What We Can Learn From The Oscars Failure

It’s no secret that I don’t have much tolerance for personal failure. To this day I remember the one and only time I brought home a ‘C’ grade from school after a flawless track record of ‘A’s. My parents were nonplussed about the whole thing, but I was silently devastated. That stain on an otherwise perfect academic record hung over my head for weeks.

This perfectionist streak propelled me through the teenage years and into my 20s, masking itself as the key to a prosperous future. I never once questioned its zero-failure rule, somehow believing this to be critical for success in a society that rewards excellence.

For a long time, it worked. I attained degrees, a career, marriage, a house…all in the prescribed order. But at some point in my 30s, the zero-failure rule started to infiltrate other parts of my life and became more of a nuisance than a help.

When failure is never an option

I’ve been reflecting a lot on the notion of failure this week in the wake of the Oscars debacle. The furor over Oscargate demonstrates how little tolerance we have for mistakes in our culture. Case in point: the social machine gained lightning momentum after the unfortunate envelope incident. First it accused Warren Beatty of being ‘washed up’ before moving on to blame-and-shame the starstruck ‘accountants’.

In the final version of the story, it appears that one of the ‘accountants’ made a mistake leading to the mix-up. The result of his mistake was disappointment for both named winner(s) of the award, in what should have been a moment of glory. Not to mention awkward scrambling for the presenters, award show organizers, and the ballot guardians themselves.

A culture of blaming and shaming

As I read the fallout of this story I couldn’t help but think, where’s your compassion everyone? Haven’t we all been there? Maybe not on the scale of being forever remembered as ‘the guy who screwed up Oscar night’. But aren’t we all guilty at one time or another of making a mistake due to our own negligence or naiveté or lack of preparation?

When did we start taking ourselves so seriously as a human species that an unfortunate incident at an entertainment event takes on the proportion of gross injustice? I mean, let’s get real: the error didn’t involved any loss of life or mass destruction. Nevertheless, Oscargate reminds us that one false move in our perfectly curated world will be seized upon with the level of shame mobbing usually reserved for those who have committed a criminal act.

I’m not saying we should applaud the Oscar blunder. But we should think long and hard about the hypocrisy of celebrating creativity on the one hand, while simultaneously denouncing a person for his mistake. The irony here is that failure is not only necessary for great art, it’s a natural part of the human experience. When we eliminate all risk, we eliminate our potential for connection and magic. This is why we see so much manufactured banality these days. We have wrapped ourselves in a perfectionistic straightjacket.

From failure to experimentation

While mulling over Oscargrate this week, I happened to watch a few episodes of a documentary series called Chef’s Table. This show takes viewers on a behind-the-scenes journey with some of the world’s leading gastronomic geniuses. While each story is as unique as the chef’s signature style, one thing they all have in common is failure.

Each chef grew into his or her own after years of trial and error, not to mention countless flops along the way. What strikes me about these chefs’ stories is their capacity to embrace failure as a natural part of the learning process. Even in a professional milieu as unforgiving as haute cuisine.

Whether we like it or not, if we want to truly evolve — in work, at home, in our relationships — we must learn to treat failure as a means of development. I admit that all of this makes me really uncomfortable. It feels counterintuitive for a full-blown perfectionist to willingly embrace failure. Just this morning we had a near Ugly Pancake Meltdown at our house.

A beginner’s guide to embracing failure

You see, hubby and I have a Sunday morning tradition whenever we aren’t travelling: homemade oatmeal pancakes. By now, I have made this pancake recipe dozens of times. Only today, for some reason, the dough didn’t take and our pancakes ended up a goopy mess. (For my fellow perfectionists out there, you know all too well how this kind of thing that can transform your wonderfully curated Sunday morning Instagram moment into ‘the weekend that must not be named’.)

Instead of throwing out the offending pancakes in a furious tantrum, I took a cue from the master chefs and turned my pancake fail into an opportunity to learn. I asked myself, what was different today? Did the temperature of the pan affect the composition of the batter as it cooked? How should I adjust the proportion of ingredients to get a better consistency next time?

Then I took a deep breath, placed those ugly little lumps of dough on our plates, and tucked in. In the end, we had an imperfect, yet precious, weekend moment together. As I ate my ugly (but tasty) pancakes, I accepted that life can be messy.

Sometimes s*%$ happens. When it does, we need to put it in perspective and try to be kinder to ourselves and others who are as imperfect as us. Failure isn’t a moral defect, no matter what the Twitterverse may say. It is only in embracing failure that we discover true magic — and sometimes it turns out differently than you might expect.

(Feature photo: Gaelle Marcel)