Failure is an option; embrace it.

Just to clarify before I go on, I don't like failure.  I hate it.  It leaves this humongously gaping hole in my ego and self-image whenever it happens, and it's happend to me way too many times.  Failure has not been an option for me, so I've strived for perfection over the last 50-odd years.

Until yesterday.

My daughter graduated from high school yesterday.  Well, to be more precise, she walked the ceremony yesterday.  She doesn't have the piece of paper yet because of a Pre-Calc class that ate her breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and then went on to devour everything on the table, in the fridge, cabinets, and freezer.  My initial reaction was, of course, classic. The five (now defunct, if you believe the news) stages of grief.  Denial (the counselor had to call my husband because her words were not making any sense to me).  Anger (major melt-down, and I mean MA-J-O-R).  Depression (what an awful mom I have been).  Bargaining (how to convince the math teacher to change her grade, let her slide by with a D?).  Acceptance (we will be contacting BYU yet again for another frickin' online class).

I don't write well off the cuff, so this whole thing seems about as delicate as an elephant.  What I'm trying to say is that yesterday, during the graduation ceremony, the teacher whom the 2014 seniors elected as their special keynote speaker changed my entire opinion on failure.  He talked about a lot of things, including the fact that he was close to fainting because he was so nervous.  But the biggest point he made was about embracing failure.  Failing something means that you took a risk.  A big one.  Failing means you were willing to stretch beyond the safety net and go for it.  It means that you have courage in the face of doubt, persistence when you could have quit because things were not going well,  and the character strength to pick yourself up and find a solution.  He talked about how high school graduations emphasize success, the ownership of a piece of paper, the attainment of all the goals set during your high school years.  He talked about how high school does not teach you how to deal with failure because they are scared shitless about it (my words, not his).  And he said that every single student needs to risk failure because you will only learn how to handle failure through failing.  And life is full of failures.

Dyslexics are intimately familiar with failure.  Failure to read, failure to write, failure to understand what is being said, failure to think on the fly, failure to think at all a lot of times.  Dyslexics are often perfectionists because we're so frickin' TIRED of failure.  I have always had difficulty understanding things other people take for granted, and let me tell you that the worst feeling in the world is feeling stupid. So I've tried very hard to be as perfect as I can to protect myself from that awful feeling.

But you know what?  As cliche as this sounds, I have learned more from failure than I ever have from success.