Failure?

I THINK my tears for Auntie Valerie were about more than the sense of loss I felt. The news of her passing conjured an image of her face, always so placid as if she was thinking of nothing at all, so humble in spite of the ground-breaking work she accomplished for TT and the Caribbean through her paintings and other creative ventures.

Anger at people without the talent to compete on the world stage, but with the audacity to complain about our athletes and artists, was initially the main emotion behind this article. But the anger cooled to disappointment when I recalled how my aunt did not complain about the lack of recognition for her contributions, but just did the work she felt compelled to do.

Like many of our brilliant, pioneering nationals who have left this realm, she was largely unacknowledged.

In the estimation of this society, was she a success or a failure? We are taught that failure is not an option. We have clear paths to success — education, university, job, marriage, wealth — that often have very little to do with the individual quest. There is not enough general conversation about the importance of never giving up and, yes, the importance of failure. Instead, the idea of “trying again” is interpreted as weakness, incompetence.

I see how this world view affects my children and their peers and the damage it has done to older generations. It locks us into a mode of thinking that is linear, small. It limits possibilities and causes us to lose perspective on the wider reality.

Thus, we want to know “how much money the TT athletes get.” Are we equally interested in how much time and resources were invested in adequate training facilities and coaches for them? In how many of them raised their own funds, worked in regular jobs while trying to train, and in spite of it all, how they felt to be flying the TT flag on the world stage? One commentator notes that “failure and fault are virtually inseparable in most households, organisations, and cultures. Every child learns at some point that admitting failure means taking the blame. That is why so few organisations have shifted to a culture of psychological safety in which the rewards of learning from failure can be fully realised.” We revel in the bacchanal and the negative. Our brash, big personalities have little patience for the ones who quietly plod on. Yet, there is an opportunity to review these socio-cultural norms, our misguided concept of “the best”, and that sense of entitlement that Auntie Valerie spoke about.

We have an opportunity to make our schools, theatres, offices and communities safe spaces; where it is alright to be talented in a different way, to create our own, imagined paths to success.

Albert Einstein was told that he would not amount to much, Oprah that she was not fit for television and both Lionel Messi and Michael Jordan were cut from their teams at early ages. We can celebrate the Laventille boy who represents President Barack Obama as US ambassador to TT or the woman who wakes at dawn to help feed her family as a garbage collector.

Will we deem one a success or the other a failure? It is time that we devote time and effort to finding a way to answer such questions, to make our collective future path to success a more enlightened one.

Dara Healy is a performance a r t - ist and founder of the N G O , the Ind i g e - n o u s Creative A r t s Network – ICAN