Failure: experience does not equal expertise

I should know a lot about failure but I don't. Failure is really the story of my life but I'm none the wiser for it.

Accomplishment does not count if it doesn't provide further opportunities, and by that reckoning, I've achieved only dead ends, a long list of failures, like seeds that never sprouted.

One is supposed to make an assessment after failure so it won't be repeated. In a sense that has worked for me; all my subsequent failures were fresh and original, not replays of old mistakes. Or so I'd like to think.

Nothing about a rational analysis of one's failures is really rational or analytical. It is more like an inquisitor looking for reasons that he is sure to find.

The fundamental assumption of post-failure analysis is there was a cause that can be identified and corrected. In truth, whether one succeeds or fails, one has no inkling why. Something worked or did not work. Could be random luck. Who would own up to that?

There is an American tendency to find fault with ourselves, usually concluding that we didn't try hard enough. So, one trains harder or studies harder or just grunts harder, and tries again. We hear only about the success stories, which encourages us to think that trying harder always works. But for every three medaled finishers on the awards stand, there were many more also rans. Failure, repeated failure without ultimate success, is the common experience which we never like to admit to others, least of all to ourselves.

I could come up with a lot of reasons for my own failures, but they would all be made up, not at all scientific, certainly rationalized but hardly rational. If the bottom line of honesty is to admit ignorance, I really don't know why I have failed. The leading contender is that once I concluded a project, I wanted to move on to something different and thus didn't diligently capitalize on what I had just accomplished; in other words, I didn't try to build a career. But that may be just a story I tell myself.

The reason we need to take pride in the small things in life that are common to the human experience is that most of us have little else to esteem. You are a parent who raised pretty good kids. You are a worker who gave good value. You are a decent person who took care of his or her friends. You are an activist who contributed time and money to your causes. All these little attainments, hardly unique, buoy up our self esteem.

As for the really big stuff performed before millions, most of us have to be content with saying, I gave it everything I had, and I'm proud to have tried my best.