Rethinking Failure: What the President of Pixar Taught Me

Ever since I snatched a once-in-a-lifetime chance to go listen to Ed Catmull speak, right in my very own workplace, I've never thought about failure the same way again. (Dr. Edwin Catmull is the President of Pixar Animation Studios, and—get this—he's a member of my faith! I hadn't ever known that! Pretty sweet, eh? Yeah, eh!) … Not because he's a "failure" (gosh no), but because his perception of "failure" is one that had never previously entered my skull.

It's not that Ed's view of failure isn't popular; I think it's just that his view naturally may not be considered very often, due to the intrinsic negative feel that failure possesses.

To most—if not all—of us, failing hurts. It hurts no matter which road we took to achieve the failure:

- It hurt when we knew full-well that we were being lazy slackers, and thus the result we produced was soooo far away from being up to par. Surely we were "asking for it," but somehow it still felt like blows to the head and gut.

- It hurt when we were in a perpetual pit of not "getting it," and we kept on not understanding and not understanding, and not succeeding and not succeeding, and all we wished to be able to do was rise above.

- It hurt when we were sure we were doing everything right, and then we stumbled backwards in surprise when we found out we were mistaken or incorrect.

- It hurt when we didn't know what the outcome would be, but we kept our hopes up and goals visible as we put our most brilliant and excellent foot forward, but then our fate turned out to be not what we wanted.

Ed emphasized the history of all of us who had ever been pupils in a school. He noted that we were all thoroughly taught the following:

- "A" = Excellent
- "B" = Above Average
- "C" = Average
- "D" = Below Average
- "F" = Failing

And lots of times, a "D" was pretty much the same as an "F." 

If I know you as well as I think I do, D's and F's were probably just as disgusting to you as they were to me. Those were hideous letters on the essays, worksheets, and report cards. They were scars that you wanted to keep hidden. They were a dreadful plague if they slithered their way into your life. Bad. Bad. Bad.

Ed said that this disdainful attitude towards failure is a stowaway on the personal ship into the seas of adulthood. It's an attitude that we've been toting along with us ever since our school days. We've been trained to make failing not our favorite. (Yes, I'm kind of alluding to "Elf" here ;)

Now that we're older, failing is still not our favorite. (In fact, it probably won't ever be our most favorite.) It perhaps may always sting a little bit. But what if we made an effort to stop frowning upon failure as harshly as we maybe do? What if we began to continually make an effort to stop frowning upon ourselves as harshly as we maybe do, whenever we make a mistake or don't win?

THIS, my friends, is the point I loved the most in Ed's presentation. The part where he basically called us audience members to action. He urged us to stop hanging negativity over our own heads whenever we come up short, and he also challenged us to similarly stop condemning others whenever they come up short.

Ed spoke of forgiveness. He spoke of sincere respect for others. He spoke of the importance of creating and maintaining something like unto a safe haven, where people can come together and share ideas with each other, without the fear of being deemed absolutely "doof" in case an idea ends up being not the greatest.

(Again, these aren't Ed's exact words, but it's what I learned from him, in my own words.)

I think this can translate into our social relationships with others. I'm challenging myself to continue striving to be a person who is a "safe haven" in the following senses:

- That I may be a person whom someone else can trust with earnest thoughts and ideas that they may wish to share with me

- That I may believe in others whenever it's their heartfelt desire to become better people than they were before; that I may be able to build others up rather than tear them down, whenever they make honest mistakes (for I am a mistake maker too)

- That I may be a "safe haven" sanctuary for my own self; that I may not be an enemy to myself whenever I mess up

One more point of Ed's that I really liked: the road to success is very often paved with mistakes. Or, for a better visual: the road to success ohhh so often is adorned from start-to-finish with potholes.

A parting story for you: Ed told the tale of how the beloved film Up came to be. Up has a looooooo-oooo-oooo-onnng history of "failure" storylines that apparently were simply not good.

Originally, Up was supposed to be about a king who had two sons who were each other's arch nemeses, and the castle they lived in floated in the air......... And for some strange reason there was this one colorful bird......... And then it was decided that that story was pretty dumb.

And so the filmmakers wrote another story, and then another one, then another one, another one, and another....... And the ONLY two elements that remained throughout the entire grueling process of coming up with the perfect story were 1) the bird, and 2) the word "up."

Just as the process of making an exceptional cinematic masterpiece is laden with mistakes along the path, so is life, and so is our journey towards becoming our ultimate best selves.

I am humbly thankful that I got to attend Dr. Catmull's presentation. He's a remarkable human being.

EPILOGUE:
Also, did you know that Pixar has its own "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost"? Ed is the "Father," John Lasseter is the "Son," and the "Holy Ghost" is ... Steve Jobs. Yup. I didn't make that up; it was Brad Bird.

My First Date

{So I guess my blog is purple now. No turning back now. I guess we're all gonna have to just deal with it :) I'm also giving the "center-justified" look a try. I've seen it done on a couple of other friends' blogs, and I'll see if I even like it. If not, then it's back to left-justified for moi!}

Now on to STORYTIME!

The story of my first date ever surprisingly has not yet been recorded, and so I thought this would be a grand opportunity. Here goes nothin':

Once upon a time, in a faraway land about a half-thousand miles yonder, there lived a tall, gangly, bashful brunette who had just turned 16. The culture in which she was reared taught that the dating world is best entered when a person has reached the age of 16.

In retrospect, this brunette gal of the NOW remembers her past self feeling pretty anxious and possibly even squeamish about going on her first date. Ohhh but just you wait, 'enry 'iggins! The tale is just a'beginnin'!

Probably only like three days after her sixteenth birthday, she's chillin' like her favorite villain in the den of the house: a bright, windowy, sunshiny room with happy sunflower wallpaper. No telling what she was doing in there. Surely she wasn't up to no good... Maybe... We'll just say she was being studious with her schoolwork. It was the den, after all...

She heard the telephone ring down the hall, in the kitchen. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrinnnng! Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrinnnng!

Boys and girls, this telephone was CORDED. It was likely believed, at that time in history, that the only CELLPHONE that was currently in use by any human was Jerry Seinfeld with his cellphone on his sitcom. (Didn't he have that dinosaur cellphone with the foot-long antenna?) Anyway, this corded telephone was hunter green in color, and is still in perfectly good operation. I used it about a month ago. Mint condition. I seriously doubt you'd be able to give similar props to a fancy-pants iPhone in 20+ years from this moment; in fact, I'm sure the iPhone will have decomposed into dust long before then. (And it came to pass that I still do indeed own an iPhone.)

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrinnnng! Remember how that is what the hunter green phone said? Mom picked it up in the kitchen down the hall. 16-year-old brunette gal could faintly hear her start to speak to whoever was on the other end of the line.

About 15 seconds passed...

"Alison! It's for you!" Mom was now standing in the sunflower room doorway. And then, beaming, she said in a thrilled yet slightly-less-exclamatory tone (lest she be overheard through the technology): "I think it's a boy who wants to ask you out on a date."

HASHTAG: HEARTRISESUPINTOTHROATANDTHUMPSUNCONTROLLABLY

Who could it be? Good gracious, who was this man?

Butterflies fluttered by every known organ in my body. But I couldn't not answer the call! Had to see who this boy was!

"Hello? ... Hello! How are you? ... Friday? Yes, that should be fine! ... Thank you! See you then! Bye!"

{Exclamation point after virtually almost every sentence I spake during that conversation. Why? BECAUSE I ALREADY HAD THE HUMONGOUSEST CRUSH ON HIM.}

His name shall not be named here, publicly, but what can be divulged is that his first name starts with a consonant, from the latter-half of the alphabet. Remember how on the final showdown round of Wheel of Fortune, that the letters that are automatically given to you are "R S T L N E"? (Reminiscent of the Goosebumps series' author R.L. Stine.) Well, the letter I have in mind is one of those, but it definitely is not E, since that, my friends, is what we call a vowel.

This young man, who had just asked young brunette gal on her first date ever, was on the yearbook staff with her. This guy and girl built beautiful, multiple-time award-winning yearbooks together. Romantic, that is? Yes, that is.

He had obviously awaited with eagerness Alison's long-overdue sixteenth birthday (yeah, let's just call her "Alison" now, instead of "brunette gal," because "brunette" and "gal" have already been established); it was not coincidence that he called her far less than 100 hours following the arrival of her age of eligibility. He knew the birthday was gonna happen. He and his dapper handsomeness were lurking in the dark corner, very much looking forward to the time he could ... um ... pounce?

So that Friday evening came around. No one remembers exactly what either party of the date was wearing. We know that there were shoes, probably jeans, plausibly a button-up shirt for the guy, a pretty blouse for the girl... oh wait... it's coming back to remembrance now... it was a coral-colored top with frillyish sleeves. It was lovely, most definitely. It's a fair bet that Alison's hair was worn long, down, and straight. She and him? They were lookin' good. Really good.

They ate something, dined somewhere. Don't remember where. But what was more important was the chain of events that followed dinner.

They found themselves in a local movie theatre, about ready to purchase flick tickets. Movie posters were hanging everywhere, high above everyone's heads. The movie poster that stood out the most in Alison's line of vision was "A Walk to Remember." She recalled that that wasn't a terrible book, and she thenceforth anticipated seeing the movie. The movie ended up being just a'ight.

But the movie that Alison and He-Who-Shan't-Be-Named-Here were scheduled to go see was none other than ... "Singles Ward." Totally a Mormon movie, yes, but she and her date were Mormon, and they loved their religion very much (still do!).

But the funny thing is that neither of them were actually old enough yet to even be in a singles ward. So when they watched the movie, they felt like they could relate to the characters a little, but not wholly. It was a decent show, though. Likable.

In case you were wondering, yes, Alison's first date was indeed what was culturally termed a "single date," and not a "group date." But please, fellow livers of this culture, do not frown upon this factoid of Alisonian history.

However... Alison did feel ever-so-slightly odd about it being a "single date," where it was just her and him. Group dates were at least culturally more ideal than one-on-one dates, as far as freshly new 16-year-olds who have absolutely NO idea how to be on a date are concerned.

But Alison's date was an excellent person, very mature for his age (even all the parents of the community thought so), so Alison felt as calm and rest-assured as could possibly be on a first date. He was a wonderful person to be around.

{In fact, a month or so after this date happened, the end-of-the-schoolyear-yearbook was finally made available, and when he wrote in and signed Alison's yearbook, he made sure to leave his phone number, and beckoned her to call him, should she decide that she wants another date with him. Ahhhh MAN, it was love, surely!}

Years zoomed by, and he married someone else. Alison deems it one of her sadder days in life, when she found out that he was going to marry another woman. But people move on. Life moves on. Ol' Man River, he just keeps rollin' along. Life is beautiful, and there are the monstrous Seven Seas as well as the five Great Lakes, and so there are plenty of quality fishes.

Thus ended the tale of Alison's first date.

Perhaps you enjoyed it.

Good night.

Ode to Floss: My Friend the Brave

I floss my teeth every day. I simply cannot "call 'er a day" and hit the hay without performing my flossing routine. Flossing is something that I wish more people would care more about. So here I am promoting it openly.

If I am nerdy about anything, I am nerdy about flossing. Nerdy enough to take a Saturday afternoon earlier this year to pen a poem about it. The poem lacks magnificence, but flossing does not. Here's the ode:

If floss were alive

With feelings and fears

Straightway he'd go

Regardless his tears

Into the corners

Of that massive cave

Through all tight spaces

Blimey he's brave

Gross is the dross

Dross: it is gross

Gross with dross rhymes

At no times at most

This dross is born

Of all food consumed

In oral manners

Grody it blooms

Grody it grows

Putrid it breathes

All over those rows

You'd better believe

Swift to the rescue

The warrior doth come

To slaughter the residue

The warrior hath won

Floss you're alive

Alive in my heart

Whenever I need you

You're never too far

Into the corners

Of my massive cave

Straightway you go

My friend the brave

Straightway you go

My friend the brave