Everybody has heard the saying, “what would you do if you knew you could not fail?” It’s a shitty saying. It’s an excuse for people to fantasize about some outlandish dream and wish it could happen. I mean fuck me, if I knew I couldn’t fail I’d whip out an electric guitar, sell out stadiums, and drown in an orgy of cocaine and women like the rock gods of old. I suppose that’s what Drake does now. But that’s besides the point.
The point is that saying is almost entirely outcome oriented. And when you’re wishing for outcomes…that’s just it, they’re wishes. When I’m picturing my rock god orgy fantasy, what I’m missing is the actual work it takes to get there: the 6-8 hours of practice a day, the blistered fingers, the endless chord progressions, the writing of a million shitty songs until one actually starts to sound okay, the blown out speakers, the lugging of a thousand pieces of equipment to a shitty smokey bar with the one drunk regular laughing that his grandma can play the guitar better than you can. I mean…fuck that, am I right?
The saying, “what would you do if you knew you could not fail?” is shitty and I stand by that. The real question you should be asking yourself is…
What would you do if you knew you would fail?
Read that again, because it’s quite a twist. Forget all outcomes you want in the world, what would you do just for the sake of learning the process? What would you do for the sake of the present moment?
When I apply this question to my own life, the first thing I think about is teaching. I have roughly 180 days to teach my kids. 180 opportunities to make an impact, and knock a lesson out of the park. If I’m lucky, about 10% of those lessons a year actually go as planned. The other 90% something goes wrong: a kid interrupts me, a piece of equipment breaks, an argument happens that throws off the activity, a fight breaks out. Most of my days are spent putting out fires, and reflecting on how to get teenagers off of their goddam phones.
So why do I do this? Why do a job where 90% of the time I fail? Because I find a ton of joy in the art of creating relationships with students. I actually enjoy finding different ways to public speak in order to deliver a point. When shit catches on fire in my classroom there’s an inherent sense that I could have changed the way I did the lesson to make it smoother. The responsibility I feel for the failure of each class actually allows me to have some agency in how to make it better. Throwing up your hands in frustration and announcing, “I can’t do anything with these fucking kids,” is just a way of saying, “I’m not responsible!!!” It removes the stress of responsibility…but it also removes the joy of success.
Those perfect classes where everything is flowing smoothly and the kids come up to you with smiles on their faces and lightbulbs going off in their minds… that’s the happy byproduct of falling in love with the process of reflecting and improving upon your shit-teacher-days.
Here’s one more knock on the ole, “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” The problem is there’s no such thing as not failing. How many rock bands have gone out of their way to practice every day, grind away at gigs no one gives a shit about, and master an amazing sound without ever selling out a stadium? Most likely thousands if not hundreds of thousands.
For every single actor that wins an Oscar and proudly announces you should never give up on your dreams, there’s a thousand actors waiting tables trying to find their moment that will never come.
Fuck the outcome. Commit to a process, delve as far as you can into that process, and enjoy it for what it is. Enjoy the rejections and the reflection on those rejections. It’s the only joy worth chasing.
What would you do if you knew you would fail?...
Your best first paragraph yet.