Image: Scrutiny by Darkcloud013
In honor of it being Sunday I am re-posting an article I wrote a few years ago, with minor edits.
Failure is scary. We’re all familiar with the fear of failure. We’re so familiar with it that most of us wrap ourselves up in a cozy, safe blanket of not doing anything. If we don’t do anything, we can’t fail! Ahhhh, safe. For those of us who manage to stick our feet out of the blanket and try, we often try a little. Not trying too much is also pretty safe: “It’s no big deal–I was just messing around.”
Trying involves risk. We risk our precious self image of being clever and talented. Of having really good taste, of being different and special. Do we know anyone like this? The smart guy? The cynical and sarcastic girl? The ones who are always ready with a clever remark about why something is not really that amazing, or kinda obvious, or been done better by so and so?
It feels good to put things and people down, because it means we’re smart enough to see their inadequacies. We’re smart! We’re part of a club. In this club, there’s a big glass window we can look through to see the other people. On our side, there’s a buffet, and some nice drinks. The other people are out there, on their hands and knees, digging in the mud. It’s dark, and it looks cold out there. And a bit undignified.
Except–wait a minute–why are those people out in the mud getting all the attention? They’re making art that’s dumb, obvious, and cliché! Why are they the ones showing films, publishing books, staging plays, releasing songs and albums? We’re smart and clever and witty!
We’re offended to see them trying because we are not. This reflects badly on us and points toward something we don’t want to see, our fear. We’re scared because actually trying means we might run into something really scary: our limitations. We don’t want to have limitations! We don’t believe in them. We’re part of the smart club! Listen to our clever comments! Dick wrote a very funny parody of a popular song! And Jane just wrote a scathing review of that guy’s new novel. We’re creative too. We don’t want to get down into the mud and scramble around and try to bring back up something good. The mud is dirty. And what if we don’t find anything?
Or worse: what if we do find something? If we find something in the mud, suddenly there’s risk. We have to lift this thing up and say “Look, here’s my thing!” But what if people think our thing is also dumb, obvious and cliché? As long as we don’t find anything, we can continue to pretend that our thing is down there hidden somewhere in the mud, and it’s awesome, and it’s better than everyone else’s. No, it’s much more comfortable over here on this side of the glass. There’s no mud, and nobody ever gets dirty. It’s very comfortable over here, and we’re all very clever and warm and safe, thank you very much.
Meanwhile, we stay on this side of the not-trying glass and talk amongst ourselves. We tell each other that one day, we’ll actually try really hard. We’ll try once it gets a little less dark, a few degrees warmer, and the mud isn’t so thick, and wet and cold. What we do is going to be amazing. We’re so much smarter than those guys out there in the mud.
But then, as we sit in our comfortable chairs on the cozy side of the glass, something uncomfortable happens. On the other side of the glass, out on the edge of the dark, one girl digs deep down into the mud and pulls up something awesome. We see it, and we know it’s awesome. We say to each other: “It’s kind of obvious.” And it is. It’s obviously awesome, to everyone who sees it.
This is definitely not fair. We were full of ideas. We were clever. Those people over there in the mud make stuff that’s dumb and obvious and we know better. In fact, we are better. All that digging around in the mud, it’s embarrassing. We’ve seen them fail! We’ve seen them hold up things that are not just dumb, or obvious, but both dumb AND obvious. It’s pathetic! We would never do stuff like that. We would never make anything that wasn’t perfect. We’re too scared to.
