On Failure

Posting commencement addresses on blogs about seeking inspiration and such must be some kind of tired old cliché, but I’m preparing to do it again.  I suppose there is a kind of commencement address genre that begins with parables or autobiographies and then somehow ramps up to the “important life lesson” that usually amounts to something having to do with personal growth, professional success and the bumps along the way.  Often, those bumps are referred to as “failures”.  JK Rowling recently delivered an address entitled “The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination”.  In it, she describes her rags to riches story and how reaching her very lowest point permitted her to “strip away the inessential” and to stop pretending that she was someone she wasn’t.  In effect, Rowling posits that failing at post-graduate working life meant that she could focus all of her energy on what was really meaningful and important to her, rather than looking for meaning in the check-list of acquisitions or the points of accomplishments that may or may not accrue on one’s CV.  Just the other day, Conan O’Brien addressed Dartmouth students stating that “There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized”.  It is this moment of rupture, he argues, that causes us to re-evaluate our dreams, and might be “the catalyst for profound re-invention”.  I never thought I would find myself quoting Conan O’Brien, but I find this to be the truest statement and perhaps the most relevant to this blog.

Having lived through more than one profound disappointment (one might even say failures) over the past year when I saw some of my greatest fears realized, I must agree that living through such a rupture has given me some clarity – if not towards what I want to be, at least it has given me a sense of what I don’t want to be or do, and what kind of person I do not want to become.  Strangely, this has not been something that I have given considerable attention over the years.  Many years ago, my dream was to get a PhD and to become a professor.  I worked hard to get that degree, but in the process, my view of the direction I was heading changed.  Many many people ask me what the point is of getting a PhD if I’m not going to go into academics.  To them, I have no concrete answer except that I am sure it was not a waste of time. It seems that my dreams have changed, and while I don’t know yet what they have become, I am certain that my recent ‘failures’ may have given me an opportunity to re-evaluate and re-invent.   I listen to the words of those who have experienced ruptures in their dreams (another way of saying this might be ‘had their fears realized’) and it occurs to me that the dreams might not always be on the mark.  And not achieving them might not always be a failure, but rather, an opportunity.

If you’re interested in watching those commencement addresses, you can find them at the following links (but be warned O’Brien’s address doesn’t get interesting until about the 16:30 mark).

JK Rowling Addresses Harvard (2008)

Conan O’Brien Addresses Dartmouth (2011)