Sunday Night With John: It's Worth The Failure

It’s Worth The Failure

John Paul Derryberry

I  was 19 and watching the basketball game from my usual place on my college team, firmly planted next to the water bottles. We were in Chicago for a weekend tournament. I loved being on the team but knew quickly into my college career that most of my time would be spent on the bench.  That night's game was swift, faster than I could turn my legs. The pace bent the court toward the home team, and we were not playing well. Then, I heard an unfamiliar sound close to the end of the first half.

Our coach yelled for me to check into the game. He had to say my name twice because I didn't hear him the first time. Why would I have? He had never called my name in the year-and-a-half I was on the team, unless it was a blowout. The simple instructions I received were to slow it down a little out there. I gulped and gingerly walked to the scorers' table, knowing failure would arrive soon. 

The question becomes, why did I pursue college basketball and these opportunities if failure was unavoidable. Somewhere along the line, in my limited life experience at 19, I had realized that failure wasn't the be-all end so many had feared and avoided.  It might have been always being the slowest guy on the basketball court and enduring countless losses. At some point I realized, who cares if you fail? It's happened before, it's going to happen again, so you might as well keep trying. 

Failure teaches us more about ourselves than any success can hope to. Success breeds being unfocused and overconfident. Only the stench of failure can focus our minds on what we need to do differently.  We must move beyond the embarrassing defeat to learn our lesson. Many of us avoid any situation that can remotely end in failure. Our fear of it causes us to actively seek out the safe route. The safe course never teaches us a thing and, more importantly, it makes the stories we tell around the dinner table terribly dull. 

In 2019, let's be a group of people who fail, fail hard, fail big, and fail often. Try to learn a new language or go for a job that seems too big for you. Ask out the person you have always wanted to date (but respect their answer of, no. Let's not forget the lessons of 2018). Nothing, let me repeat that, Nothing is sadder than a life lived without failure. We are nothing without examination, and without the feeling of falling flat on your face. We cannot honestly know ourselves without falling and, from our lower vantage point, looking around, seeing people chuckle, then brushing ourselves off, and standing back up. 

As for the game I checked into I received a pass, and everything was moving so fast that I froze. I failed to execute even a basic dribble, something I can still do to this day. But because my slow movements were in stark contrast to the speed demons around me, no one really knew what to do. They flew by me, and I had a clear path to dribble up the court at my own slow speed. 

My coach screamed from the sidelines, "Way to think, John".

 I failed my way into success, been doing it ever since. It doesn’t always work out so nice, but——

 It's always worth the failure.