Lessons of Failure

This sermon was delivered on January 24, 2010 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation (Blacksburg, VA), by the Reverend Christine Brownlie.

“Failing” ... “Failed” ... “ Failure”. We hear these words a lot more often these days than we did just a couple of years ago. Once upon a time, we were told, “failure is not an option.” But now failure is all around us. Failed policies, failed banks, failed rescue plans, failed attempts to save some much-beloved makes of automobiles, failing airlines, failing retail chains, failing TV hosts. Some institutions are “too big to fail.” Other failures are so small and local, it seems that it doesn’t matter except to the homeowners, the business owners, the employees, and their families. Week after week, another one bites the dust and we shrug our shoulders. Failure is probably with some of us this morning. We’re almost a month into the New Year, and I would bet that some of us are feeling the sting of failure as we face the reality of the New Year’s resolutions that have tanked again.

Failure hurts us in many ways. Our own failures can weigh on us, sometimes long after the event. Sometimes we pay a heavy price even if we ourselves had nothing to do with actions and decisions that caused the failure. The collapses of major financial institutions have cost many of us dearly. We feel helpless as we wonder about our future. Will we ever work again? Will we be able to retire? Will we be able to send our children to the college or university of their dreams? A failed battle plan can change the course of history and affect the fate of generations of people.

Failures offer lessons, but often they are not obvious to us — for reasons that we’ll explore a little later. Some folks like to put a happy face on whatever went wrong. When their plans or their efforts go off a cliff, they say that life has given them an opportunity for growth or to take lemons and make lemonade. They pick themselves up and follow that little saying that we all learned as children, “If at first you don’t succeed, try try again.”

In some situations, this is a fine strategy. There are some activities that are only mastered through repetition: handwriting, roller-skating, scales on the piano. Recently I was fascinated by a toddler's efforts to use a spoon. Again and again this little guy went at the task. With each attempt he smeared more food on his face or the large bib he was wearing than he managed to get into his mouth. Determination and patience kept him going for a while, but when that fuel ran out, he threw the spoon on the floor and banged his little hands on the messy tray in front of him and screamed, “Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh!”

I knew how he felt, and I’ll bet that everyone here has experienced a similar moment of frustration due to this kind of momentary failure. The nails that bend under the hammer blow, the screw that will not come out of the hole, the ice skates make our feet go in opposite directions, the recipe that never comes out right no matter how many times we try it. Arrrrrrrrrrgh!

This child is on a long continuum of learning — as are all of us. I’m sure that he will eventually learn to use a spoon and master walking and running and riding a bicycle and all sorts of other wonderful things we learn only if we try-try again.

Of course, not all of us do — and not all of us can, no matter how hard and how often we try. I think of my cousin, Cathy, who suffered from severe birth defects and who can barely sit up on her own. She never learned to walk or read or ride a bicycle, but no one would call her a failure. She did what she was able to do, and she was a great teacher to me. She was patient and determined. She learned from her mistakes and also from her parents who would gently coach her.

I notice that so often we don’t learn from our mistakes — even very simple ones — and we suffer needlessly. I have a special holder that I bought for my keys after many frantic searches for them. I thought that if I had a special place to put them, right by the door, I’d save myself a lot of anxiety and wasted time. Most of the time I use it. But every now and then, I fail to put the keys on the hook and then I face unhappy consequences! I ask myself “Why do you do this?”

I’m like the woman in a cartoon that I came across in a recent issue of the New Yorker. She’s having her fortune told by another woman who says to her, “You will make the same foolish mistakes you made before, not once, but many many times!” Oh dear, and isn’t that true for all of us? We know that our actions or lack of action is going to lead to something we won’t like, but we just can’t seem to figure out how to change.

How much better to be like the characters in another cartoon in the same magazine. The artist has drawn two men who are dressed in colonial garb, each holding a pistol. They are standing nose to nose, a trail of footprints behind them and one says to the other, “Hang on, I think I know what we’re doing wrong.” Ah ha! Let’s take the time to analyze this repeated failure and see what we might learn. Sometimes "try try again" only works if we try something new.

To correct what I’ve been doing wrong, I’ve posted a note to myself in my entryway that says “Keys!” to remind myself to put them on the hook! And if I notice that the keys have ended up someplace else, I immediately put them where they belong with a verbal reinforcement. “Keys on the hook!” Now I say this to myself as I come through the door, and it’s working! But it has required some observation, analysis, and follow-though to correct this repeated failure.

Or course, besides walking in the wrong direction — toward each other rather than away — there are a number of things that could go wrong for these dueling gentlemen. A gun could be loaded improperly and fail to fire. One or both could miss the target. Some of would say that dueling itself is a sign of failure! Excuse me fellows, but have you considered a visit to Ye Olde Mediator?

Sometimes we fail because we are blind to the opportunities and solutions that are right before us, but that we just don’t see. I remember getting lost one evening as I was on my way to visit a friend. This was in the era I call “bcp” or before cell phones

I knew that I was close to her home, but I kept arriving at what appeared to be a dead end street. Frustrated, I would turn around go back a couple of blocks, re-read her directions, and end up in the same place. Arrrrrrrrgh! Finally it was dark enough that I turned on my headlights and the light caught a small post at the end of a driveway that I had not previously noticed. This post had a sign with numbers on it! The numbers corresponded to the numbers on the now wrinkled and clammy piece of paper in my hand!! And I wondered why didn’t I see this driveway before. I realized that when I got to the end of the road, I’d never taken a few minutes to look around. I just made an assumption based on my hasty observation. My field of vision was too small.

Sometimes we fail because we don’t take the time or make the effort to fully understand a problem so that we can develop a solution that will be successful. Here’s a very simple example from The Logic of Failure by Dietrich Dörner. Imagine that you have a garden fish pond that stinks. You want to get rid of the odor, so you remove the fish and drain the water. Now you discover that the bottom of the pond reeks, so you take out the plants and remove the gravel and replace it with a fresh clean layer. Now you put everything back. For the next two months, the pond is lovely and then it stinks again.

Dörner says that in this case the goal, getting rid of the stench, was too limited. A better approach would be to look at the various components that make up the system of the pool and how they relate to one another. In his example, the width of the hole that was dug for the pool was too small relative to the depth. Until this could be reconfigured, the same problem would come back again and again.

But there is still more to consider. For example, every system is made of up individual components that flourish only when working relationships with the other components exist. Change one individual component — like the number of fish in the pond — and everything else in the pond is affected.

Even “good” changes can lead to failure if the consequences of that change are not anticipated. Think of the concern over the growing number of gasoline engine cars on the road in China and India. This number grows larger by the week, thanks to the rising income of the middle class of these countries as well as improved infrastructure. Most people would applaud these changes as the signs of a higher standard of living for these emerging nations. But the cost of millions of additional automobiles to the Earth’s climate may be catastrophic.

We had our own brush with the downside of a positive shift at our last potluck. It was a wonderful success in that at least 120 people enjoyed a great meal and warm fellowship. But as we set up additional tables and scrounged for knives and forks, some of us also saw a warning of what we might be facing in the hopefully not too distant future. We realized that we must begin to think now about how we will provide such warm and welcoming hospitality if we ramp up our outreach efforts and welcome more people into our congregation.

If we wait until that day when all the seats in the Meeting Room are full, we may get caught up in the anxiety and pressure that comes with a sense of urgency. The pressure of NOW often leads to poor decisions and failure, especially if we’re forced to deal with several urgent and important matters at the same time.

The pressure of many complex decisions and the urgency of time always figure in the response to wide-scale natural disaster. It will be very interesting and instructive to watch how Haiti evolves after this terrible and catastrophic earthquake. The complexity of the needs must be overwhelming to those who face the challenge of meeting them. I wish them wisdom, imagination, and 20–20 foresight!

In my small and seemingly insignificant sphere, I sometime feel boggled by mundane matters as I try to live my values. Take grocery shopping as an example. Like many of you, I want to buy as much food as I can that is both good for me and good for the planet. This sounds easy, but we all know that the choices aren’t always so obvious. Is it better to buy organic apples or local apples? The organic apples come in a (non-biodegradable) plastic bag and the local apples do not. Or how about my reuse-recycle dilemmas? Someone once asked me if I’d ever considered the repercussions of shopping at Good Will. Did I ever consider what would happen to the retail and clothing manufacturers if everyone did this? And where would the used clothes come from if fewer and fewer people bought new clothes? Arrrrrrgh!

Small matters indeed, but also laden with the problem of unintended consequences. Sometimes these unexpected consequences can lead to real problems that have a lasting impact. In Thursday’s Roanoke Times there was an opinion piece by Robert Hudson Jr. who owned an auto dealership in the NRV for 31 years. Mr. Hudson argues passionately that the introduction of the Saturn by General Motors was the root cause of the decimation of the American auto industry and the demise of many local dealerships. Back in the early 90s when this new way of building and marketing cars was introduced, it seemed to be just what the American auto industry needed. Now the brand is gone, it failed and at least one critic believes that it severely damaged that segment of the American economy.

Who knew? Who could have foreseen this painful and costly outcome? As someone who bought a Saturn back In the 90s — thinking that this was an enlightened and positive step — I felt awful.

Human beings are not omnipotent. This might be obvious, but it is a very difficult lesson to learn. It can be extraordinarily painful to discover that our best intended action have created new and difficult problem for others, maybe even people we love. We spend years training for a profession only to find that we’re competing with hundreds of others for a limited number of jobs. We enter into a relationship with someone who appears to be the ideal life partner, and ten years later the relationship ends because of growing differences that make life together miserable for both people. We invest money in what appears to be a solid instrument to pay for our child’s college costs and the very year that we need the money, the stock market takes a dive and half the value of the investment vanishes.

The truth is that we cannot avoid failures, no matter how we might try to do so. As in so many other situations in life, what matters most is how we choose to look at them. I find this quote from Gandhi to be helpful:

“My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents, and I lay them both at his feet.”

You may prefer to use the word “Parents ” or maybe “inborn human traits” for God, but the reality is that we are born to fail just as much as we are born to succeed. Failure is not necessarily the ending place of whatever went wrong. We’ve all heard stories of the many new, innovative, and hopeful opportunities that have arisen from the ashes of a failure. History, creativity, and determination all play a part in the process of turning failure into success. And there may well be another agent: that free and active spirit which, in the words of UU theologian James Luther Adams,

“Bloweth where it listeth and maketh all things. new.”

May all your failures be small ones, and may the lessons you learn from them serve you well.

May it be so!