Thursday, March 10, 2005
An important lesson: Learning to fail
Smiling success experts on TV or at business sessions help us kid ourselves. They imply that we'll never taste of failure if our convictions are strong, our courage is great, and we follow their formula.
Yet, at some time or other, we all fall. We fall on our faces, fall for someone's manipulations, fall ill from sickness or injury, fall into a depression or a period of grieving We all know of a marriage that couldn't be saved, a child lost to drugs, or the job we were performing so well, and lost.
Not too long ago, CBS's Sunday night 60 Minutes had a segment about 20- and 30-year-olds in the workplace. These young people were raised in an era of over concern about their self-esteem. Their every effort was praised, everybody on their sports team received a trophy, and rarely was firm discipline or a corrective critique offered.
This "You're wonderful" treatment has now bred unfortunate personality traits carried into the job market.
A psychologist said this age group now expects to rise quickly in their jobs, they're not open to suggestions for improvement, and are offended when their bosses don't constantly compliment them. Falls and failures are foreign to them. They didn't learn how to fall.
To a secular and materialistic world, falls and failures are totally unacceptable. But in the world of "reality spirituality" personal failures are a necessary yet paradoxical part of human development.
For, it is not our successes, but our falls and failures that provide our chief opportunities of transformation. Don't we all know some people who failed but who now are clothed with a certain nobility of character?
Sure, we all seek success and welcome its arrival. But to lack the capacity to live and deal with failure leaves us only half-formed persons. The vulnerability of human life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived. At times the mystery is best lived and our character best formed by letting go of the constant need of apparent success.
By Father Lou Guntzelman
Father Lou Guntzelman is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Reach him at life@communitypress.com. Please include a mailing address if you wish for him to respond.
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