Permission to Fail

When I was a little girl, I begged my parents to let me enter the Little Miss Norwalk beauty pageant. I wanted to be in it more than anything. My parents agreed to let me participate as long as I promised not to be upset if I lost. I swore I wouldn’t cry. I made the finals, but didn’t place, and so naturally I started bawling as soon as I left the stage.

My grandfather took me aside and said, “It’s better to aim for the moon and miss it, then to aim for a skunk and hit it.”

His words did the trick, because suddenly I was laughing through my tears. I’ve forgotten what color dress I wore, and the names of the other contestants, but I’ve recalled my grandfather’s words of wisdom many times since. It’s better to aim high and fail than it is to aim low and succeed.

I thought of his words a couple of years ago when I was frozen by the fear of failure. What if after years of writing I found that I couldn’t complete my Prana Island novel, or worse yet I completed it and it’s terrible? I wondered if I should give up the goal of being a novelist, and instead focus on a career with less risk and a bigger paycheck. No one promised to publish my novel, and there’s a possibility that no one ever will. I know this sounds pessimistic, but it was also a reality. It still is. I needed to face this reality down before I could proceed. So how did I move forward?

I accepted that I might fail. Just as my grandfather suggested, I decided to aim for the moon even if there was a great chance I’d fall to the earth before ever reaching it.

Besides, failure isn’t the end of the world. I didn’t become Little Miss Norwalk like I’d dreamed of as a girl, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t look back at that pageant fondly. I recall the excitement of picking out the new dress, the fun I had sitting in the audience and rooting for my favorite contestants in the other age categories, and the thrill of strutting on the stage with my family in the audience cheering me on. I failed in my goal of becoming the next Little Miss Norwalk but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth entering.

As I edit my novel, I’ve given myself a great gift: the permission to fail. Give it a try. I think you’ll find that failure isn’t as scary as you imagined.