On Failure
What Tennis Can Teach Us About Writing, and Monkeys Can Teach Us About Mozart
I used to work in a college library – well, I say “library”, but over the years it had evolved into a hybrid space that also served as an unofficial common room, where students could flirt and make out, chat, snack, surf the web, and try to bypass the IT department’s porn blocker. Aside from the hormonally supercharged teenagers, it was also home to a few elderly souls who had failed to complete an “IT for Seniors” type course years previously and administrative oversight had yet to rescind their library privileges. Among these was an old gentleman who would come in every morning, pick up the same dog-eared book from the reference section, and ensconce himself before one of the PCs, arising only for toilet breaks, lunch and – reluctantly, I always got the feeling – to return home at the end of the day.
From what I could tell (sneaking occasional glances over his shoulder) he was some sort of playwright or screenwriter. Of what calibre, I never found out. Was he a dedicated hobbyist? A retired professional? A late-flowering aspirant? He never appeared to finish anything, and whatever he was working on never seemed to reach any conclusion – there was never any talk of publication or performance. A part of me – a bit condescendingly, I now think – just considered it all a little bit sad. Why write plays – plays, especially – that will never be read, let alone performed? Why not give it up and do something more meaningful?
I was reminded of all this recently when reading a piece by Conor Niland, in which he recounts his years dedicated to the hard graft of being a professional tennis player some rungs below the top of the ladder. To put this in context, however, Niland was no Sunday league dabbler: during his career, he earned almost a quarter of a million dollars in prize money, and at the height of his powers was Ireland’s number 1 tennis player, ranked 129th in the world. His view, therefore, was of someone who, if not centre stage, or even close to it, was definitely more than a bit-part player; close enough to rub shoulders with the Agassis and the Federers, the Djokovics and the Nadals, who might occasionally nod in passing as they made their way to and from the spotlight, but who otherwise lived in another world. Niland spent most of his latter career grinding out a gruelling weekly schedule in the third tier Futures circuit, competing in back-to-back tournaments that might ping-pong him between places as far-flung as Bukhara, Wrexham and Morocco. Here, the top 2,000 hopefuls sought to progress to the Challengers Tour, which contains those players ranked between 100 and 300, and from there aspire to the ATP – the elite 100 players in the world.
What’s interesting about the piece – apart from the eye-widening insight it gives into life as a professional sportsman – is its questioning of why those who are past their best or have missed their shot, continue to chase a dream that is dead and buried, pursuing a professional life that brings in little money, leaves no free time, takes an enormous physical toll, and from which the simple joy of participation has long ago fled. Why don’t they just admit failure, give up and move on? Of course, that someone ranked 129th in the world at anything should be considered a “failure” is ludicrous, but it did get me thinking about how we judge ourselves and others, and how we assign meaning to our ambitions and achievements.
The first lesson to draw from all of this is that, no matter what we have achieved, its value is relative, for neither failure nor success are absolute terms. What is one person’s professional zenith is another’s dissatisfying baseline standard. The unpublished writer dreams of publication; the published writer of bestseller lists and awards. Even Shakespeare occasionally envied “this man’s art and that man’s scope”. I once saw a clip from a football match – labelled “miss of the century” – in which a player picked up the ball in his own penalty area, ran the length of the pitch, beating every player in the other team, and then slid the ball past the goalkeeper – only to see it hit one post, roll along the goal-line, and then hit the other post and bounce away. “Miss of the century” seems a bit harsh.
But if the glass is half empty, it is also half full. Someone collecting a dispiriting slew of agent rejections for their unpublished novel has at least succeeded in writing one. The loser who is beaten in the Wimbledon final has at least succeeded in getting there. The above-mentioned footballer has at least made the team and shown great skill leading up to his “miss”. So why do we let our discontent eat away at us? Before we despair that the fruits of our endeavours continue to elude us, shouldn’t we remind ourselves of what we have achieved? Why must we feel discontent?
There is, in my view, no finer illustration of the nature of this discontent than Peter Shaffer’s wonderful play Amadeus (adapted into the equally wonderful 1984 film by Miloš Forman). In case you don’t know it (what!), the drama revolves around two musical greats: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Viennese court composer Antonio Salieri. Despite his illustrious success, Salieri comes to envy Mozart’s genius, in relation to which he considers himself a mediocrity. Eventually, Salieri’s envy grows so great that he decides to kill Mozart.1 Why? In his own words:
“All I wanted was to sing to God. He gave me that longing... and then made me mute. Why? Tell me that. If He didn't want me to praise him with music, why implant the desire? Like a lust in my body! And then deny me the talent?”
The whole story is a study in the toxic dangers of ambition, and Salieri’s bitterness and envy spring from his own sense of entitlement. When Salieri himself has dedicated himself to the celebration of God through music, he sees God’s gift of genius to “this obscene child” as a cosmic injustice. But none of us is owed success or recognition simply by virtue of the strength of our desire or commitment. Do you think the journeymen on the Future’s tour didn’t want it as much as Agassi or Federer? Whatever the reason our endeavours are not rewarded in the way we would like, we have no one to blame but our own inflated expectations.
Of course, even if we want to, it is hard to accept this simple lesson. One reason for this might be that we are biologically hard-wired to compete and compare. For instance, the neurotransmitter serotonin regulates mood (among other things) and is therefore known as the “feel-good chemical”. Studies in vervet monkeys have shown that levels of serotonin in their brains will vary according to the status of each monkey within the group, the higher up evidencing correspondingly greater levels. But if there is a fight for dominance, the winner will display a boost in serotonin, whereas the loser will suffer a reduction in it.2 Is this then what drives us to compete and be successful? Why failure brings on depression and bitterness? And why we carry on pursuing our dreams even when our realistic chances of realising them have all but disappeared? And if Nature is driving us on, what can we do about it?
One answer was provided by the Stoic philosopher Antipater of Tarsus. Whenever we attempt something, we are, he said, like archers, trying to hit a target. As much as we train and practice, honing the skill of eye and hand, whether or not we hit the bullseye is ultimately out of our control – the wind may blow the arrow off course, a last-second muscle twinge may send it askew, or it may even be intercepted by a passing bird. All that is really within our control is our intentions.
The writer Steven Pressfield makes a similar point in his book The War of Art. Success, publication, awards – none of these things are guaranteed. We are only entitled to create, not to the anticipated fruits of our creations.
So how then do we deal with “failure”? The Stoics would argue that we should try to achieve a state of mental detachment and calm – what they termed ataraxia. By letting go of those things that we cannot control – which was, for Stoicism, pretty much everything! – we foster a certain sort of contentment and c’est la vie.
But what about the monkeys? you ask. Aren’t we pre-programmed by nature to strive for success? Aren’t we programmed to feel elation and despair? You make a good point! I’m not sure the Stoics would want us to switch our ambitions off, or even our emotions, even if either of those things were possible. Rather I think this is about managing expectations and trying to find meaning and enjoyment in those things that we are driven to do. There is a phrase in Laozi’s Tao Te Ching that I think better embodies the right sort of attitude:
Act without lust of result; work without anxiety; taste without
attachment to flavour3
This idea – to act without “lust of result” – acknowledges this natural inner drive, but attempts to detach it from the goal-centred outcomes we impose upon it. Is this possible? Can we simply do something – write, create, build – for its own sake? It’s difficult, and would seem also to involve dismantling the ego that has built up around achieving those outcomes. It would also require setting aside all sense of entitlement to our justified place in the social hierarchy and simply trying to enjoy the process of whatever we’re doing. And, perhaps, turning up everyday and writing a play that no one might ever read, let alone perform.
[If you have suggestions for things you’d like me to write about, get in touch via Substack DM, my website, or leave a comment below.]
While it makes for great drama, there is actually no historical evidence that the real Salieri ever harboured such evil intentions.
See Britain on the Couch, by Oliver James, pp.63–74.
Laozi, Tao Te Ching, section 63, Aleister Crowley translation.
The Ramble represents my occasional musings on things that interest me philosophically – technology, art, science, religion, the facial hair of the great philosophers – free to everyone until the end of time (well, until the end of my time, anyway...).
We are indeed possibly hard-wired to compete and compare, but if so, this 'natural' behaviour is stoked throughout our lives by first, education, then work. When aged eight to eleven, my teacher had our desks arranged from first row, front seat where the child who was 'top' sat, snaking up and down the aisles, to the kids at the bottom of the class (where I sat). The teacher told us that we bottom five or six children would all fail miserably at life, would work as road sweepers or in factories. It did not seem as if there much we could do to escape this fate, we had failed, were useless, might as well go eat worms. Capitalism thrives on competition, though the game is rigged. The great benefit of success and failure viewed through the lens of sport is that this is easily measurable; unlike many of the arts. This year there has been at least one meme floating about on social media that questions why Coldplay are headlining Glastonbury for the fifth or sixth time - the point being, why are they SO successful when not everyone would agree. Success could be measured (it used to be) by record sales, now results are far more amorphous: are Coldplay so well-liked they will draw more people to Glastonbury than other bands? The winning poems in the National Poetry Competition are often discussed with derision and questioned, 'Call that a poem?! That's not a poem. It doesn't even say anything!' These are immeasurable.
Despite (not because of) my junior school teacher's forecast for my future, I have been trying to succeed as a writer for decades, part of me says it would be wise to stop. It invites me to see a nice future where I'm not spending hour upon hour writing, not cast down into the depths of disappointment by another rejection. Another part, maybe it's a demon of addiction, just won't stop. Another says, 'Well, if I'm not that, what am I?!' This is the psychic equivalent of water spilled on the Wicked Witch of the West - the result is annihilation... or feels like it.
I love this. I find myself particularly fond of people who do things just for the love of it. I used to be a perfectionist (I can't believe I can actually say that now!) and have had to get over my fear of failure in order to be able to create things that are even a little bit good. Because of course, the irony of being terrified to fail is that often it means you end up doing nothing at all.
A friend and I have a habit of coming up with a "word of the year" each year which we're going to hold in mind and try to live by. A few years ago I had two words of the year: 'build' and 'imperfection.' When I first came up with them I had no intention of them being linked, but throughout the year I found they drew closer and closer together, and by the end of the year I'd created a few things (one of which you've read!) which, although certainly imperfect, existed much more than the preceding ideas I'd been too scared to try.
Though "work without anxiety" in today's world sounds... hard....