Failing Better

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” - Samuel Beckett

I am not an artist. Never had any pretensions of being able to draw or paint; putting science diagrams on the whiteboard was the limit of my artistic ability as a teacher. My children praise me every time I produce a piece of paper with colors on it, but that’s because they like the time we spend together – and, let’s face it – they still idolize me. I’m almost out of time there . . .but I’m always my own harshest critic so nothing they say could make me feel less adequate in the art department. Which sentiment made last Saturday’s escape to “Paint and Sip” quite an adventure.

The principle of this new type of outing is for a group of friends to come together and enjoy a glass of wine, some art instruction and all manner of art supplies in a painting frenzy. Most of our group tended to overlook the instruction and paint away furiously at colors and scenes of our own mad design. I fell into this mindset; after painting a lovely background I threw some dark brown spots in a corner that failed to come off with additional water or brushing. So I turned the canvas upside down and moved from a forest scene to a cliff / ocean design. I had the misfortune of sitting next to two good artists, and when people roamed around to look at other people’s paintings (shocking, I know, I was not prepared for that) they oohed and aahed over my neighbors’ and stopped speechless at mine. Some of the comments I got: “oh, that’s a boat!”, “is that actually land over there?”, “aren’t you having fun.”

I did enjoy the process and the companionship but was frustrated by my lack of results. How hard could it be to paint a cliff and an ocean? Pretty darn hard, as it turns out. Fortunately, my forgiving family greeted my painting at the door with appreciative whistles and outbursts like “How did you DO that?” which I chose to interpret as positive feedback. My boys even offered to have it hang in their room, which was sweet, though every time I go in there to vacuum I am tempted to throw it in the closet.

But no! My point in this rambling is that for the first time in my life I get Beckett’s quote. It’s not only OK to fail – it’s expected. And if I go painting and sipping again, I’ll most likely fail again, but that will be OK, as long as I ‘fail better.’ I may not be aging gracefully but I am at least learning that we should not do anything based on expected results. Cleaning house, writing, teaching, raising children - pretty much all of my activities fall in this category. I can’t worry about the results, but only rest in the knowledge that I will try, and I will fail. Maybe eventually I will fail better.