How to Fail Successfully
How to Fail Successfully.
At the risk of proclaiming at the top of my substantial, hearty voice, "The world has gone mad," I feel compelled at this point to raise the subject of failure. My compulsion comes hot on the heels of a news report on Radio 5 live of a children's football league in Telford which has announced that it will no longer publish the full scores of matches in case they embarrass the children. Therefore a 12-0 defeat will be shown as a 1-0 loss. There have, I fear, been many bad ideas cast into our increasingly over-sensitive society in recent years; such as the idea to award a pass to any further education college student who can spell his or her name correctly on an equal opportunities form, or the preposterous idea to force children to wear protective clothing for an innocent, yet supposedly brutal game of playground conkers, yet those in stratosphere of empty authority have managed to outdo even themselves with this risible recommendation.
Failure and humiliation is a part of life and it must be experienced so that we can understand our own strengths and weaknesses as human beings. Failure, unpleasant though it is, is a merely a brick of personality which defines the fine, structurally sound manor which we habituate and call - ourselves. It is no less important a building block than our sense of triumph, achievement and accomplishment with which we build our sense of confidence and self-satisfaction, in fact such successes be they in our social, personal or working lives are given more meaning, context and sheer happiness by the existence of our failures. Nobody likes the feeling of failure, of course, but the fear of repeating such failures, is what drives us on to be the people we always hoped we might be.
In my case I have failed on many occasions in my life. Small failures, large failures, humiliating failures, they have all made me the rather strange person I am now. I may not be a specimen of physical perfection or, for that matter, a man of any real intellectual insight – but I am ME, and that is the best I have to offer. When I was eight years old I would go every week to Shaw's, a local newsagent in the quaint seaside town of Penarth in South Wales, to pick up my reserved copy of The Beano. The shop itself was lake any other newsagent but to me would always be remembered for the dozens and dozens of note-sized advertisements which cluttered up the window beside the main entrance. There were all colours and shapes of scraps of paper selling anything from ankle-biting Jack Russell puppies to tuba tuition for bronchitis sufferers and all eccentric points in between. On this particular day I walked up to the counter and proudly requested, "The Beano, for a Mister Jon Lawrence, 2 Dingle Road please." The polite balding gentlemen duly obliged and presented to me the weekly grail of children's comic literature which, as usual, I began to read on my way out of the shop. I was completely and inauspiciously unaware of the window in front of me. It was, at this point, free from tatty advertisements and local paraphernalia having been cleaned expertly to the point that it resembled an open door. As I began to absorb the speedy comic musings of Billy Whizz, I walked with purpose and stupidity straight into the window. I will always remember the sound of my face smashing into the glass and the gasps, concerned looks and then finally, uncontrollable and hysterical laughter from everybody in the shop. The only two people who were not laughing were the shop owner, who had only just cleaned the glass and was now faced with the prospect of removing a print of my facial features from the window, and me - as by this point I had the added a nosebleed to the humiliation of the proceedings. This was a desperately embarrassing failure on my part, one which I never wanted, or indeed want to experience again. Therefore, as a result, I now wait until I am sat in the comfort of my own home before reading The Beano and always endeavour to look where I am going.
Some of my failures have, in fact, created some of my more endearing personality traits. Some of my guitar solos can only be described as beautiful failures and they have, among friends, added another layer of humour to our relationship. The very thought of a Jon Lawrence guitar solo is enough to reduce friends to fits of laughter as it evokes memories of a musical incompetence so utterly complete that the only thing to do is… well, laugh. As the wonderfully eccentric Quentin Crisp once said, "If at first you don't succeed, Failure might be your style."
I have recently failed in my relationships with many people, my family and dear friends and yet my biggest failing is the shame I feel when I should simply realise that it is something I can learn from, hopefully I will. The failures I have suffered in relationships with friends this year have only served to make me realise the importance of such honest people and how I need them in my life. After failing to deal with a difficult son of mine and resorting to shouting at him in such a way as to install genuine fear into his eyes (one of my most awful failures), I held my son with all the love, hope, faith and spirit I could muster. Such an embrace could only come from my failure. From a moment of abject failure came a moment of such complete and unconditional love.
In the world of art and creativity there are many who have failed time and time again before succeeding. The great and incomparable Beatles were rejected by Decca records yet went forward to become the pioneers that they undoubtedly became. Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, likewise put the critical failure of Blackadder I behind them and duly delivered the roaring success that was Blackadder II. And let us not forget the wonder and emotional landscape of Vincent Van Goch who only sold a handful of paintings in his short difficult life. And yet the rejections and failures he felt in his life have transcended death and given us art so inarticulately beautiful that it can take our very breath away.
As a tutor of music for eleven years my ethics and beliefs were tested to the breaking point and I was asked by certain figure driven staff members to "find a pass in this piece of work." If a pass was there I would gladly have awarded it but it would have been unconscionable to reward failure with success. I was not even allowed to use the word fail? The term was, "Not Yet Achieved." What an absurdity of language! The tongue of cowardice! How devalued would those who have failed have felt? What would those students have learned from such false achievement? That there failure is rewarded. What sort of a lesson does that send out to future generations? How likely is it that a policeman who pulls over an inebriated twenty-something on the hard shoulder of the motorway, will say, "I'm sorry Mr Bubblybum but you have not yet achieved your breathalizer test?"
I would love the opportunity, unlikely though it may be, to travel into the future and see what this generation of children will be like in twenty years time. My worrying hypothesis is that most will have the physique of a clinically obese, no make that morbidly obese humpback whale due to the lack of physical exercise they will have undertaken in the name of health and safety and, god help us, "safeguarding" them. Will we have created race of footballers who are required to play in a suit of armour, with a sponge-foam ball which weighs little more than an anorexic guinea pig even though, by this time, football will be a completely non-contact sport, with the FA being sponsored by Mothercare and the Samaritans? As a parent I want to protect my children, as dreadful as they can be sometimes, from harm, from suffering and from the very worst things that this beautiful, yet often misguided world can spew forth at a moments notice. In truth I worry not one iota that my children will be humiliated by a crushing football defeat but am filled with dread that they might actually turn into one of the pot-bellied, beige-shirt-wearing, arse-kissing, superior (and yes I mean that in the most blatantly ironic sense possible), soulless administrators that have come up with a rule so stupid as to actually make me want to hang myself!
"If at first you don't succed, failure may be your style." Quentin Crisp.
At the risk of proclaiming at the top of my substantial, hearty voice, "The world has gone mad," I feel compelled at this point to raise the subject of failure. My compulsion comes hot on the heels of a news report on Radio 5 live of a children's football league in Telford which has announced that it will no longer publish the full scores of matches in case they embarrass the children. Therefore a 12-0 defeat will be shown as a 1-0 loss. There have, I fear, been many bad ideas cast into our increasingly over-sensitive society in recent years; such as the idea to award a pass to any further education college student who can spell his or her name correctly on an equal opportunities form, or the preposterous idea to force children to wear protective clothing for an innocent, yet supposedly brutal game of playground conkers, yet those in stratosphere of empty authority have managed to outdo even themselves with this risible recommendation.
Failure and humiliation is a part of life and it must be experienced so that we can understand our own strengths and weaknesses as human beings. Failure, unpleasant though it is, is a merely a brick of personality which defines the fine, structurally sound manor which we habituate and call - ourselves. It is no less important a building block than our sense of triumph, achievement and accomplishment with which we build our sense of confidence and self-satisfaction, in fact such successes be they in our social, personal or working lives are given more meaning, context and sheer happiness by the existence of our failures. Nobody likes the feeling of failure, of course, but the fear of repeating such failures, is what drives us on to be the people we always hoped we might be.
In my case I have failed on many occasions in my life. Small failures, large failures, humiliating failures, they have all made me the rather strange person I am now. I may not be a specimen of physical perfection or, for that matter, a man of any real intellectual insight – but I am ME, and that is the best I have to offer. When I was eight years old I would go every week to Shaw's, a local newsagent in the quaint seaside town of Penarth in South Wales, to pick up my reserved copy of The Beano. The shop itself was lake any other newsagent but to me would always be remembered for the dozens and dozens of note-sized advertisements which cluttered up the window beside the main entrance. There were all colours and shapes of scraps of paper selling anything from ankle-biting Jack Russell puppies to tuba tuition for bronchitis sufferers and all eccentric points in between. On this particular day I walked up to the counter and proudly requested, "The Beano, for a Mister Jon Lawrence, 2 Dingle Road please." The polite balding gentlemen duly obliged and presented to me the weekly grail of children's comic literature which, as usual, I began to read on my way out of the shop. I was completely and inauspiciously unaware of the window in front of me. It was, at this point, free from tatty advertisements and local paraphernalia having been cleaned expertly to the point that it resembled an open door. As I began to absorb the speedy comic musings of Billy Whizz, I walked with purpose and stupidity straight into the window. I will always remember the sound of my face smashing into the glass and the gasps, concerned looks and then finally, uncontrollable and hysterical laughter from everybody in the shop. The only two people who were not laughing were the shop owner, who had only just cleaned the glass and was now faced with the prospect of removing a print of my facial features from the window, and me - as by this point I had the added a nosebleed to the humiliation of the proceedings. This was a desperately embarrassing failure on my part, one which I never wanted, or indeed want to experience again. Therefore, as a result, I now wait until I am sat in the comfort of my own home before reading The Beano and always endeavour to look where I am going.
Some of my failures have, in fact, created some of my more endearing personality traits. Some of my guitar solos can only be described as beautiful failures and they have, among friends, added another layer of humour to our relationship. The very thought of a Jon Lawrence guitar solo is enough to reduce friends to fits of laughter as it evokes memories of a musical incompetence so utterly complete that the only thing to do is… well, laugh. As the wonderfully eccentric Quentin Crisp once said, "If at first you don't succeed, Failure might be your style."
I have recently failed in my relationships with many people, my family and dear friends and yet my biggest failing is the shame I feel when I should simply realise that it is something I can learn from, hopefully I will. The failures I have suffered in relationships with friends this year have only served to make me realise the importance of such honest people and how I need them in my life. After failing to deal with a difficult son of mine and resorting to shouting at him in such a way as to install genuine fear into his eyes (one of my most awful failures), I held my son with all the love, hope, faith and spirit I could muster. Such an embrace could only come from my failure. From a moment of abject failure came a moment of such complete and unconditional love.
In the world of art and creativity there are many who have failed time and time again before succeeding. The great and incomparable Beatles were rejected by Decca records yet went forward to become the pioneers that they undoubtedly became. Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, likewise put the critical failure of Blackadder I behind them and duly delivered the roaring success that was Blackadder II. And let us not forget the wonder and emotional landscape of Vincent Van Goch who only sold a handful of paintings in his short difficult life. And yet the rejections and failures he felt in his life have transcended death and given us art so inarticulately beautiful that it can take our very breath away.
As a tutor of music for eleven years my ethics and beliefs were tested to the breaking point and I was asked by certain figure driven staff members to "find a pass in this piece of work." If a pass was there I would gladly have awarded it but it would have been unconscionable to reward failure with success. I was not even allowed to use the word fail? The term was, "Not Yet Achieved." What an absurdity of language! The tongue of cowardice! How devalued would those who have failed have felt? What would those students have learned from such false achievement? That there failure is rewarded. What sort of a lesson does that send out to future generations? How likely is it that a policeman who pulls over an inebriated twenty-something on the hard shoulder of the motorway, will say, "I'm sorry Mr Bubblybum but you have not yet achieved your breathalizer test?"
I would love the opportunity, unlikely though it may be, to travel into the future and see what this generation of children will be like in twenty years time. My worrying hypothesis is that most will have the physique of a clinically obese, no make that morbidly obese humpback whale due to the lack of physical exercise they will have undertaken in the name of health and safety and, god help us, "safeguarding" them. Will we have created race of footballers who are required to play in a suit of armour, with a sponge-foam ball which weighs little more than an anorexic guinea pig even though, by this time, football will be a completely non-contact sport, with the FA being sponsored by Mothercare and the Samaritans? As a parent I want to protect my children, as dreadful as they can be sometimes, from harm, from suffering and from the very worst things that this beautiful, yet often misguided world can spew forth at a moments notice. In truth I worry not one iota that my children will be humiliated by a crushing football defeat but am filled with dread that they might actually turn into one of the pot-bellied, beige-shirt-wearing, arse-kissing, superior (and yes I mean that in the most blatantly ironic sense possible), soulless administrators that have come up with a rule so stupid as to actually make me want to hang myself!
"If at first you don't succed, failure may be your style." Quentin Crisp.
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