Learning to Fail

"Failure is not an option."  These words rather surreptitiously attributed to Gene Kranz, Flight Director for NASA's Apollo flights, reflect what can be called a "can-do" attitude.  However, the truth is, failure is often a choice.  Wait, is that not a contradiction?  Nope, not really.  One can choose failure simply through a lack of effort to succeed.

As stated earlier, life is a journey.  Along the way, there are victories, losses, successes, and failures.  Each of these lend insight into one's character; both externally and internally.  It is so easy to find resources and guides that promise a means to find success.  Some self-help guides teach principles of financial greatness.  Others claim to have the secret to enlightenment; a spiritual guide to some hidden heaven far from the masses, attainable only through the purchase of 9.98 at Amazon.  Diet books  (Like the Seefood diet).  Treatises on maximizing hair follicle retention.  How to cast spells for fun and profit.  The American's guide to speaking British (that's for real, and it is quite funny).  Want to succeed at something, anything - there's a guide for that.

Sorely missing, however, is a step-by-step guide for failing.  Yet, there are so many steps, so many great examples of how to fail.  Maybe FailBlog comes closest.  Nah, not really.  It just shows the result of failure, sometimes at the expense of other's dignity, sanity or health.  It can be both funny and offensive at the same time.  So then, does one look to the Darwin Awards for guidance?  Maybe, if a cautionary tale is what is sought; but in the end, the subject is typically, and irrevocably, removed from the gene pool.  Again, this can be quite amusing, but saddening when one realizes the poor choices that can be made.  Further proving that failure is a choice.

Who, then, wakes up in the morning and says,"Today is a good day to fail?"  Before there is an argument to the contrary, this phrase is not to be confused with "Today is a good day to die."  Unlike Commander Worf of the U.S.S. Enterprise, most people in modern society would not actively pursue "Death before Dishonor."  The concept of self-sacrifice as a failure is not really appropriate in the current context.  That, like the Mac vs. PC conversation will have to wait for another day.

Back to the topic at hand, if people do not actively seek failure, how do they choose to fail?  And for that matter, why would any one want to learn how to fail?  The idea of writing on the topic of failure, especially a How-To guide, seems to be a sure-fire commercial disaster.  Other than family members, friends, and the weird guy staring at the light fixtures in the local Barnes and Noble, it is highly unlikely to be purchased.  Is this subject matter worth exploring, and can anything really be learned in the process?

Perhaps.  The journey of failure is a system, with many components.  The dissection of this system is necessary, and each step or process should be examined closely.  The interactions of the process of achieving failure, be it trivial (forgetting the stamp on an envelope in the post), large-scale (the Renault Fuego), stellar (Windows Vista), plain folly ("My Mother the Car") or tragic (the introduction of  New Coke) - each has common elements.   How these elements are approached, the choice of words in the evaluation, can either bring this part of the literary journey to a satisfactory conclusion, or lead to further, frustrated, failure.  And that is not an option.