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 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.
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