When I was 6 or 7 years old, there was this time when my dad picked me up from a friends house at night and it was snowing. As we were driving home, he said he had something cool to show me. Because I was a skeptical person even then, I questioned him: "huh?"
He waited till a car passed us, then he turned on the bright headlights.
At this time, our family drove a 1986 Isuzu Trooper. The thing always felt like it was two speed bumps away from a rusty metal grave, and as it hurtled into the darkness that night when dad had something to show me that only the bright setting of the headlights could make possible, it felt like we weren't in a car at all. Maybe a time travel machine, or a b-wing starfighter.
When he turned on the brights, the snowflakes that only moments before had appeared to be gently floating through the night sky and coming to rest softly on the windshield turned into terrifying stars hurtling toward us at the speed of light, comet-like tails streaming behind them.
I was enchanted.
It took me a while to realize that turning on the brights wasn't going into warp speed, we weren't really moving any faster and neither was the snow, we could just see the flakes more clearly when the lights were at full power. Enchantment slightly abated.
I feel a little silly about it now, but then again, who didn't believe something ridiculous when they were a kid? Santa, the Easter Bunny, the monsters in the closet, the idea that fire fighters do nothing but hang out with dalmations and slide down poles and save cats from trees, and that cookies are good for you.
One of the things that was nice about being a kid was that you had permission to fail. As a very small and still-developing (physically and cognitively) person, one was granted permission to believe crazy things, dream impossible dreams, make grand plans, try new and unusual things - and with that permission went the clause that said: "Since you're small, we won't hold you to this. You have permission to fail. You can say you want to be an astronaut and decide to be a chef two weeks later, you can get bad grades on tests, you can accidentally mess up friendships (sorry I took your legos) - and you can recover." That's what children are told, at least ideally, and I have to confess that I want to be told the same thing.
I want permission to fail.
And I think a lot of people want the same thing. Having permission to fail means having permission to try crazy things, dream crazy dreams, and live a life that won't leave you wondering "what if I had done ____." We give kids that permission, who decided that adults shouldn't have the same freedom? Yes, adults have more responsibility and it gets harder to recover from failure the older you get - but I think we're all more afraid of failure than we should be. There is no real success without some element of risk.
All that said, I'm not waiting to get permission from you, friend.
I don't want YOUR permission to fail.
I have to give it to myself, because ultimately I'm the one who has to live with me and my successes and my failures.
Just a thought.
