Talking to myself with Sister Failure

They say failure is valuable, and it is.

They say failure teaches you how to succeed.

But I don’t think so.

I have been fired.

I have been laid off.

I never learned how to hold a job forever.

But I learned that life goes on.

I learned not to be afraid of being fired. Or laid off.

I have lived on unemployment. And savings.

And the money from piecework.

And the help of family, and strangers.

I never learned how to be rich.

But I learned that I can get by until the next thing comes along.

I have held jobs that went nowhere.

I have held jobs from which the only road to promotion was to quit and work somewhere else.

I never learned how to rise to the top.

But I watch the guys who make it to the top.

And they spend their whole lives at it.

Day in, day out, they do nothing but work.

They have to work hard, because they are irreplaceable.

When they drop dead, the company replaces them. In half an hour.

And they leave behind a big pile of money that somebody else has to spend.

They never spend it because they are too busy working.

I have failed at marriage.

After many, many years of struggle.

Can it possibly have made me a better husband?

Probably not.

Bitter, not better.

But I learned that I can’t change my wife.

And I learned that I can’t endure forever.

I am only a man, not a god: my power is weak, and if you bend me too far I will break.

It is very freeing to know I am only a man.

I have failed at adultery.

The affair went faster and more urgently than my marriage.

I never learned to be a better seducer.

But I learned not to pick women that are too much like my wife.

That’s worth something right there.

I never could teach my sons to do their math homework.

I don’t know what I did teach them.

They seem to have learned something from me, but never the things I set out to teach.

I guess the only things they learned must have been the things they picked up by imitation.

By habit.

Just by being there.

The things they got by watching me.

And they saw a lot that way.

They saw me lose my temper. Many times.

And make them do stupid things. For no reason.

And argue with their mother. Endlessly. Out of spite.

Every moment of weakness and failure, those are what they saw.

What they learned from.

And what have they become? Young men, like others.

Mixing good and bad. Like others.

I never learned to be a great father.

Sometimes I wonder if I ever learned to be any kind of father at all.

What I know I learned is that children grow up in spite of you.

When you see their faults, you see a mirror.

In a flash you recognize your own faults in them.

But when you see their strengths, you gaze with awe and wonder:

“Where did they learn that?”

“How did they come to be so good and so strong?”

They didn’t get it from me.

And so I learned to be grateful.

Because whatever is good and strong in my children is a gift from God.

Maybe some people learn from failure how to succeed.

Not me.

What I have learned from failure is freedom.

Not how to succeed, but that I don’t have to succeed.

If some time I chance to succeed at this or that – by accident – OK fine.

But if I don’t – and often I don’t – I can walk away.

There’s freedom in that.

And peace.

And quiet.