Don’t be afraid to fail — even if it doesn’t lead to success.
Why ‘don’t fear failure’ grad speeches don’t make us any less obsessed with becoming successful
The commencement season is over. The recurring message that we can distill from many speeches is probably this: Don’t be afraid to fail. It can lead to success.
For years, I had found this message reassuring. It’s great that speeches remind us every year that we can mess up and know that it’s only a step toward better things.
Perhaps one of the most popular speeches in 2008 was J.K. Rowling’s at Harvard. But after recently rediscovering it on my Facebook feed, it didn’t offer the same consolation anymore. I still like Rowling and her speech overall, but there’s something about it that made me feel slightly sad or anxious instead of inspired.
It was this line, in particular: And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
It’s oft-quoted maybe because it makes failure less scary. It even says that failure can be good for us because it will help us succeed.
And that’s probably my problem with it. The message don’t be afraid of failure easily warps into be ready to fail so that you’ll succeed. Interpreted this way, speeches about embracing failure become speeches about chasing success. Sure, success comes in many forms. But because most commencement speakers are famous or influential, their message may be associated with how their lives turned out. That is, these speeches may make some graduates think: If only I open myself up to failure, I can be influential like them.
Most likely, Rowling doesn’t want to imply that our goal is success or becoming influential and that we must wisely use failure as a means to that end. But because she’s now a famous writer, we can easily twist her message — subconsciously — to mean that way.
That being said, Rowling’s speech has better parts that are not quoted often. It’s the story about her stint at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London, which according to Rowling was one of her life’s “greatest formative experiences.” She says that this informs much of what she wrote in her Harry Potter books:
“I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
“And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.”
This young man did what he thought was right — to speak out against his country’s unjust regime — and his life fell apart. I don’t know if he was eventually able to influence anyone. I don’t know if he succeeded in the way most commencement speakers have. I don’t know if anyone in the world can confidently say, “All that he went through was worth it because the world is better for it.”
But doesn’t his story tell us something about failure, something that’s mostly outside our control?
Maybe failure doesn’t always lead to success but is simply the price of doing the right thing. Or sometimes tragedy strikes for no reason and without any apparent benefit.
Maybe there are moments in some people’s lives that they have to choose between unimaginable pain and ignoring their conscience.
Maybe success in the broader sense comes in the form of failure itself when success’s definition is no longer limited to our individual lives.
Maybe life isn’t even about success at all but simply about recognizing and upholding our dignity as human beings. Like failure, perhaps success is also just a means to other ends such as love or charity.
Maybe it’s about courageously facing the fact that our actions’ intentions won’t always match with their consequences, no matter how much thought and work and goodness we’ve put into them.
Maybe it’s recognizing the dignity and sacredness of failure itself, not its ability to make us successful, that ultimately makes our communities kinder, more empathetic, forgiving, and livable.
Rock bottom can be tragic, absurd, senseless. Rock bottom sometimes doesn’t lead to success. But recognizing the dignity with which some people suffer their fate may become the foundation on which we can build our lives — lives that are not mainly concerned about success but about helping each other go through the tragic, absurd, and senseless things that happen to us.
Don’t be afraid to fail. Sometimes it’s because you did the right thing. Sometimes it’s just senseless. But it’s always something we humans will have in common. We’re not really here to watch our own backs but to look out for each other.
Don’t be afraid to fail even if it doesn’t lead to success.
