cthewind's Blog

“Failure is not an option.”[1] We’ve heard it before–in advertisements for action movies, in talk about our schools, around committee meeting tables. We’ve heard it, over and over again. And it’s supposed to be a motivator.

Here’s the problem: it’s only partly true. If option is a choice, it’s true that we rarely choose to fail. The problem with the way the phrase is used is that it makes failure seem avoidable. Failure is framed out of the picture of life.

How do you deal with failure if you have no frame for it, if you think it does not exist?

Frames are often used to focus attention. If you’re choosing what to frame and how, you choose the best stuff–the good news, the clean clothes, accomplishments from good days, interactions that bring out your best and make you smile. All this stuff is true, but it’s only part of the story.

What do you leave out when you frame your best self?

Frames get smaller and smaller if you don’t include failure. In the effort to preserve what is good in the frame, some things are judged as inadequate and inferior and pushed outside the frame. We get so used to framing our lives–what is acceptable clothing, language, physical behavior, etc.–that we can make snap judgments against everything that does not fit. We judge others and we judge ourselves.

We ourselves often do not fit the frames we’ve made or adopted for our lives.

Because we don’t know how to deal with failure we have a hard time admitting it. There is pressure to avoid failure and spin difficult situations into some good. If failure must be acknowledged we often blame or punish, as though it is not possible to fail and any failure is the work of one bad apple. Failure is treated as total disgrace, from which there is no authentic recovery. Careers are ruined and names are besmirched; the fallen famous appear in your feed for weeks.

In short, we’re afraid to fail and worse still, we think it possible not to fail. Worry about failure keeps us from voicing our deepest values, reaching out to others who are different, and acting on core convictions in risky ways.

Think for a minute about framing a path instead of a picture. When you frame a path you try to pay attention to what the journey will be like–how to avoid traps, ascend and descend slowly, where the shade and sun will be. A path guides your steps through different kinds of terrain.

How is your failure part of your path through this week or year?

[1] This post draws from materially originally developed for the Practice Discipleship Initiative in the ELCA Network for Children, Youth, and Family, https://www.elcaymnet.org/.