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on failure

You can make a philosophical subject out of failure, like Costica Bradatan did: In Prize of Failure (NY Times, Dec. 15, 2013). He sees failures as evolutionary requisites. It might be true but it’s the truth which hurts. However, when Bradatan says that philosophy is in the best position to address failure because it knows it intimately, he is talking about the failure of ideas. I like more the way Nora Ephron (I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections, 2010) talks about her own failures. Not to mention that Bradatan’s writing skills are far below Ephron’s breezily funny prose.

from In Prize of Failure by Costica Bradatan

(NY Times, Dec. 15, 2013).

Failure allows us to see our existence in its naked condition.

Whenever it occurs, failure reveals just how close our existence is to its opposite. Failure is the sudden irruption of nothingness into the midst of existence. To experience failure is to start seeing the cracks in the fabric of being, and that’s precisely the moment when, properly digested, failure turns out to be a blessing in disguise.

In this role, failure also possesses a distinct therapeutic function.

Our capacity to fail is essential to what we are. We need to preserve, cultivate, even treasure this capacity. It is crucial that we remain fundamentally imperfect, incomplete, erring creatures; in other words, that there is always a gap left between what we are and what we can be.

We are designed to fail. No matter how successful our lives turn out to be, how smart, industrious or diligent we are, the same end awaits us all: "biological failure". We will all end in failure, but that’s not the most important thing. What really matters is how we fail and what we gain in the process.

Certainly the promise of continual human progress and improvement is alluring. But there is a danger there, too — that in this more perfect future, failure will become obsolete.

from I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron (2010)

At this point, you surely know you’ve got s flop. You’d have to be a fool not to know. But you don’t. Because you hope. You hope against hope.

Time passes. Life goes on. But that flop sits there, in the history of your life, like a black hole with a wildly powerful magnetic field.

By the way, there are people who have positive things to say about flops. They write books about success through failure and the power of failure. Failure, they say, is a growth experience; you learn from failure. I wish that were true. It seems to me the main thing you learn from a failure is that it’s entirely possible you will have another failure.