Why failure is good for you

I’m sure we’re all familiar with the growing trend in the modern world to smother kids in cotton wool and protect them from the vagaries of real life. This is bollocks of course. Life isn’t a reality TV show, where all the losers get put back in the competition again. Where not only do you have to suffer the obnoxious media presence of the talentless so called winner, but also several of the losers as well.

Newsflash kids – we live in a dog eat dog capitalist society, and there can’t be a handful of winners without a whole bunch of losers to prop them up. The only upside is that we all get the choice to be winners or losers (unless you’re exceptionally unlucky). We all get to sink or swim, gorge or starve.

But don’t despair, because the truth is that failure is in fact good for you. I’m sure you’ve heard it somewhere. Failure builds character – from defeat comes the first spark of victory, when you lose, don’t lose the lesson, and the greatest triumphs have their roots in the depths of despair.

Take me for example. I’ve been around for a while, and when I was a kid, it was acceptable to be a loser. In fact, they encouraged you to lose, they beat it in to you – teachers, parents, neighbours, bullies, even your friends. Why? Because they were all psychopaths, but not only that, because failure is in fact life affirming.

Trust me, I failed at everything at least once, and I’m a better person for it.

I failed at school

I failed at sport

I failed my driving test

I failed at relationships

I failed at sex

I failed at friendship

I failed as an employee

I failed at writing

But in every case, I persevered until I got better. Yet if I had been a raging success at any of those things right off the bat, would I have put in the effort to improve? Hell no. I would have done what most people do, rested on my laurels until I’d pissed all my talent up against a wall.

When I was a kid, my father took me down to the river and threw me in off the jetty. There weren’t many public swimming pools in those days. It was literally sink or swim, tough love. At least I think he was teaching me how to swim. Come to think of it he had gone when I struggled back to shore… nevertheless, it taught me how to swim.

Then I joined the local soccer club. In those days there was one team for every age group, and if you weren’t good enough, you didn’t get a game, simple as that. For two years I turned up to training twice a week every week, and every weekend I was told I wasn’t good enough and I sat on the sidelines and watched the game. In the third year I finally got on the field and never looked back. If that was now the kid’s parents would have the coach and the club in court for discriminating against junior and destroying his or her confidence. But back then it just made me more determined to succeed.

Then I failed at school and was pretty much kicked to the curb and into the workforce at the age of fifteen. But I went back, night school, college, university, and ended up with a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters’ degree. A PHD is on the horizon.

Then when I got older it took me a number of failed attempts to get the relationship thing together, to grow up and become a considerate partner. As for sex, like most young men I had no idea what I was doing, especially downstairs. So, like many others I experienced that dreaded tap on the shoulder followed by the ego crushing question – “What the hell are you doing down there? Look, come here, f*ckknuckle. This is a clitoris, and this is how it works.”

I’m a better man for it (and eternally grateful to that woman).

Coming full circle (yeah, that is a pun) I failed as a writer. Despite numerous publications which convinced me I could write, I couldn’t. It was only when I turned to other writers for help, in particular these guys at the Australian Horror Writers Association –

http://www.australianhorror.com/

and started giving and receiving considered feedback, that I began to approach a level of competence, and I’m still learning (and occasionally failing) every single day of my life.

That’s what failure teaches us, to pick ourselves up off the floor and try again, try harder, try better, always look for self-improvement. The bottom line is that you won’t be good at most things without working hard, improving your skills, and not giving up.

So parents, don’t lie to your children and tell them they’re all winners, because they’re not. We can’t all be astronauts and entrepreneurs. Some of us have to clean the damn toilets and flip burgers. Just let them know you love them and shove them out the door and let them work it out for themselves.

And never forget that life isn’t fair.