Failure to fail

Technically I did already post for this week, with my punful, titular apology on my comment moderation practices.

And if you want something longer, you're going to have to wait a bit more, because I'm exhausted from a late night and an early morning helping some awesome people make breakfast for a bunch of other awesome people at the regional spiritual retreat I just came back from. And, more relevant, I'm subbing for my old class tomorrow, so I need to get sleep, because I need to get up super early and plan out what I'm going to do.

Most of the specific details have been taken care of by the teacher, but if I want to do something special and vivifying, which I do, I'll need time to plan that, and I want to meditate on my past mistakes and successes with classroom management and think about a few things to try out and see if I can improve my performance with that.

When I first got the text asking if I wanted to sub, my immediate response was a visceral "no!" I mean, I'm on vacation, kind of, and frankly, it's kinda stressful, especially switching gears into teacher mode. But that little voice inside said to do it. So, with some serious longing for me to be mistaken on what the voice was saying, I agreed to do it. The voice of rightness is most certainly not the voice of ease.

Anyway, I was thinking about tomorrow, and thinking about how great a spiritual opportunity it continues to be. For me to have such an aversion to something, well, it means I've got some serious ego going on. Some serious misidentification of self. If I am truly identified as Atma, eternal, unchanging unaffected, or if I think I can practice equanimity as described in the Bhagavad Gita, or even if I just believe in my teacher's phrase, "why fear when I am here?" Then I should not be worried in the slightest.

And in fact, I know from experience with improv dance and creative writing, that I do my best work when I am in a playful, focused mindset that is 100% unconcerned with failure. And when I start getting precious about something, when I start thinking that "this is the thing that will make everything ok, if I just do it well" then I am swiftly given the smack-down by the universe, and my work becomes stilted and bland and unpleasant.

There are some who might say, "that sounds irresponsible and dumb. come over here so I can slap you." Maybe that's just in my own head. Anyways, all I can say is, perhaps I'm not describing it right, or perhaps those people just haven't had the experience that I'm referring to, because it's actually a much, much, more effective way to be, so if I'm not doing it, I'm doing the disservice to whoever I'm working for.

I suspect it's because this easier, more fun, and less neurotic way of being puts me in a state where I take intelligent risks and try new things, which are often good ideas that improve my work. And, it makes the process of doing whatever I'm doing, fun, so I do it more, so I get more practice. And, when I'm having fun, other people involved are way more likely to be having fun too. And people learn best when they are doing focused play. And when I'm not taking success and failure personally, it's easier to look objectively and change things that are not working, then get right back to it, rather than quit for a while and nurse my wounds and when I eventual do get back to it,  approach with timidity.

So teaching is a superb training ground for this. In my mind it's super important, so it's a battle to not worry about my performance. Yet at the same time, it's not surgery or war, where mistakes actually could mean someone dies. As long as I'm approaching things with love, I may be totally ineffective, or anger a student, but that's probably the worst that's realistically going to happen, given my level of responsibility, even in this worry-free state. And I strongly suspect all of that is more likely to happen when I'm not in my "improv dance/creative writing" state.

Well, this did end up being long. Man, I am not so good at the "short post" thing. I need to practice that skill, for my own sake.

Anyhoo. Next time, if I remember: a cool little story about intuition and a garage sale on the way back from the retreat today. Or maybe I'll just try practicing writing really short posts. Except those might take even longer. The Mark Twain quote comes to mind: "-

er, never mind, apparently that was a spurious attribution. Thanks internets. One of the actual authors of this quote was Blase Pascal, and translated from the French, it is, "I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter."

So yeah, that.

Well, I have failed to not write a real post, and tomorrow hopefully I will fail to do a bad job. 


P.S. I feel like I should add a less tongue in cheek addendum if anyone is planning on trying this at home: I'm not skimping on preparation. I just approach it with more of a sense of play, which, because it's fun, can result in a great deal more preparation. This kind of not worrying is still responsible. It's a matter of fear-based motivation vs. love-based motivation. Fear-based motivation stops being responsible once it's not afraid of failing. Love-based motivation just does the right thing regardless of circumstances.

P.P.S. This "failing to fail" reminds me of the thing from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, where Arthur Dent learns to fly by falling and missing the ground.