Rhonda Sider Edgington: No one wants to talk about failure

EDITOR'S NOTE: The views and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not of Ottawa News Network.

A good way to make a conversation quickly awkward is to bring up a failure you’ve experienced. It’s almost like death — we all have to deal with it, but we’d rather pretend we won’t. Creative people, both by profession and vocation, tend to know a good deal about failure, but there are many other areas where it is just as common and necessary: scientific research, athletic endeavors, or starting a business.  

I’m a sucker for new recipes, and often prefer the excitement of a new dish to the more mundane act of cooking something I already know. This means we have lots of happy surprises at my house during mealtimes, but they come with costs. The higher the stakes and the more we risk, the greater both the potential rewards or the disappointment. Besides my time, the ingredients, and some good-hearted mocking from family members, I don’t risk too much with a meal that didn’t turn out well. But many creative risks come with higher costs.    

Years ago, I wanted to perform a unique piece I’d heard for organ and drummer, and undertook a Quixotic quest to do so. It included a months-long search through layers of far-flung connections to track down the score, then more emailed introductions to find a percussionist willing to learn the piece, and then attempts to find a way and place to perform it and pay my collaborator. 

Each step of the way included failure — often a pathway that initially seemed promising wasn’t. And many times what I thought was success was only one question or problem solved, and soon more loomed. I endured many disappointments, like colleagues who acted interested but then weren’t, or grants I sunk endless hours into and didn’t receive. 

But I finally did find a willing musician, and we put together a series of highly satisfying concerts. And out of that connection grew other pieces and concerts together, a musical collaboration totally unlike anything I’d done before. In short, not only is this the story of how I eventually performed that piece and continue to love it (perhaps partly because of the struggle involved?). It’s also the story of how moving through and around failure led me to a destination I’d never considered at the outset. Maybe failure is the teacher none of us wants, but who bears the gifts we need to grow.  

As I’ve been thinking about recent creative failures in my life, I’ve noticed some tendencies in myself. Shame is one: why did I think I was good enough to be accepted to X? Who did I think I was? Then it’s easy to take a step back and question the entire endeavor — was the effort (to apply, to create a new thing) worth it? Should I have kept on playing it safe, doing what I know, sticking with already-familiar ideas and projects?

Sometimes failure means we need to take our great idea elsewhere, find a different venue/audience/arena. Sometimes it means we need to re-examine or rework. It’s easy to be self-defensively reactive, but failure could also be an opportunity to go back to the drawing board, or the writing desk, to examine our work with new eyes. Not cynically, but looking again to ask, is this still as strong as I originally thought? Does the original idea need to be recovered, refound, or re-imagined?  

Unfortunately, no one can tell the creator which sort this particular failure is, and that discernment can be a fraught process. I suspect it necessitates the ego taking a back seat, to be as honest as we can with ourselves. This involves quieting both the wounded ego that would inflate how painful this rejection might be (I’ll never create or risk again, I’m so humiliated!), and also the self-aggrandized ego that just knows this idea is unacknowledged brilliance (like Van Gogh, the prophet is never recognized in their own time!)        

It takes courage and vision to see beyond a failure. Out of one disappointment, maybe a new or transformed idea will arise. What was important to me about this project, which sparked my energy and excitement? And where does it seem to be leading? I’m in that not-entirely-comfortable space right now, looking around, talking with colleagues, wondering about and feeling out next steps.  

Wise mentors have explained there’s a natural cycle to this process we ought to respect. Sadness, regret, and grief come with failure, and maybe a drawing back, to lick our wounds and reassess. No need to run out the next day to begin a new idea, though, to sit with failure can be painful. We’d rather ignore, cover up, distract. To sit with our failure means to be honest about what might not be working, or what is simply out of our control.      

I’ve been imagining the rich heritage of musicians, artists, and writers throughout the ages who battled failure during their lives, but kept creating. I try to channel the gutsiest, most imaginative ones, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Ruth Asawa, or many others around the world who don’t create for anything other than their love of the act.

Another creative iconoclast, Annie Dillard, once wrote: "How we spend our days is, after all, how we spend our lives." I’ve often taken that to mean that a life spent creating is a life well spent. Maybe it also means a life spent wrestling through failure while working out something we believe in is a pretty good place to be.      

— Rhonda Sider Edgington is the Organist and Music Director at Hope Church in Holland, teaches organ at Calvin University and Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, and as a soloist and with duo Thunder & Wind (with Carolyn Koebel, percussion) travels to play concerts around West Michigan and throughout the country. Find more of her writings on music at rhondasideredgington.substack.com.

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