It is possible to live a life almost devoid of failure: expending limited effort, avoiding difficult judgements, and mitigating risk down to its lowest form. In this way, tests are passed because they are never sufficiently challenging, and the risk of being cut by ignominy is swapped out for the luke-warm embrace of anonymity.
But what is the impact of the set of life choices that this drives on our capacity to self actualise? And how much risk taking does a well lived life involve?
There is the aphorism that the thing that you will regret on your death bed is the chances you don’t take. As you wheeze out your last, you won’t regret all those times you bet against the odds, you’ll regret the times you allowed the odds to overcome you.
Behavioural science tells us that humans fear loss more than they anticipate gain. So, in the moment of decision making we remain path dependent, acting generally more consistent with our past decisions rather than taking a new direction entirely, and yet when the blinds are drawing close and we’re sketching out what we would like to see on a witty park bench engraving, we realise we should have rolled the dice much more often.
In his ‘Courage to be Disliked’, Ichiro Kishimi articulates Adler’s view of psychological development, arguing against the teleological view that childhood trauma necessarily drives our adult behaviours. He argues that if we say our current predilection to avoidant relationship behaviour is drawn from an unreliable primary care giver experience, we are expressing a preference for avoidance; life is a series of choices in which courage is tested. As of this moment, whether you wish to change your job, drink less, love more or begin a sideline in stand up, the way you act depends on your bravery alone.
You can choose to allow your childhood to be the decider, or you can let current you make the call, either way it’s a choice.
We have on average 4000 weeks left in this world, Oliver Burkeman tells us in his book of the same name. (If you want to really feel this you can find a grid online and work out how many you have left -I am around the 2300 mark.) Burkeman thinks we think about life all wrong and attach our happiness to-do lists which never finish and he has some general rules to help us live better. He instructs that where we are unsure about any decision, rather than think of success or failure, we should ask: will the route chose lessen me, or will it enlarge me? In absence of strong reasons otherwise, growth should be our aim.
Now I’m a growth junkie, and I always want to feel like I am developing in some fashion. My girlfriend tells me it’s partly because I haven’t worked out what I want to ‘do’ yet. But even when I have meaningful employment beyond tapping out musings on Substack, I have this hankering to see a more expanded version of myself and I am always trying to work out how to get there.
In order to grow, we must be open to fail. In the body as in the mind, growth comes from challenging and stretching ourself either from endurance or from intensity. Whether it be lifting weights, memorising information, or writing academic texts, we grow only after we ask ourselves a question to which we don’t yet have the answer.
Even though people wish to grow, they don’t want to pay the entrance fee.
I am interested as to why it is people limit this risk of failure. I think ego – we tie our sense of self to the things that we have done and we see the self as being risked if the thing we do doesn’t receive plaudits.
But ego is a thin jacket in cold weather – it serves us little when things are tough, and it often drives us to make decisions which aren’t in our interest; to take the decision which helps maintain the esteem of those we already know rather than the risk which might making a meaningful ripple in the world.
And where do we end up? Stuck in grooves well worn and rigid, progressively deeper and more difficult to leave over time. Stood at the edge of the dance floor looking in, cradling our lukewarm wine and clutching onto the idea that never looking silly is the right objective.
Well, I refute this, and so does Maslow – with self actualisation and creativity the highest form of existence.
I think we should relish failure, and see it as an applause for our bravery, collecting it often if not quite living in search of it.
So here is my exhortation – let’s all fail more often. We might just learn something and live a whole lot more while doing it.
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