The Pain of Failing
Pain comes in all kinds, shapes and sizes. Like the pain you feel when you cut yourself with a very sharp knife or the pain you feel when you lose a pet. While I’ve experienced those, I know there are many other kinds of pain out there that I’ve never experienced and probably never will. But the most excruciating pain that I’ve ever experienced is the pain of failure.
Like I mentioned in my last blogpost, I see humans as on a journey from gutsy and naive children, willing to put ourselves out there, into informed but scared adults who become risk averse. I’ve worked in many an adult education setting. There’s no better place to see how risk averse we do become then a class or a course for adults.
For example, the instructor asks the participants a question and nobody answers. It doesn’t matter that the reason could be that nobody actually knows the answer. The fact is, most times people will just sit on their hands instead of having a go. We don’t want to be told we’re wrong and embarrass ourselves in front of our peers. It’s easier — and safer — to say nothing. And if grown adults aren’t willing to be wrong in such a benign environment as a professional development setting, then what does that say for larger and more substantial risks?
I believe that compassion is the antidote to failure. Experiencing empathy for others or, more importantly, for ourselves when we fail is crucial to moving beyond that pain. But sometimes not even compassion can protect us from the pain of failure.
Go on and raise your hand if you’ve ever experienced at least one time in school where youthful curiosity and imagination were beaten out of you in favour of rote and rigor (I’ve got both hands raised)? And then we carry that experience with us into the adult learning environment. However, I don’t think that’s an uncommon experience for most Canadians as the game of school is played in pretty much the same way it always has from coast to coast to coast. And yet there are many places in this country where standards are high and risks are taken in order to maintain excellence.
Compassion or no compassion, failure is not only being experienced out there, it’s being embraced. Well, maybe not embraced but certainly accepted. I wonder. Are we Islanders more likely to be averse to and not accepting of failure? Is it the Broken Windows thing in that we play it safe because that’s what we see around us? And then anyone else who comes here to live gets enculturated into the acceptance of lower standards? Is it the lasting impact of a scarring experience in school or in some other learning environment when we’re young?
I don’t really know. What I do know is how difficult it is to raise the bar here in PEI. And I really want to figure out what the antidote is.
