I fell on my face this week. Literally. I was walking my pandemic puppy on my persistently under-construction street, and my ankle rolled over the 1.5-inch lip that the workmen left behind as my street awaits its final top coat of asphalt. That lip has been there for six months, though. I should have known better. I should have been more careful.
A few hours later, I found myself in a temporary state of situational depression. Stitched up, I lay listlessly under multiple bags of ice, and I hate feeling cold! I was embarrassed, angry, and despondent. How could I have barely survived the pandemic (truly, I feel that way at times) only to find myself in this battered condition soon after newfound freedoms have been unleashed in my world? On the upside, never have I been more grateful for the mask as an accessory.
Falling and failure are tied closely to embarrassment and depression, so much so that we can all likely cite a quote about the values of failure, quotes that are waiting just to make us feel better, to feel positive about our missteps and mistakes.
To learn from failures, though, we must first experience falling. Without the fall, the lessons are lost. Because parents, teachers, and schools have created an expansive safety net, our children rarely fail. Indeed, I feel like students must actually try to fail in today’s classrooms, usually by actively avoiding work. I have never before seen so many students with abysmal averages right up until the last week of each quarter who miraculously manage to pass at the semester’s end.
I categorize failures as occurring over a spectrum with two poles: on one end, failure that comes despite our best efforts, and, on the other, failure that comes when even our community safety net cannot protect those of us who never try. In the middle lie unexpected failures – failures that occur due to carelessness. For example, I certainly was not trying to fall this week, but I was distracted, listening to my latest Audible book. Even though I know the dangers of falling – my mom spent the last decade of her life actively trying not to fall – I allowed myself a moment of inattention.
When our children fail after trying hard to achieve something that they really desire, the lessons are worthy. When they fail to eke out a truly hard-fought A in AP Calculus BC, when they barely miss a PR in the 400-meter sprint after months of training, when they stumble while giving a school-wide speech, they discover the lapses in their preparation. They gain a certain doggedness. They vow to overcome.
When, on the other hand, our children fail without effort, despite the safety net, children learn relatively little. Instead, the community around them learns. The children were not even trying; we did everything we could to “save” them, but our efforts were for naught. The lesson instead lies within us. What did we do wrong? Should we have let them fail sooner, perhaps, when failure had fewer repercussions?
Most failures, though, occur somewhere in the middle, and there, we must intentionally seek out the inherent lessons. We should examine and reflect on exactly what we did wrong and how we can avoid feeling battered and bruised in the future. That’s what I am doing now, and I encourage parents to do the same with their children. Do not bury or avoid the pain that accompanies failures, even the minor failures. Embrace and leverage it for all that it is worth to become more surefooted, more confident, and more competent.
Deep down, we know, though, that living is not worth living if we don’t fly without a safety net at times. Despite the falls.