When did we forget?

This is a little off topic, so if you're just in the mood for motorcycle-only content then move along; nothing to see here.

When did we forget? Forget how to learn from our stumbles? Forget that failing and succeeding are two sides of the same coin? When did we forget that all of those giants whose shoulders we trample on every day failed over and over and over again before succeeding?

And why?

I'm reminded of a line from Batman Begins.
"Bruce, why do we fall down?"
"So that we learn to pick ourselves up again."

When did we forget this?

I see it at work all the time. Everyone is so eager to attach their name to canned successes, but so very few are willing to stand up and say, "I've never done that, but I'll give it a shot!" The easy answers, the easy wins, the quick hits; these are what people seem to care most about. I can understand the idea that for every bullet on your list, a gold star is preferable. But at what point are people going to remember that, for the most part, not a single one of us gets "here" alone. In almost every success story there is a foundation of work and failure and successes.

I work as a professional staff software developer for a large-ish company. I certainly don't write my software starting with a hex editor and assembler every day. No, I start up Visual Studio or NetBeans or heck even Textpad for those occasional VBScript, CMD or Perl scripts. You think that years and years of blood, sweat and tears didn't go into each and every one of those tools? And the OS on which they run? And the keyboard interpreter firmware? And the CPU inside of which all this grinds along? People worked - and worked hard - to get us to this point, and every day, I silently tip my hat to those pioneers. And every day, when I'm coding along, grinding out the mundane or the new stuff, I try something that I haven't tried before. I learn something new, I try - and often fail - something new or different or that I haven't really worried about before.

People are just afraid to fail. And this saddens me.

I see this a lot in the motorcycling world, too. You can look on nearly any message board, forum or newsgroup and find a guy looking for some special widget that he "needs" to finish off his "project". He's checked every online source and store and what-have-you and now he's just going to compromise and get something that isn't right, or worse, scrap the completion of the project altogether or go in a different direction, away from his vision. Why?

We're genetically wired to be pretty well versed in experimentation and adaptability. I mean, we DID tame this planet, after all (don't go there... just allow me that one, ok?). Surely we can try to bang some metal into shape, or drill a hole now and then without a written, money back guarantee of success. Right?

Variations of the scientific method don't belong in the laboratory alone. Dear goodness, get out in the garage, go to Home Depot or a manufacturing facility. Get some metal or fiberglass or lexan or whatever material will fit the bill and try to make what you need. Even if all you end up with is a barely-good-enough mock up prototype that you can do a better job on later, or take to a fabricator to have him do the final version for you, using his skill and experience. Just try. Don't be afraid to mess up. Don't be afraid to fail and start over.

I see it in my kids at school, too. My high school son would rather not turn in a half-finished homework then to take the chance that he might have to take a little extra ribbing on answers that may not be perfect. To his mind it seems that getting a zero is better than "failing" to correctly answer some questions or do some work he doesn't quite get the first time. This is rare enough, mind you, but it happens. And he sure as hell didn't learn that from me. When he was younger, he would be right out there in the garage with me, working on some wood-working projects and seeing the learn-as-you-go model working right there, in living color. He would help me work on the car or bikes and see that if I didn't know something, I would experiment with it, go find the answer through research or find my own way of doing it. I never, ever, just put the tools away and said "I can't do this".

It's sad. People have been so conditioned to believe that failure of any kind is bad, and the best you can ever do is mitigate your failures. I shake my head a lot. I wonder how we got here. And I try to change it. I've walked away from stuff, especially recently with a certain project at work, but not before trying. I may not always try as much or with as much diversity as I used to, but I never (yeah, I'll go ahead and say 'never') just don't try.

I rather believe in the notion that the only true failures are the attempts we never make. And in that respect, that is the only failure I really fear.

Late last night I was working on a "Career Placement Assessment - Advanced C# Concepts". I'm a good coder, but like most people who work in a box, I'm fairly stale at certain things outside my main focus. (this is the reason I miss commercial software development - never the same thing over and over again. but I digress...) Some of the questions on this assessment were pretty intense, and some were just plain esoteric. I had to guess on a few, and each question had a 3-minute time limit, so doing research on the fly was interesting. But you know what...? I never once thought about just bailing on the assessment. I took up the challenge and soldiered through all 40 questions. Intense. Kind of fun. I absolutely know I got a few wrong. OH NO! I failed to answer some correctly!! Bet your ass I'll be making some notes, doing some toying around with "new" coding ideas and learning something new today and beyond.

That's how I roll, bitches!

Don't be afraid to write that computer code, grind that metal, write that short story, do that math problem, cut that wood, flip that switch. Don't be afraid to learn from mistakes, most importantly, your own. Failures are nothing more than a learning experience. Just try.

Just try.