The Importance of Failing

Condoleezza Rice spoke yesterday evening at Baylor University for one of President Starr's "On Topic" events and I was fortunate enough to be among the audience. Yes, some of what she said I disagreed with and Yes, some of it sounded too practiced and stilted. But a good deal of it was genuine and entertaining. My favorite moment was near the end when a question card from an 8 year old was chosen who asked "why are you so smart, beautiful, and amazing?" Dr. Rice answered with the story of how she got to be Secretary of State, which was, she says, "by failing as a concert pianist." Apparently she could read music before she could read and her mother had groomed her to become a world-renowned musician (they lived in segregated Alabama if this tells you anything about where Dr. Rice gets her tenacity from). Dr. Rice discovered as a sophomore that she would not be able to cut it in that line of work, so she gave up this pursuit that had to that point consumed her life. A few months later she discovered politics.

Her answer, I thought, to how she found her way to success profoundly begins with failure. This is a quality I think we need to cultivate in our culture - both inside and outside the classroom. A praise of failure would go a long way toward enabling people, especially those in high positions, to say "I was wrong" without being lambasted. Or even to say "I don't know." It would also foster greater creativity in all kinds of ways, by encouraging people to try and then to see their failure as success. Failure is a kind of success, because you you find out all kinds of important things-about yourself, about the subject you are pursuing, about the world-when you don't get it right.