IN DEFENSE OF FAILURE *

by Aaron Bullerd

Our culture, dominated as it is by idolatry for the successful, has virtually smothered the dignity of failure and misunderstood its utility to society. Far from simple historical neglect, failure to succeed has been maligned to such an extent that now those who are labeled such are seen as droppings in the great march of mankind, persons deserving of some kind of special missionary-like aid or rehabilitation. I want to set this confusion straight.

Failures are the very stepping stones of success: without the multitudes of suckers and foolhardy there would be no incentive for industry, no motive for philanthropy, in short, no success. Without the failures – those small folks who leap into small and big ventures and lose their shirts – there would be no competition: the successful would one day languish around their swimming pools if there were no failures, no one to win control over or to beat out. Without failures there would be nothing in life to evoke those charming characteristics we call success. Then where would be the glamour of it, the contrasts.

To truly qualify as a failure one must not be weak but resilient, coming back again and again for a licking: one must have attempted to succeed at something at least once in one's life. Of course, some Far Eastern mystic might be quoted in order to argue that to do absolutely nothing is success, but how many could even succeed in doing that. Falling short with some amount of prescience and grace, I contend, is by far the product of more lasting worth in this world of ours.

Success is an empty feeling, I hear tell: that stunning moment when one discovers that one has struggled hard to get something or some honor which no longer has near the merit it once was presumed to carry. Consequendy, success fails to satisfy so one must resort to new adventures. Perhaps, then, the only sure way to conserve one's values is to constantly fail to live up to them – some Western religions condone this resolution to the problem on grounds of the human condition.

But I am forgetting my point and overrunning my argument. All that precedes is but to say: here's to failure, may you never make a go.

*Previously published in PINCH, August 1978, Memphis, TN. (Written & published anonymously by G. D. Murley, Jr.)