Striking Out into Life

 

I've made this point before but it bears repeating: failure is a natural and necessary part of life, and the sooner we learn that the better off we are. My work colleague likes to ask this question when we're interviewing a candidate: "Tell me about a time you failed and what you learned from it." I love it, because it allows us to see if someone has actually been willing to fail, failed, and emerged from the other side better for it.

Alas, most people know this is a common question and have some canned answer that doesn't actually feel authentic. But recently we had someone share a pretty spectacular work failure, and besides the obvious lesson of "don't do that again" their takeaway was that the next morning the sun still rose and life went on.

I think back to my own, relatively healthy childhood, which included a love for baseball, the quintessential metaphor for most of life being about failure. As for me, I was bad and then good, and during my good spell I actually made an all-star team. Of course, I also struck out to end the game and our season on that all-star team, and I wept bitterly on my way back to the dugout and all the way home. And then, just like the person we recently interviewed, the next morning the sun rose and life went on.

It can be paralyzing to be so afraid of failure that we are unwilling to put ourselves out there. When we think the world will collapse upon itself if we fail, we play it safe or we don't play at all. But everything in life - career success, love, social progress - requires that we try, and more often than not that we fail, sometimes repeatedly and sometimes spectacularly. 

I can laugh about striking out to end our season, but obviously other failures are more embarrassing or costly. Yet fail we must if we desire to grow, to make a difference, to truly live life. To continue the sports metaphor, more and more people are content to sit on the sideline and snipe at everyone on the field making mistakes. It feels good and safe to do so, especially when we are joined by a growing chorus of similarly minded folks. 

As for me, I want to be on the field, and I hope you do too. And if, like me, you fail a lot, and take your lumps for it, that too is part of the process. Let's embrace it, together, as part of the journey to anything and everything that truly matters in this world.