You Have to Earn the Right to Talk About Failure
Or, if you want society to tolerate your kinks, you gotta do the work
We all love to quote Thomas Edison whenever we try to glorify failure: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
What most people don’t realise is that this oftquoted remark makes sense not because Edison found 10,000 ways that didn’t work, but because he eventually found a way that did work. This truism is inspiring only because Edison was successful. Otherwise, it just sounds stupid.
Everyone loves a rags to riches story. The general narrative goes something like this: “He was poor. He struggled a lot. He made some stupid mistakes. Now, there he is — super rich and doing super cool things.” This is inspiring! But a rags to riches story without riches is just a sad story: “He was poor. He struggled a lot. Actually he’s still struggling. Oh, and he’s still poor.”
Failure has no meaning without success. People who don’t understand this subtle difference don’t realise that when a Mark Zuckerberg or an Elon Musk talk about their “failure” or “struggle”, it’s one thing; but when a serially failed entrepreneur (who has never accomplished anything significant) talks about their failure, it’s a completely different thing.
You have to earn the right to talk about failure. Or rather, you have to earn the right to do just about anything that breaks some form of societal norm.
Tomorrow, if Mark Zuckerberg or Sam Altman walk into the US Congress in hoodies and shorts, at best nobody would say anything, or at worst they’d be politely asked not to repeat this feat. But very few people in the world (except for the very very old senators the US Congress is full of) would be taken aback. But if you or I tried to pull that kinda stunt, we’d be laughed and kicked out of the place.
If you want the society to tolerate your kinks, you gotta do the work for the society to owe you something first.
Steve Jobs was anything but humble. He’s often addressed as a “genius asshole”. Umpteen entrepreneurs throughout the world imitate his “perceived” characteristics — being stubborn, being dismissive, and being abrasive, apart from a few other not-so-nice character traits.
The problem however is that while all of them nail the “asshole” part very well, they don’t even get close to the “genius” part. You see, Jobs had earned the right to be an asshole. The “genius” bit in the genius asshole makes all the difference. Without it, you’re just some schmuck.
When you’re successful, society rewards you with some special rights. You can get away with breaking a lotta norms (as long as you aren’t breaking any laws). Often times, your flaws and shortcomings (sometimes, even your stupidity) become glorified as “best practices”.
But it’s important to note that the sequence matters. The mistakes and failures become lessons and adages only after a certain point, not before. In other words, you have the right to break the norm only after you have done or achieved something, not before. There’s no way to shortchange that.
Had Airbnb not been the success it is today, their initial 1,000 days of obscurity (that I have already referred to a zillion times) wouldn’t really matter much. In fact, there are probably thousands and thousands of companies with such a story but they never survived failure and earn the right to tell the tale.
Stories of failure, mistakes, struggles, find glory only in the shadow of success. Otherwise they are stupid, irritating, or just plain sad.
Had Steve Jobs never made a comeback, his story of getting ousted from his own company would be nothing but a footnote in the history of Silicon Valley. Unlike what we’re made to believe, the meaning of the journey depends solely on how it ends.
Failure is a lesson only if it’s followed by success, otherwise it’s a cautionary tale. Never forget that.