The buzz of the modern world is not without its wisdoms. Through industry is the toil of labour, the discipline, fortitude, and sense of imperviousness—necessary qualities in facing the onslaught of life’s challenges. After all, where would the world be without those who, in the face of pain, kept their heads bowed, and quietly, stalwartly, forged onward as if in total ignorance of it?
And yet, now facing a crisis of mental health in every generation, we cannot ignore that a certain degree of sensitivity, of human compassion, cooperation and camaraderie, even a higher intellect, has been sacrificed in the face of economic flourishing. In the words of Charlie Chaplin, “Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.”
Amongst the positive results of modern society’s evolution is an embroiling of competition. Excellence, the pursuit of mastery, the self-defeating hopes of perfection. Regardless how one views the morality or consequences of an entire culture become obsessed with these notions, today we might take a single fragment and judge its worth detached from the larger picture.
Practice.
Practice, in any pursuit, is an ongoing competition and cooperation with one’s higher self.
It admits of flaws and seeks to banish them. It reveals our malleability. The masterpiece awaiting in the block of granite. That a limping toddler might become an indomitable ballerina. That a deaf musician might compose the world’s most celebrated symphonies. That a multiple amputee might run faster than most men and women.
It celebrates our Promethean nature of being too curious for our own good, but then dares to ask the question of what might happen when we attempt to control the chaotic flames we usher into the world. To totally justify that curiosity, that flame that is passion.
Through practice, the myth of born talent is repeatedly thwarted. It shows that mastery is pulled from pain and patience. It must be learnt time and time again. There is a famous quote: that any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic. I say that any sufficiently practiced skill will be indistinguishable from one’s second nature.
The dual mechanism of practice reveals weakness and areas for improvement, while being the only true solution to the very challenge it exposes.
Just on the other side of practice is failure. It is a crucial partner. Failure and practice have a symbiotic relationship divorced of success. They do not require achievement. Together they teach, motivate, and propel the practitioner towards the mastery or success they imagine, what indeed exists beyond practice as another entity entirely.
Failure is demonised. We go so far as to say that failure only exists if one ceases trying. But to suggest that failure is not a crucial component of practice, or indeed is illusory in practice, to my mind, is to devalue both concepts. Failure exists. Failure happens. But we needn’t fear it, not because it can be explained away like a monster hiding under the bed, but because it happens so much that it really is commonplace and nothing to mind, truly.
Like the light of an angler fish, to be lured by failure’s simplest definition is to be consumed without fully understanding it. Failure, being irreversibly attached to practice, is the means by which our areas for improvement might be shown to us, and in that knowing is the power to overcome them. The serenity of that acceptance is, in it of itself, a practice. Honed alongside the craft one is mastering, it will make the ongoing, infinite path of improvement a pleasant one.
(As an aside, practice also has this fantastic, dual usage to suggest that it is not merely a hobby or skill but one’s whole career, e.g., the ‘practice’ of a doctor, lawyer, or monk. There is a trick, here. It suggests that even in the middle of a successful profession, or at the zenith of one’s career, the possibility for improvement never leaves.)
So why does failure have this impressive shadow over the lives of so many? It is in the anxious expectation, or denial of failure that we become hostage to it. For example, the Dunning-Kruger effect often occurs to those who think themselves above failure. Ironically, those in the Dunning-Kruger spell are failing so miserably that they cannot even possibly imagine it, only adding to their spectacular failure. Meanwhile, those who frequently recognise their missteps often make the most progress in the shortest of time.
Take this hypothetical for instance. Two artists send to you—their trusted friend—pieces of work that are somehow virtually identical. Both, however, are simply bad. One artist professes how proud they are of this piece, going so far as to suggest that it will make their career, perhaps even some stardom. The other admits that it’s their third attempt and they look forward to the next try tomorrow. Which one are you embarrassed (and mortified) for? And which one do you suspect might actually have some potential in the future, considering their mindset?
Failure is only the demon worth its infamy so long as we cannot accurately diagnose it.
In resolutely accepting one’s failures, we begin the wonderful art of banishing them. But once we are in this process, we might forget about success entirely, and failure too, and we will be left with the only thing we might ever need in the sphere of professional pursuit, of individual mastery, of tiny improvements and colossal achievements, for we will have entered the infinite, boundless, and undying realm of: practice.
