I’ve been really interested in failure recently. With a few exceptions I have felt like the failure rate in my own life has been too low. That’s not a braggart’s way of pointing out my tendency to succeed, because that tendency may just as well be subconsciously constructed to prevent failure. It can be hard to tell in something if we’ve gotten lucky or if we simply didn’t reach high enough. In Miles Davis’ bands risk and growth were heavily praised, but perfection brought the wrath of God. If you weren’t stumbling on occasion, you weren’t pushing hard enough.
So what should we fail at? Everything, or at least almost everything. Don’t fail at marriage, friendship, or loyalty, almost everything else if fair game. Creativity is something at which we can, and should, afford to fail. As Twyla Tharp points out in The Creative Habit, much of this failure can be done in private, stretching past your comfort zone to discover new spaces. Failing in private can help reduce the number of failures we share with the public. Still, public failure should not be something that deters forward progress.
As a teen Charlie Parker was chased off the stage by having cymbals thrown at his feet mid-solo, Van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime, Emily Dickinson published less than a dozen poems, and everyone knows the story of Michael Jordan failing to make the varsity team his sophomore year. If you follow the career of anyone you deem truly successful you will find moments of perseverance, when they refused to be held down.
I would make the argument for setting almost unreasonably high goals, for “reaching for the stars”. In this regard I am happy to sound cheesy or naive. As a child we were all told we could do anything. At age 5, when asked what you want to be when you grow up, the answers Fireman, Astronaut, and Elephant are all met with the same warm smile and “good for you”. Maybe I have no hope of being an Elephant, but I cling to the belief that given the work ethic anything else is within my grasp. You should too.