A Response to Failure

Canaan McGee argues

Failure births success. Pain develops pleasure. Inhale oxygen, exhale carbon dioxide. Living your life knowing you will die. The thought of my expanding maturation and contracting erosion reminds me of the heartbeat of nature—of existence. Isn’t this the one characteristic that all humans share—to be alive, to exist? Many claim that we wish to live happy, successful, meaningful lives, yet wait around stagnantly as if our dreams and desires will magically appear before us. Many of us put our faiths and beliefs into that which we do not understand—that which we do not know—and in this life time, will never know. Those who wish to become masters of their own destiny? take responsibility for their actions—they are content with admitting that they know what they know and they do not know what they do not know. ("Reflections of Failure")

When I was a wee Cub Scout, I entered by first Pinewood Derby. I would have been 8 years old. I don't remember much about the car (and I wonder where it would have been tossed away through my family's many moves -- at which point did parents or I decide that a boy's first pinewood car was disposable?), but it was probably blue and white, which were my favorite colors at the time. The derby was held in some church where our pack met and one by one groups of 4-6 Cubs let their cars roll down the track, gravity doing all the work (after the fathers having done all the work in carving, balancing the wheels, and adding lead weights; the boys claimed that the derby was for them, but the fathers really did most of the work and then let the boys paint the block; some fathers actually did the painting, too).

This is how it went. I placed my car at the top of the ramp with three or four other boys' cars. The cars raced down the track seemingly faster than we could run to the bottom. In my mind's eye to this day, I saw my car finish first, but the trackmaster claimed that some other boy's car was ahead of mine and that I didn't win. I lost.

Wikimedia Commons -- Our cars where never this cool

I wasn't used to loosing. Perhaps my parents had protected me from losing before then; perhaps because of all the moving from city to city because of my father's working-class job and desperate attempt to climb to some stable economic standing I simply didn't compete at all. That was too long ago to reflect upon. But that night was my first real experience with failure -- either through gravity's fault or of the trackmaster's lousy eyesight. I was crushed. I cried. I had to hide myself in the boy's room while the Derby continued that night, and my embarrassed father came to find me, tell me whatever fathers are supposed to say in times like those.

I've lost several times since then. I ran races I didn't win. I swam at Scout Camp in relays where I was the last boy in the team and (honestly) the number two guy was a lousy swimmer and took three times as long as anyone else did in his lap, so by the time I jumped in the water the race was pretty much finished anyway, but I had to finish because that's what men do -- we finish. As I came back to the starting point, the race already over by a lap, the crowd of parents politely applauded because I finished, but in reality, we lost and I was the figurehead for that loss -- the last boy in the water.

I was nominated for scholarships I didn't win. I've lost friends and I've lost an important woman who would have saved my soul if I had let her. I've failed in business tasks when the boss had to turn the assignment over to someone else just so we could get on. I've failed college classes (when FORTRAN was a thing). I've failed in physical goals, skills development, applications for grant money, etc. etc.

I sometimes work with very young students, students so young they shouldn't be taking a college class, but their counselor or parent told them that college writing is "easy" and so they squeeze in a writing class in a five week summer term, thinking that it might be a review of English IV, reading poetry and writing bland literary analysis. Or they perhaps think that, since they "passed" the Texas STAAR writing exam, they're prepared for college writing. It's only community college, right? It's just like high school.

Of the 25 students originally enrolled in my summer writing course, 12 of those idealistic high school students have withdrawn or I had to withdraw them because they were not prepared for the work load and didn't know how to ask for help. The didn't know they were helpless, and that they had been taught to be helpless because of their working class/poverty class environment and their under-budgeted, over-stressed school system which -- No Child Left Behind notwithstanding -- tells students that they're successful only because the standards are so deflated.

I was like those students in many ways. I was one of the golden boys of Spring High School (roar!). I was one of those who was nominated for "Most Likely to Succeed" and teachers just expected to go to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute because that's just who I was. I was accepted to RPI, and then two weeks before I was to leave, I fell off a cliff, breaking both my legs; hospital for a week; wheel chair for three months. I lost my scholarship to RPI, and instead I rolled that wheelchair to North Harris Community College for my first semester, the promise of being the next Carl Sagan gone.

And yet that failure was the birth of new opportunities, as McGee argues.

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. (Frost, 1920)

So, though I never met Sagan (or deGrasse Tyson, I should add -- I could have yet persuaded him to continue his dream of becoming a dancer), I walked some path. Not the path I intended, and not an easy path. The failures continues, but often they were really a reworking that I didn't take the time to reflect upon. That's been my biggest failure -- failing to take the time to pause, breathe, reflect, and look for a larger picture.  And yet, I would argue that my life overall is a success. It's not what I wanted it to be -- not when I was that idealistic teen, or the idealistic college grad, or that idealistic suitor after the perfect woman. But it is what I want it to be.

Thoreau said

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” (Walden)

This morning I went cycling and chose to stop half way and swim in the creek. It wasn't Walden Pond, but the sun was still low and within the shadow of the overhanging American Elm I saw cormorants and egrets flying low, low over the brown water. The current was strong but the water was low, the white sand on the beach brilliant against the dark and darker foliage of the brush. The sounds of the airport were absorbed by the forest, the noise of the freeways long gone, the mosquitoes too afraid of the moving water to bother.

Texas Egret

This was no game or amusement of mankind. This was a successful day after a hectic week -- appreciating a wilderness scene only miles from five million people all scurrying to find their version of success. I could have been studying or writing or grading or cleaning or doing a dozen other things that need to be done to chase the muskrats. Perhaps I should have done those things, but I would have done them on some level desperately instead of lovingly. When I love the work, I love the work. When I despair, I despair. Today was a success, built from failure after failure after some failures I didn't even know were failures. I'll return to the academic life in a few hours and I'll be different when I do so.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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