Learning From Defeat

This week, my friend and I went to see an exhibit about the works of Charles Schultz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strips.  There were many quotes from Schultz himself to explain his vision behind each character or his method, and one right at the beginning stood out to me. He thought failure was funnier than success, so he made the characters lose at everything they did.  He said,

"The Peanuts is a chronicle of defeat.  All the loves in the strip are unrequited; all the baseball games are lost; all the test scores are D-minuses; the Great Pumpkin never comes; the football is always pulled away."

My first thoughts when I read this were that:

• We love the Peanuts characters and their stories because we can all identify with failure.  
• Current children's media is just the opposite. We try to make kids believe they will always be victorious with enough trying.

Then, I remembered an interview I once heard with Lemony Snicket, author of the Series of Unfortunate Events, a hilarious series of books in which orphaned children are sent from horrible relative to horrible relative while their evil uncle is out to kill them for their inheritance, and the one time they find a good caretaker, he is killed by the bite of a snake.  (I promise the books are funny and not at all scary for children in spite of this plot line - such is the genius of Lemony Snicket.). In the interview, he referenced that the popularity of his first few books rose in the months after September 11th.  Children were asked why they liked the stories, and they said, "Adults keep telling us everything is going to be fine, but we know that's not true.  We like that he tells the truth."

And here's the truth.

• Life is hard (but there are joyful times in it).
• Some people are more talented than you are at some things (which is okay because you are more talented than they are something else).
• You will have bad hair days (and sometimes they are on school picture day).
• You will fail a test (which is why your grade is an average and not based on only one thing).
• Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, the other team wins (or the other guy gets the job you want or the man you love loves someone else or you don't get into your first choice college).

Yesterday, I overheard a conversation between two coaches.  They were having trouble with the parents of two of their athletes (not the athletes themselves).  These parents were insistent that their sons must compete in a competition for which they had not qualified because, without it, they would not make the special elite team.  The coaches were also talking about their own past, when they didn't make the team they wanted and how much they learned from it.  They wished they could communicate that to the athletes, but their parents were preventing them from having that conversation.  As I overheard this, I was reminded of a student's parent I once dealt with who worked herself into all kinds of anxiety, the kind that makes you email a teacher at 3AM, because her daughter couldn't get into honors biology at her new school of her grade in my class dropped by one point.  Both sets of well meaning parents were hanging all of their hopes for their children on ONE event.  That's a lot of pressure for a fourteen year old, the belief that God's plan for them will be derailed by one sporting event or high school class.  

But here's another truth:

• You learn more from failure than you do from success.
• Character is built from learning to be gracious when you win AND when you lose.
• Your life will take a lot of turns that you cannot foresee in middle school.
• It is only in exceedingly rare cases that failure results in death.  (Most of the time, you just feel sad for a few days while you figure out where to go from here.)

Parents and teachers, I know it is hard to see kids hurting.  It's natural to want to fix it for them. But tears dry and hearts heal with time and perspective.  The lessons they learn are far more lasting.  How many times have you looked back and been grateful that you didn't get what you thought you wanted?  How many times have you looked back on a lost job and been glad you have a different job?  

I know this seems counterintuitive, but kids will actually have less anxiety if we let them fail sometimes.  It will teach them resilience - that they don't have to be afraid of failure because they lived through it last time.  It will teach them to show class - another way to be successful.  It will teach them not to find winning mundane - and savor the times they do win.

This leads me to a quote from another artist whose work I've recently seen exhibited, the great Bob Ross.

"You can't see the light without the dark."