Notes from my Knapsack 9-12-19

Notes from my Knapsack 9-12-19

Jeff Gill

 

Hi, I'm a failure!

___

 

Recently an event was held in our area, aimed at reaching out to students and families on the subject of achievement and stress.

 

Which is why I'd like to talk about failure.

 

I am honored to know John Ball, the convener, and some of his cohorts; those Granville High School grads who are now seniors in college this year are of particular interest to me. Those young adults have grown up and achieved for years in my sphere of observation, and when proud Blue Aces and some friends from up on Denison's hill get together to say "high school and college have been really, really stressful," I know exactly what they're talking about.

 

Pressures to succeed and excel and not just aspire but to attain – oh, they're real. Not just an internal sense of drive, but many external reminders that this is what's expected of them. Which is hard, especially when there's something else out there that can happen. Like failure.

 

But we don't talk about failure. "Failure is not an option" isn't just a mantra for the space program. Failure is for the memory hole, it's not spoken of, either as a possibility in the future, or as an actual occurrence in the past. Except, stuff happens.

 

So here goes: I have failed. Oh, no, not small stuff, either. Some big ones. I know, yet I get to write a column for the Granville Sentinel? All the better that I share some of them with you.

 

I was thinking law school was where I should go, and I got it into my head that pursing that path by way of the United States Marine Corps made sense for me, and so I enlisted, and began a journey towards that goal. In candidate school (officer basic), I slipped on the obstacle course, turned my knee around backwards, and was given a lovely cot in a grim silent building for a few weeks to think about my future plans.

 

When a jovial sergeant (they do exist!) said to me as I was ready to be "separated" that maybe my destiny was elsewhere, I agreed, and we signed the papers. I got an honorable discharge from the USMC, and I was and am proud that I volunteered to serve, but I've never felt comfortable being called a veteran, because I really wasn't. I served, and I failed, and home I went. It was a learning experience in many useful ways.

 

Years later I was talking to a friend about his time in the Navy, much more substantive than my own service, and on hearing my story, he smiled sheepishly and told me he went up for SEAL training not once, but twice, and washed out both times. "I don't think I've ever told anyone about this." We agreed, however, that given the failure rate, if you know one SEAL, odds are you know three or four people who tried, and failed to make it into the program. But you don't know, because we don't talk about it.

 

I went into a technical field, and my first truly grown-up job I was poorly trained for a week, and the first night on my own, I erased an entire county's voting records (this is forty years ago elsewhere, relax). I was fired the next day, fairly or not. I did learn, however, never to settle for less than the training I know I'll need, even if I'm assured "it doesn't matter."

 

I've learned much from failure. You almost certainly know people who didn't get into the programs they hoped for, got jilted by suitors or dumped by friends, or just plain couldn't do what they wanted to be able to do, whether a backflip on a balance beam or a chord change on the guitar. We ALL have failed, some more spectacularly than others.

 

Maybe what would help the pressure felt by our youth around trying to succeed is hearing more from us older adults about our failures. Some of them are actually pretty funny stories, too.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's got failures he hasn't even gotten around to remembering yet. Tell him one of yours at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.