How much do we miss out on because failure is calling the shots?

“It’s just sour grapes.”

Someone said that to me recently. They were explaining away a moment of potential jealousy or negative reaction.

The concept of sour grapes (and indeed a lot of what Aesop wrote) has always fascinated me. That idea of the fox, hungry and delighted, leaping for the juicy, plump grapes above. Pushing all that energy into extended legs, finding air and failing to secure the prize. Try after try, a probing tongue and sharp teeth found no grapes. Only salivating jaws and ever-increasing frustration.

That hungry leaping beast gives up with a muttered, “they were probably sour anyway.”

The fox, justifying their inability to reach the grapes, relegates the grapes to unworthy. And unworthy, they stay. There is no further explanation or pondering. We never find out if the fox truly blames the vine or the grapes. Whether there is a quiet moment of acceptance underneath that initial dismissive rage. Or if the fox ever gets over itself and realises their limitations. We don’t even know if life went on after encountering them.

We simply know that while the fox never got the grapes, we humans got one heck of a sticky idiom as a result of Aesop’s deft hand.

Australian sour grapes grow alongside tall poppies in the soils of our discomfort. We readily plough the fields of this snarling rejection. We heap freshly laid bullshit to cover and nourish the ever-burgeoning shoots. We are rather keen to help sow the seeds of our discontent.

You can almost see those iconic Australian windmills spinning their dispassionate faces across those fields of taunting tall poppies and acidic grapes, hoping for the weather to change while the farmer sweats, oblivious in their labour. ?

It reminds me of a familiar family living room. It’s cluttered. Clutter and I are not friends.

If I squint or when I am bored, I imagine ailing sour grapes in the coffee table fruit bowl, slowly decaying away. I can see the dying poppies in a vase with a green slime watermark well above the water line dropping malnourished petals on the floor.

It feels so quintessentially Australian, my imagination can’t help but view it as some weird time-machine/artistic statement on the way we as a country function. ?

The person that lives there has every National Geographic ever written. The shelves overflowing, the information collected but uncategorised. The piles so high that, even if you knew it was the January 1979 article on Antarctica you wanted, you’d have to launch your own Mawson-esque expedition to retrieve it.

In that living room is a floral sheet fashioned as drapery. It covers something box shaped. In almost 15 years of me being in that living room, I have never seen what lies underneath. It simply sits there, towering above the people on the couch next to the overflowing bookshelf and no-longer easy chair. It’s box-like shape mocking from beneath the pretty floral cover. It’s complete and utter lack of use reflected in the shadowed etching of the dust on all sides and corners.

This box, it’s very seventies floral covering, and those stacks of magazines that surely wish for more life than to be crushed under the weight of the next, remind me a lot of the Australian freelance scene. Of Australian business and politics and our approach, too.

We tend to hold onto things we do not even know serve us anymore. We’re risk adverse, so we pantry-load things that hold us down. And that we create monuments to an existence we don’t fully understand. And if it becomes too difficult, if it becomes unsightly, we find something prettier to put over it so we can get on with our day.

As we gather, we sit underneath the shadows of that existence in our comfortable complacency. If we direct our faces just right, we can only see it on the periphery. If we don’t face it for long enough, it doesn’t matter anyway. And then somehow, the focus on other things, that are louder, more encompassing take hold.

In Australia, my apathy identifies me. My innate ability to ignore that I have stepped away from meaningful work means I don’t have to challenge my workday choices. That ever-presenting low grumbling infection we have in our conversation where people are difficult and problematic for trying, for standing up, and for being visible keeps us unwell enough to not have the energy to try.

But more than that. We have such a sour impression of failure. We’ve become so scared of visibility, praise and success.

We hold it back. We hold ourselves back, too. We lean in on low-hanging fruit, ignoring the rotten perfume and dissatisfaction it brings. ?

I used to think it was modesty and humility. I used to think if we kept our feet in contact with the earth, we remained grounded.

Now however, I realise that we don’t want to be seen being the fox. We aren’t afraid of missing those grapes. Or even missing out on them.

We don’t want anyone to see us fail to reach them.

Instead, we setup our living room to accommodate a box we’re never going to use. We cover it in something we don’t care about.

We design the rest of the room – and make choices about what we can and can’t include in that living room – around the anonymous fear of one day having to decide about parting with that floral covered, dust-etched box.

And we continue to design around this box until the very thing we tried to hide dominates the room.

Box trumps elephant in the failure room

Failure might skin your knees if you fall off your skateboard. But it can also teach you how to land the trick next time. We accept that, right?

But what about failure as an inventor? How many things in this world were invented by accident? How many times has the human race benefitted from someone else cocking up royally?

Failure teaches us we survive post-failure. And I’d wager, it can teach us to be kinder to others, too, if we’d listen.

We’ve all worked with that person who believes failure is not an option who is hell on earth to work with. We’ve all read the stories of the powerful businessperson who embezzled instead of admitting economic defeat. Or watched the doco special shaking our head at the person who murdered instead of accepting divorce. ?

How much heartache would we save ourselves and others if we learned to fail gracefully? Or fail in a wonderfully sploshy, bruised up mess that laughed, chalked it up and got on with the job?

If we accepted that failure might suck, but not failing is worse, how many more ways would we succeed?

Consider your relationship with failure.

·???????What do you feel when you consider not getting something right? What rises up in your body, mind and emotional core when you consider failure?

·???????How does it inform the relationship you have with feedback and criticism?

·???????How does avoiding failure make you play small?

·???????How does it make you behave towards others?

·???????How much energy do you devote to accommodating the fear over the failure?

·???????How much does that fear block your progress, your decision-making, your great ideas and have you dining on far less palatable low-hanging fruit?

I am by no means perfect in this regard. I work on myself daily not to get caught in the tendrils and tempting weeds of procrastination that blanket me in the felty fronds of obscurity. I crave the ‘atta girl’ and it makes me lazy and complacent. It greets me with a lonely silence when it doesn’t come.

But sometimes, I break free.

I’m not anti-success or anti-failure, I have decided I am pro-meaningful creativity.

I trick myself into making progress and I tell myself I don’t care as much as I do. I use that fear of sour grapes dying in my fruit bowl and accumulated fabric-covered boxes to make other choices. Ones I hope are better choices. But choices I made (instead of fear or apathy) that I own.

And that (for the most part) seems to work, too. Until it doesn’t. And then, I just say it’s failed. And through accepting failure, I can (mostly) move on.

Places you can choose to be

Don’t fail to attend these <insert marketing bow tie spin and glinting tooth here>.

The ‘Reinvent your Working Life’ free freelance festival is wrapping up soon.

Let Kate O’Mealley tell you where you can find freelance leads (Wed 20th), Holly Shoebridge help you get your finances in ship-shape (wed 27th morning session), and Rachel Smith create space for you to lead the freelance scene (Wed 27th arvo session).

Oh, and you can catch the action replays of why freelancing is great for teachers, yes, you can freelance outside the big city, get over rejection and redundancy heartbreak, uncover life after the uni sector and redundancy, manage government contract work, and turn your journalism skills to your side hustle ?

ABOUT THIS PROGRAM:

The?Freelance Jungle?redundancy program has been made possible through the generosity of?Good2Give?and?Facebook Australia. As part of a grant, this program aims to provide people affected by COVID, the bushfires and the economic downturn within Australia to transition from employment to freelancing. It includes the opportunity to learn from people who have already faced redundancy as well as those flourishing in their fields.

Other classes

You can also tap into your inner improvisation skills and learn to improve your ability to receive and apply client feedback in Improv to Improve your Client Management for four weeks starting Nov 1st via the Freelance Jungle Patreon.

Want a workshop? Let’s develop personas together on October 27th via the Pains and Gains workshop or get your Pitch Perfect on November 18th – available for Patreon supporters.

Final parting gifts

Come play as I am playing hard, fast and a happy failure stalks me for free with the Dollhouse Theatre. Join the Freelance Jungle for a Halloween themed dress up lunch on Zoom on October 29th. Melanie Horsnell is inviting you to a digital open mic – check her Facebook profile for upcoming dates. You can use creativity to break bad habits with Makeshift. Be inspired by the streets of your town podcast with Nance Haxton. ?

Oh, and always remember that you are the expert in your life. There is no way you can fail at being you.

Love and other failures that make great art, ?

Rebekah

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