𝔽𝕒𝕚𝕝𝕦𝕣𝕖 ℙ𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕣

Irish Traveller girl - Ireland, 2024 by @hmcguirephoto

In weight training, training to failure means repeating an exercise to the point of momentary muscular failure, in other words to the point where the system can no longer produce enough force to overcome a specific workload. It is said to be beneficial to develop strength and muscle mass. 

Let me rephrase. We purposely train to fail because failure is necessary for growth. 

Let that sink in for a moment.

However, I am not here to debate the pros and cons of weightlifting, merely to use it as an entertaining metaphor to my actual subject - take a wild guess - the acceptance of failure. Somewhere along the road of our social construct, failure got a bad rep. Some homies said it ain’t no good to flop. I don’t know why I said homies, but the important part is that failure has been limited to the narrow definition of ‘not succeeding’. Failure is a process, failure is training, failure is practice, failure is a ramp to build strength. FAILURE IS ESSENTIAL! 

Like our good friend Ed Sheeran said (I don’t know Ed but he seems like a nice guy): "You learn nothing from success. Nothing. You learn everything from the failures... Success happens from failing hundreds of times." Ed is neither the first nor the last or the only one who expressed himself on the subject, yet, we keep forgetting. (Did I mean ‘ignoring’?)

Sure, if you don’t like the feeling of failing (who does), there is a guaranteed way not to. Don’t do anything. You should be safe that way. Richard Yates wrote it best: “If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes backbone to lead the life you want”. 

Yes, it does take a little courage to build yourself up, and yes, sometimes it stings. But isn't it better than the alternative? 

How many times did Stephen King fail before he became, well, the Stephen King? He actually is so proud of his rejections that he made a wall of said rejection slips. “By the time I was fourteen, the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it.” He wasn’t proud of failing, he was proud of his growing experience and persistence. The slips were a reminder of the road traveled.

As usual, the subject of this article came about from personal experience, a rejection slip of my own on a series dear to me that I submitted to a photo magazine. The ‘unfortunately’ word at the top of the email never feels great, but it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to. I have grown, I know better. Just as making mistakes is how I got better at what I do, rejection is part of the artist's job. Better yet, instead of thinking of it as rejection, let’s think of it as the selection process. I was just not the one selected that one time. And so onward we go. We sharpen our tools, develop our skills, build up our strength further, smarter, tougher. 

In the end, giving up is the only true and unredeemable failure. Isn’t it how we learned to walk? We kept falling until we didn’t fall anymore. Why see all the other challenges any differently? 

Success is a long haul endurance race for “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” (- Robert F. Kennedy). 

Dare to fail, you need it.

*by H.McGuire - the Word Is My Oyster