Bicentennial Man

We read so much about our heroes, if we have them. We’ll chew on all the information we can about their successes, their talents, their lives, and occasionally we’ll be fascinated by some fact of failure in their “past”. Even if you don’t have heroes, you’re surrounded by the mythology of America; the Horatio Alger, rags-to-riches, I-overcame-adversity-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth mentality. But what we inherently miss the importance of, and what we should supremely value, is what the myth lacks in its superficial structure:
Failure, failure, failure, and more failure.

I only have a few examples of the people in whose presence I would feel myself a jackass. One of them is Joss Whedon, who – chronologically – has done one thing after another that I (and his paychecks, no doubt) call enormously successful, but which others might call categorical failures. Let’s face it: Buffy the Vampire Slayer was campy, Angel a spinoff, Firefly was canceled, Dollhouse ran less than 3 seasons, Speed and Serenity and The Cabin in the Woods appeal to niche audiences and the opposing kinds of audiences for each are always highly critical due to their misinterpretation of the text (e.g.: the layman’s review,

OH BUT OH WAIT. IS ANYONE LOOKING. GUY CO-WROTE TOY STORY. AND AVENGERS. 3RD-HIGHEST GROSSING FILM OF ALL TIME.
And yet he doesn’t qualify for universal respect. Shocking.

You know, I’d also feel myself a real jerk if I were sitting in a room with Thomas Edison. Say what you will about Tesla, but Edison was a badass as well. For as long as I can remember, so from at least the time I was 7, I’ve had this time-transcendent crush on Edison. I don’t know why, but I grew up always consuming biographies about people with disabilities: Louis Braille, Thomas Edison, Helen Keller – blind, deaf, blind and deaf. I won’t talk about Edison and the Lumiere brothers, or Edison and Tesla (though if you want an informed and balanced opinion, measure this: based upon your own scale of authorial ethos).

What I will talk about is Edison and his work on Bell’s telephone. He is, to me, an example of invention and entrepreneurship – which, damnit, is the hardest balance to strike but probably the most necessary. It never, ever, EVER matters what you do or make if too few people know you’re doing or making it. This starts with lies – who cares if no one notices? And ends with telephones – thank you, Edison and Charles Batchelor, for phonograph parlors. ()

Edison had ear infections growing up and was so deaf by the time he worked on phonographs that he had to bite the instruments and hear sound through the rattling of his skullbones (). He cared so much about other people hearing things (and marketing those things to hearing-abled people!).

Me, at present. I’m reading a book by John C. Maxwell called Failing Forward. It’s encouraging business and self-help propaganda that most would probably quietly regard as goulash. But Maxwell makes a few key points as he succeeds in teaching me to not be afraid of my screw-ups:

The difference between people who achieve whatever they want, people who achieve whatever, and people who don’t achieve is this: the ones who do whatever they want perceive and respond to failure differently. It’s usually not a, “pick-yourself-up-dust-yourself-off” attitude, but more of an, “I do not need time to recover I will just do whatever I planned to do, immediately.”

It’s the essence of YOLO, really. Carpe diem. Passive versus aggressive. One of the problems my cohorts frequently cite when talking about why they haven’t done something – anything! ask a girl out! write a book! – is fear of failing. But, c’mon. I, personally, wouldn’t love Whedon so much if he weren’t a bit of an underdog. He is made so much BIGGER to me by his “big”, so-called “failures”. We love that part that’s missing in the myth. Like Edison –  some deaf inventor guy who spent his life literally chewing on the phonograph. You remember your teachers buying those well-marketed posters from Mardels Christian Bookstore and all they said was some bastardized version of, “Success is this: ‘I have not failed 1,000 times.  I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb,'” and we hemmed and hawed and ignored them or just kept quiet and colored?

Well sheesh. I wanna be one of the 1 or 2 of every 100 people who DO what we say we’re going to do. Who GETS what she wants because she doesn’t care (i.e., is fearless). And everybody can have a copy of my every screw-up along the way, because I want us all to to know exactly how big and great I am by how much I’ve ignored and bullied through.

I only hope I can pick up and drag and push and pull and tug and tussle with as many people as possible in the wake of my success. I wanna teach people to take chances. Raise the stakes. Risk and risk and risk and risk until risking 1 thing becomes so easy that you have to risk something else instead. The first thing you’ll always risk is your pride – whether you want to be a musician, an entrepreneur, or an auteur. The average of 98 to 99 out of 100 people is the risks they have in common: they risk losing themselves in relationships, marriages, careers with soulless bosses, mindless jobs, having kids, or – worse – losing themselves in complete inactivity. If you’re going to risk something, don’t risk all the shit that makes you who you are (or who you want to be). Risk a little time, a little money, a little money, a little pride, a little energy. Get bigger than your obstacles or risk not getting big at all.

You’re just gonna die whispering, “I have this one idea, but no, no – I can’t explain it.”