When Failure Can't

I’m beginning to look at my past “failures” in a whole new light, since I’m redefining goals in their entirety. I used to have “thing” goals – get produced, get into an art show – instead of “being” goals – experience something via art, connect with the deep part of the world. I still have some “thing” goals, like be able to pay my bills, but I’m even coming to believe that these aren’t all that important – one can always pay one’s bills, somehow. And if you can't -- well, something else will happen.

I learned that at 26 when I completely ran out of money. Rent was due, I had $6 in my checking account, no car, an old mattress on a board for a bed in my studio apartment in San Francisco, a few books, and a teddy bear from childhood. I huddled there all weekend, with my big Monday plan being: Cut up the teddy bear with scissors and walk out to see what would happen. Poor Nice Bear must have been shaking in his teddy bear shoes!

Monday morning at 8 am (I kid you not!) a prospective client called to say yes, they loved my proposal for the newsletter, yes they wanted to start immediately, and where did they send the check? I was saved by the world. Or rather, by the seeds I had planted.

I learned that when you run out of money, nothing happens. You don’t get spit out of the universe like a watermelon seed. You’re there, and you have no money. And somehow you get out of it if you don’t panic. The seeds you planted grow and fruit. They just grow on their own timeline.

I’m glad I didn’t cut up Nice Bear. He’s still around at 51 (his age), and I think of that moment every time I look at him. As well as all of the secrets he has in his teddy bear head from childhood.

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So maybe even “thing” goals like “pay my bills” are the wrong place to start.

What would a “being” goal “failure” look like? Well, pretty much if one remains mindful, one can’t fail. A “being” goal failure is a gremlin, a false perception. It's beating yourself up mentally for not “being” something in this instant that you’re not. When really, all you can do is be where you are, experience what you are experiencing, and trust the process. Plant seeds.

It’s funny: changing this perception of goals has changed my perception of how I might contribute. I was in a "visioning" course this past December, and when I was asked, “What can you contribute?” I thought, well, nothing, I don’t contribute anything to anyone. (No gremlins there, eh?) Now, in thinking about “being” goals, I see that it all contributes, only you can never know how. If I am present, and “indulge” my creativity, and create something cool, and spread it around, that is the gift, whether the Thing is art, a business or personal tool, an idea, a comment. That's the seed.

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I love studying complex systems, because they are so unpredictable. And because they represent real life: you never know where you contribution will go, how your seeds will sprout, because you aren’t privy to the impact.

For example, in 1985, I wrote a play about Nelson Mandela called "What Is To be Done?" My "thing" goal: get it on Broadway. It got locally produced; it didn't hit The Big Time (almost, but not quite; I made sure of that by having a nervous breakdown before it could be finished). My thought at the time? Failure. Not just the play, either; Me.

I lived with that failure, blaming myself, for 20 years, long after I stopped writing plays.

Fast forward to Google: it's true, I Google'd myself, and discovered that a copy of the play landed up in the African National Congress collection at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. How did it get there? Who has read it? What do they think now? What did it spark them to do? I have no idea, no answer to any of those questions.

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A "being" goal means trusting that, if we are true to ourselves and the world, to kindness, joy and love, then our impact will be positive. We don't have to make it so. We just have to let the world know. We just have to plant a seed.