Every summer my brothers, cousins and I would go and stay at my grandparent’s house. These were, without doubt, the best three weeks of the year.

 

My grandfather, a rugged outdoorsman-type, loved taking us out to play. Playing Game Gear and watching TV all day was not an option.

 

He was a giant tree of a man, palms rough from a lifetime of work. What was left of his hair was a mix of more-grey-than-black, and when he kissed your cheek his bristly mustache would prick your skin like a brush.

 

After lunch, he would lead a convoy of tiny feet out to the woods, fields, and parks close to the house. We’d play hide and seek, tag and run sprinting races until we were exhausted.

 

Granddad was also the one who introduced us to the magic of and climbing trees (and yes, we would occasionally fall out of them too).

 

“Children mus’ play” he would say in his thick Jamaican accent. Children must play.

 

It might sound unremarkable. But the simplicity of this kernel sentence implies much more than meets the eye. The use of ‘must’, in the dialect, conveys more of a need i.e. there’s a vitamin-like quality to running wild that’s essential to a good childhood.

 

And if you know how children play once they’re let loose, you know that it’s inevitable that someone is going to get hurt (remember those trees?). And sure enough, every now and then one of us would fall, or ‘drop’ as we put it.

 

Honest cuts and bruises

I remember cutting my knees on the ground on more than one occasion. Granddad would always be there to pick you up, patch you up (all be it roughly –he didn’t have Grandma’s bedside manner) and tell you to get on with it. And get on with it we did.

 

In the evenings, after we had squeezed every drop of sunlight out of the day, the convoy would head back to our grandparent’s house for dinner. The smell of jerk chicken, steamed fish, plantain and (most importantly) fried dumplings would pull us in through the front door.

 

“You get some good honest cuts and bruises today ee?” Granddad would say as he untied the laces on my trainers (the ‘ee’ sound makes almost any statement a question).

 

It always surprised me how fingers so huge had the dexterity to tie (and undo) the tiny knots and bows. I would nod along as he spoke, but it would be years before I’d realize what I was agreeing with.

 

Yes, I did get some cuts and bruises, but what made them honest?

 

To err is human

The key to understanding what he meant lies in the fact that my grandfather knew the importance of learning through play.

 

My mind turns from the words of one great man to the words of another. We all trip and fall in life. Making mistakes is a human thing to do. To err is (indeed) human.

 

You might not be familiar with the eighteenth-century poet Alexander Pope, I have to admit I wasn’t. But, chances are, you’ve heard his famous line-come-maxim on more than one occasion.

 

I’ve concluded that we are no more human than when we are children because it’s a time when we’re most in touch with the necessity to fail in order to go on to succeed.

 

Children are, after all, professional learners. We are never better at acquiring skill than when we’re young. We learn how to walk and talk. It’s our ‘job’ to go to school – all to learn.

 

We need to accept two things if we are to learn to come back from our mistakes;

1. Mistakes are inevitable.
2. Failure only defines us if we let it

 

We all make mistakes. So when we fail, all it says about us is that we’re human. It’s quite simply an honest admission of our own humanity. It’s part of the deal.

 

It’s when we dwell on our mistakes (or don’t learn from them), that we start to teach failure the new words it needs to define us.

 

Failure is past tense, for a reason

It strikes me that concept of ‘failure’ is tied to the past. It defines a conclusion. Someone tried to achieve something, was unsuccessful, and the end result is a lack of success.

 

Even in the present continuous tense, ‘failing’ points to an unfavorable outcome. If failure is a word of the past, focusing on it will only trap us there with it. And there are a more than a few problems with being stuck in the past.

 

Where we get off track

The fear of being wrong

At some point on the road to adulthood, we get introduced to the fear of making mistakes. It decouples failure from learning.

 

But to mock or judge others for their failings is a form of dishonesty. It implies that we hold ourselves as better than others -as if we ourselves don’t fail.

 

It can appear ‘cool’ to make fun of others for their shortcomings at times. But, underneath the above implication, what’s really going on here? Maybe in these moments of judgment, we’re really exposing how we truly feel about ourselves when we fail.

 

Of course, we might not go out with the intention of making a mistake. We may try to do the right thing. But the danger of developing an unhealthy fear of failure is that we lose the empathy needed to tolerate the shortcomings of others and the self-love to forgive our own.

 

Blame-shift

Alternatively, this unhealthy fear can manifest as blame-shift; a constant search for someone or something to pin the responsibility on. If we become practiced at this we eventually become blind to the habit. And without the ability to take responsibility for our stumbles, we also become incapable of learning.

 

The etiquette of failure

So when we fail (which we will) what do we do?

 

Feel it (but don’t stay in the pain). You can’t avoid the consequence of a mistake and I’m not saying that we have to pretend failure doesn’t hurt in order to be a ‘positive thinker’. A period of recognition is natural.

 

Forgive yourself. When we fall as children, our body’s capacity to heal is like a physical ‘margin for error’. We need a mental one too.

 

Own up to it. It’s a universal truth that nobody is perfect. A true friend, colleague or leader will be more interested in how you conduct yourself in the face of your failure.

 

Look for the lesson, no matter how painful. Try to see your failure as a new beginning, not an end. It’s the only way to find out what doesn’t work. Steepen the learning curve; has someone else gone through something similar? How can we get strategic about getting back on track?

 

We never stop being children in life, because there’s always more to learn

We may fail in more complex ways than a child tripping and falling, but I’ve never seen a child permanently give up wanting to play after doing so. If all children did this, none of us would be able to walk.

 

Maybe we’ve been fired from our job or lost all of our money. Maybe our relationship ended. Perhaps we even feel we missed out on a great relationship because we didn’t realize what we had at the time.

 

Whatever it is we know we can’t change the past. We need to find out what we can do?

 

While it might be the end of a chapter, it’s doesn’t have to be the end of the book. Remembering this is what makes the cuts and bruises that life hands out honest ones. It puts failure in its correct place –at the heart of learning and our future success.

 

Turn the page and start to look for ways to begin the next chapter of your own future.

 

See The Good would like to thank Nat for sharing this amazing and insightful post. There are so many great pieces of advice here that I am certain many readers will be returning glean new information and points to ponder and learn from. 

Nat Campbell is a copywriter and creative by trade, and a science fiction author and poet by compulsion. His personal website is http://natcampbell.me/