On the other hand, something niggles me about the end:
So here is the point: you are going to meet the dragon of failure in your life. You may not get into the school you want, or you may get kicked out of the school you are in. You may get rejected by the girl of your dreams, or, God forbid, get into an accident beyond your control. But the point is, everything happens for a reason. At the time, it may not be clear. And certainly the pain and the shame are going to be overwhelming and devastating. But as sure as the sun comes up, there will come a time on the next day or next week or next year when you will grab that sword and tell him "Be gone, dragon."
This seems like a pretty safe bet when you're talking to Buckley students, who have an ample safety net underneath them to allow them to bounce back from nearly any failure. But would he really say this to, say, a 55 year old man who'd just been fired from his sales job? Bad things--persistent bad things--happen to good people, and while it's comforting to think of them as merely a waystation, for lots of people that isn't really true. It only seems true to people who have been spectacular successes, because for them every failure actually just one more step towards the happy place they enjoy today. Sure, you can always rise over adversity. But a significant number of people will never again rise to the level they previously enjoyed.
1) The speaker isn't saying that failure will leave the person better off in the long rung, or even that they will "rise to the level they previously enjoyed", just that the person will get past it and find a reason. Even Buckley students find someone as objectively awesome as the girls, guys, and jobs of their dreams, but most of them will learn to love someone who will have you, and things usually work out.
2) I'll concede that even the weaker proposition -- that we will survive adversity and come to believe we experienced it for a reason-- is not always true. However, it's one of those useful myths that we should act as if we believed, even if we don't. The way to maximize our chances of surviving from and even profiting from failure is to act as if we believe we will come out the back side stronger, even if we probably won't.
I, and I presume most others, learn more from failure than from success -- but only if I have the audacity to keep trying.
I knew a successful VC fund manager who told repeated his mistakes when asked to speak, though he'd been invited to talk of the secret of his success. (Biggest? Not investing in Celestial Seasonings in hippy era.)
But these are failures that slow our success; they impede us without "swamping" our lives.
This is a patently silly post. Especially this dunderheaded nonsense: "But would he really say this to, say, a 55 year old man who'd just been fired from his sales job?"
He is speaking to the graduating boys of the ninth grade. His speech has absolutely nothing to do with 55 year-old men (Although some of the teachers in the room may have fit that description.) What a waste of pixels.
Any man that has been a salesman until age 55 already believes that tomorrow will be a better day. Only optimists survive that long in the sales profession.
But you seem to be implying that happiness and contentment are based on financial stability and gain. Again, the 55 year old folks know that life has ups and downs. The current situation wasn't the first setback, won't be the last and the worst may be yet to come. And if one hasn't found satisfaction and contentment in something besides money by age 55, then more money probably won't help.
It only seems true to people who have been spectacular successes, because for them every failure actually just one more step towards the happy place they enjoy today.
Much like religious people like to believe there is an invisible man who lives in the sky who's looking out for them, we all tell ourselves pleasant little lies to make it through the day.
But would he really say this to, say, a 55 year old man who'd just been fired from his sales job?
We have a saying to cover this situation, Megan: shit happens. He was not issued a certificate at birth saying that life would be fair. That it was fair for so long (or at least a rough approximation thereof) was partly accidental. As the stockbrokers like to say, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Now, is this a comforting bromide for our unemployed Willy Loman who is now facing a middle age of lowered circumstances? No. But it is up to Willy and not us to adapt to his situation and begin to think about what he's going to do with his life.
The key to managing failure is not to make sure that failures don't happen, because this is impossible. Rather, you want to make sure that systems fail gracefully and recover quickly from failures if and when they occur. In computer science, this is sometimes called "hardening" a system -- building in both point-robustness and redundancy at critical points. But no matter how hard you try, failure always lurks, and usually from an avenue you never expected.
We have a saying to cover this situation, Megan: shit happens. He was not issued a certificate at birth saying that life would be fair. That it was fair for so long (or at least a rough approximation thereof) was partly accidental.
If it's not fair when bad things happen, then it isn't fair when good things happen either.
I think more people should follow your lead, though. When someone says "life isn't fair", what they really mean is "I owe you nothing", and you've made that connection fairly explicit.
Mcardle would not be a good motivational speaker.
Haha! That's funny. She is the anti-Sullivan. Refuses to let the emotions bubble forth and inspire. Something learned from her own early career failures, I suspect. Sullivan was a publicly lauded prodigy from a very young age, so he is much more optimistic and willing to let himself get crushed with disappointment.
Wonderfully dry quote: "People get what they deserve in life. Successful people usually know this truth instinctively." Hilarious.
Good post and definitely true: life sucks for some people. Don't believe the pretty lies about it all being for the best, it's not always for the best.
But I kinda wish I hadn't read such a depressing sentiment just before the start of the weekend!
And it's my birthday weekend no less! On the other hand, it kind of jibes with the fact that my outdoor party plans are in 99% danger of being rained out, a failure not in the same league as an elder's job loss, but also one without any obvious bright side...
I enjoyed your writing, Megan, and hope to read it elsewhere in the future.
I am only sorry you had to use the totally innocuous word "niggles", which is almost certainly going to be misinterpreted in such a way as to cause you to be fired from any self-respecting national magazine.
I DO understand Howard was rehired afterward, hopefully you get the same consideration.
Megan,
You are of course, correct; you also miss the point of the speech. Years ago I listened to a motivational speaker our firm had hired for its annual meeting. Afterward, I had a chance to talk with him at the reception. I said something like, "I get that having a positive mental attitude is important, but it doesn't matter how many times I look in the mirror and say, 'I'm the fastest man in the world', I'm never going to beat Carl Lewis in the 100 yard dash!" The speaker just smiled. He then said, "It's hard to motivate people if you are required to footnote every possible cause of failure. My job is to remind you of the wondrous possibilities that are available only if you will try. You already know that bad things -- things you cannot control -- might prevent you from achieving your goals. You don't need me to tell you that. You need me to remind you that you won't achieve your dream unless you decide to try. Trying won't guarantee success; not trying will guarantee failure."
So, ya, you're right. Not everyone bounces back from an early failure or two. That insight was not unique to you. Yet, if no one is willing to risk failure, no one will ever succeed.
What he's saying is fundamentally a matter of faith -- that not a sparrow falls to the ground unless it's the will of God. As such, he's not appealing to reason, and you can accept it or reject it. But arguing the point is really to miss it.
"Not everyone bounces back from an early failure or two. That insight was not unique to you. Yet, if no one is willing to risk failure, no one will ever succeed."
The problem is that attitude has become inextricably tied up with the phenomenal economic growth experienced in the U.S. since WWII. In the last 60 years, it's been hard to experience really crushing failure if you were willing to work because there's been so many opportunities available. Even the guy or girl who took off for the coasts to be an actor/singer/artist and beat their head against the wall for 5 or 10 years still had a great chance to get a "real job" after that and build something like a middle class life.
Even putting aside the current crisis, there're fairly good reasons to think the next 60 years aren't going to be such easy sledding. Which means a better appreciation of the consequences of failure is probably needed before we Twitter ourselves into social anarchy.
Mike
I don't see this as a "problem". It's true today and will still be true in the forseeable future. If there's a problem it's that people have defined "middle class" up to an unreasonable level of wealth. There are still a whole lot of opportunities out there for people who take the time to develop marketable skills.
I don't see the problem. The size of the economy doubles by 72/R where R is your rate of economic growth. That means if the US maintains on average 3% economic growth, the size of the US economy will double in 24 years.
* everything happens for a reason. And everything is as it should be,
in this best of all possible worlds.
* But as sure as the sun comes up tomorrow, tomorrow, there's going
to be sun tomorrow: Lil Orphan Annie
* tell him "Be gone, dragon." Yeah, right before you feel the burn.
The race is not to the swift, nor victory to the strong,
but time and chance happen to them all.
There is a grim little art film, "The Music of Time and Chance",
which gives a better picture of what happens to people who live
in hope: They die hoping, as the russians say.
C. S. Lewis gave lectures on how suffering was good for the soul -
until he had to watch his wife die of cancer; It left a mark.
That which does not kills us, make us stronger. Unless of course it leaves you a broken shell of your former self,longing for the release that death will bring. But usually it just kills us with long agonizing suffering. And pain, must not forget the pain. Oh the pain, the pain of it all.
Wombat,
LOL!!! That is too good!
You win for best comment post of the day.
FAN tastic!
Ummm . . . Jack Handy?
That's the most depressing blog post I've ever read...sort of an existentialist sting there at the end. At least you posted it on a Friday evening rather than a Monday morning.
This is a fun topic for cliches!
Life is hard, suck it up.
Keep on keeping on.
You're not dead yet.
"everything happens for a reason": oh what juvenile twaddle.
Everything does happen for a reason, a lot of times for really bad reasons. Sometimes because of stupid things other people do. I don't think he meant it that way though. If I lose both of my legs in a car accident because someone else was driving drunk, it really sucks. (I still have both my legs but I do lack a sense of purpose, its just an example) It won't help me to sit around feeling sorry for myself though. I'll never be the same person again, but what's my alternative. I think that is the reason that I always hated the story about Job.
Have you heard the term "Resilient Child" ? New finding:
About 1 in 10 children who grow up in horrendous households
survive, recover, and lead normal, even outstanding lives,
as adults. The other 9 are ruined for life.
Even after controlling, analyzing, and massaging the data
ad infinitum, they could not avoid the conclusion that
it is an organic, probably genetic, difference;
Some kids are better than others.
I don't know if that's the main conclusion I would draw from that....
Read a study comparing kids who did well in school and those who didn't. The 'did good' group felt they were in control of their lives. Mr. Jones is trying not to do harm by congratulating the students on taking that attitude and perhaps subtly signaling that this is a first approximation by putting this 'conclusion' in a child fantasy of dragons.
"I'm a big proponent of the transformative power of failure."
That is one way of dealing with the cognitive dissonance (while still collecting the cheques, of course).
"But a significant number of people will never again rise to the level they previously enjoyed."
Oddly, the only demographic group gaining jobs recently has been the over-55s (though probably at a lower level than they previously enjoyed). I've gotten depressed about this sort of setback in the past, where the next job is no longer on an upward trajectory from the last job. It took a while for me to burn off my bitterness, self-pity, etc., but I did. And once I did, my perspective broadened. Just because I burned my bridges in a particular niche doesn't mean there are no more niches to explore. Now I've started my own business, which is impossible to do without being an optimist. The future is uncertain, but I look forward to it now. I heartily recommend optimism. It beats the hell out of the alternative.
I did a couple of blog posts on this stuff back in March:
http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/03/value-of-mistakes-mistakes-and-learning.html
"You can learn more from mistakes - from things that go wrong - than from successes. Success can always be the result of accident or coincidence, things outside of your control."
"Since you are trying to succeed, however, a mistake is a definite sign that something in your knowledge of the situation or in your technique needs refinement or even to be completely re-thought.
"Learning from others is less painful than learning from your own mistakes, so you should learn that way whenever you can, but if you don't learn from the mistakes you do make, the pain will be for nothing, and worse you may make the same mistake with same pain again."
And: http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/03/optimism-is-not-necessarily-as.html
"Optimists may accomplish more than realists, realists certainly accomplish more than pessimists, but optimists do many times as much damage. For example, nearly all "revolutionaries" and criminals are optimists. Lenin, Hitler, Sadam Hussein, Bernie Madoff, and probably all con-men and burglars were extremely optimistic. The conviction that they will never be caught is nearly universal among criminals. Many, perhaps most, excessive risk takers are optimists."
The fear of failure keeps us mindful of opportunity costs, something that our society should pay more attention too, not less.
Cant and happy-talk about blindly "following your dreams" seems to be a nice racket these days (and I'd like to know since when -- this wasn't always a part of our culture, was it?) but net-net I'd venture to guess that it does a lot more harm than good, save for the local Starbucks employing liberal arts graduates on the cheap at seven dollars an hour.
As I've heard it told, the attitude you want is, it's okay to make mistakes. But make new ones.
What sort of statistics would disprove this hypothesis? That no one gets out alive? And how do they define 'successful' and 'normal'?
It's easy to say, "Everything happens for a reason," if you're a billionaire. He can't admit that, although he undoubtedly worked hard for his billions, he was also very, very, very lucky.
ScentOfViolets:
What sort of statistics would disprove this hypothesis?
That no one gets out alive?
Close: That all the children are ruined.
And how do they define 'successful' and 'normal'?
Ah, yes, those are more difficult;
A person can be functional in society, but quite mad.
As an engineer, I would do a "black box" definition:
Observables only; If you want to know what is going on
inside their heads, ask Dr. Sanity.
So: Educated, employed, gets along with coworkers, has
friends and a "significant other", laughs frequently.
Heck, maybe having a sense of humor is sufficient. ;)
Seriously, though, for me, this was a surprising finding:
There are "Unbreakable" individuals, most of whom are
not recognized as such, because they have normal childhoods.
The more I think about it, the more I think such people
used to be selected/rewarded by society for filling critical
roles, for accepting the call to a profession, and that our
society has forgotten why it is necessary to do this, stopped
doing it, and is now about to get reeducated by reality;
If you let yourself be governed by Fools, the Mob rules.
Wow; unintended double entendre. Excuse me while I go review
the movies "Heavy Metal" and "Wizards" for further inspiration.
Perhaps we're seeing the transformative power of failure in Iran.
I was just barely 18 when the last revolution there happened, just moved to Boston. I lived in a dingy, dark 2-room basement apartment on Comm. Ave. A farm girl, fresh to the city, seeking to become a musician. I used to go out onto the mall early in the morning and practice; guitar or mandolin. The mandolin attracted a girl, always in full burka, from Iran. She, and two brothers, were attending 'university.'
For about a month, we struck up a fragile friendship. We'd meet early in the morning, and talk, or go for an ice cream when it got hot -- she would not remove any of her oppressive clothing, and it was frequently the subject of our conversations. I think she food my hippie-wild-child demeanor a bit frightening.
The last day I saw her, she told me she would be going home soon. She said her brothers were going to overthrow the government. And she showed me her hair.
Within two months, the Shah was gone; and Jimmy Carter soon followed. And we switched from a path of conserving oil to spendthrift burning.
I'll never forget how stunned I was when I found out she'd told me the truth, and wasn't just parroting the revolutionary speech I was so prone to at the time. Real change is painful; I wasn't really prepared to suffer the pain when I was young. I'm not sure I'm prepared to suffer it now.
But the Iranian people, from my very small experience, are not so fearful as I.
I hope this revolution provides a correction of the poor choices her nation and mine made back in that time of turmoil.
I hope the future at least has the opportunity forgive us or condemn us for the mistakes we make now.
@ ZIC One can hope.
The only Iranians I ever observed were students at my Dojo:
One of them almost passed out from shame when he accidentally
stopped a slap in the face during practice.
The other assured me that his Sensei in Iran was a very powerful man;
He could stare at a fly, and it would fall over dead. Not joking.
If one can grasp just how different these people are from us, how
different are the things they live for, and are willing to die for,
then one may decide to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, when he
remains...diplomatically vague...on the subject of the protests in Iran.
Still, I was classmates with an Arab Christian from Palestine, and
am willing to believe that if the Israelis had treated his people
better, maybe formed an alliance with them, that things might be
different today in the Middle East. The idea is not mine; Dr. Pournelle
suggested it, based on his much greater experience in the area.
The faith here is the more important thing to dissect:
If he means that every event is somehow specially crafted by a higher being to impart some meaning then I think we have no idea whether that is the case. If could be that Brownian motion caused some series of events to unwind in a certain way. It could be that it was all determined but that there's no great lesson to learn from much of what happens to you. It could be that much of it (even parts that are tragic and painful) is just filler between the events you are supposed to learn from.
Maybe there's not a higher consciousness. Maybe we are all just elements in a computer simulation. Maybe I'm a tool of the simulation writer who is intervening to interject these comments into the sim to see how these thoughts change the calculations of other sentient simulations that are part of the larger sim.
As for the transformative power of failure: Some people learn from it that they want more government help. Some learn that other people are to blame and they become bitter and vengeful. Some learn that successful people just got lucky and that they will resent successful people.
Some people are too dumb to get a clue about their mistakes.
This seems like a pretty safe bet when you're talking to Buckley students, who have an ample safety net underneath them to allow them to bounce back from nearly any failure. But would he really say this to, say, a 55 year old man who'd just been fired from his sales job?
No he would not say that to a 55 year old, nor is he speaking to 55 year olds, so why ask that question? Speeches are targeted to specific audiences, with truths or half truths appropriate to that audience.
It would seem an argument is being made that the speech should have some universality across audience and that's just not normative for speeches. Speeches have the virtue and limitation of being very audience specific. So that speech you gave, hypothetically speaking, to The Strong Hispanic Woman Congress Conference is not the speech that is gonna get you the job as Supreme Burger Justice Judge under Mayor McCheese.
As for the Book of Job, I think it offers some interesting takes on why stuff happens, and the philosophical back and forth is what makes the story. Whether it's God and Satan discussing man, or various men discussing why stuff happens, or how each man in the tale relates to each other... insightful. (Even for the atheist, and read as just a tale, you get interesting perspectives on how people approach "bad things").
And often, people approach the idea of bad things happening with never a view of Satan. It is always, "How could God allow..."
"No he would not say that to a 55 year old, nor is he speaking to 55 year olds, so why ask that question? Speeches are targeted to specific audiences, with truths or half truths appropriate to that audience."
I didn't read Megan's post as being, primarily, a criticism of the speech. I think that what she was saying is that while the address may have a perfectly appropriate message for Buckley students that message wasn't applicable to a large swath of society.
What I think she is saying -- and what I don't see a lot of direct responses to -- is that a lot of people (55 year salesmen, autoworkers) are being thrown the to the side of the road in this economy. Will most of them survive, sure? Is reasonable to suggest that their plight is something we as a society (including perhaps bright east coast prep school grads) should care about -- and not just say "there's a reason things happen." I would say sure to that also.
Being an adult means seeing the world as it is as much as possible. Anytime I hear somebody say "things happen for a reason", I usually try and run away from that child (even if they are 50 years old).
Everyone spins a few fairy tales to get them through the day (I'm decent looking, charming and I will get the new promotion), but I think a rational person limits these indulgences.
Your life is an intersection of all your abilities/hopes/dreams with a world that has a huge amount of randomness (randomness being a stand-in for "causes not known" which is really what randomness despite the fact that people misunderstand this all the time).
Some people get screwed despite their heroic efforts, others are rewarded (think spiedie or Paris Hilton) despite the fact they are douche nozzles. That said, the majority of people get mostly what they deserve based on who they are, but you never know if you are going to get a really bad hand of cards despite your heroic efforts -- c'est la vie.
I think you are missing the point. I once heard a saying about this topic: "It's not where you are on the stairs of life, its whether you are moving up or down them." In other words, its not your level of success or failure in life that is important; what's important is whether you are improving upon your present circumstances. This speaker is not saying that life will be in uninterrupted progression to ever higher and higher levels of success and well being. What this speaker is saying is that even though you will get knocked back down the stairs of life over and over again, you can always pick yourself up and start moving back upward no matter how far down you have been knocked, and its the moving upward that is important.
Optimism beats pessimism every time. This is the message, and it does apply universally. That 55-year-old may never achieve the status he had before, but taking a pessimistic view of life virtually guarantees he will wallow in self-pity until he dies.
The other thing to consider is that the direction of moves on the "stairs of life" is not always obvious at first. A promotion that initially looks like a step forward may turn out to be a deeply negative experience. Similarly, someone who gets forced out of a corporate job may start a business or retrain as a teacher and find that those activities have their own rewards.
What the setbacks get you is self-knowledge and knowledge of the world. If you can avoid despair, the knowledge you gain can help you make the next choice more successful than the last one. Even if society perceives the move as backwards or off on a tangent.
Of course, this only applies to setbacks that are actually survivable. Not all are, but many are.