I was recently discussing career and life advancement through entrepreneurship with a friend when he said something that few people say: “I need to get more failures under my belt.”

This statement was born from immediately preceding comments about things we’ve both tried with varying degrees of success, and the things we’ve learned from them. Before discussing any personal application of the phrase, let’s briefly explore its origin. I especially liked this online description: “The literal meaning of having something under your belt is having it in your stomach, but it’s probably more frequently used figuratively, to mean having acquired something, often intellectual.”

We do not normally think of failure as being acquired or intellectual, but if we did we might more readily benefit from it. In a very short series on personal failure, I will discuss scenarios involving; Facebook, Harvard Business School, starting a business in the Ukraine, and a job offer that I received from The New York Times about six months ago. I will also share things that I have heard and thought at a Not For Profit Conference that I’m currently attending in Washington, DC.  

Please stay tuned… If you don’t, it’s cool.. We’ll just consider it a failure on your part.

This afternoon I received an email from “Poetry, TNY” which I assumed was spam or some other electronic detritus. I opened it anyway, more reflexively than anything and also because I was multitasking. It was actually an email from The New Yorker, and it read:
 
“Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider your work. We regret that we are unable to carry it in the magazine.
Warmest regards,
  The Editors”
 
That really made me chuckle because I apparently so casually submitted the poem, that but for their email, I had zero recollection of it. In fact, I scrolled down to review the original message to ensure that it was really from me because after having been confronted with their message, I still didn’t remember. 
 
The poem, “Clear Blue Freedom and a Purple Wake” will appear in my upcoming book, “Afloat, Atop a Marbled Sea”. It was inspired by a national news story that culminated explosively, but has since just as dramatically faded from view. There will probably be a reference to this rejection letter in my autobiography some day, if I remember to include it, if I remember to write one. If not in my autobiography, perhaps in my Hall of Fame speech – The New Yorker just added a little more “wood to the fire”. To call it motivation would be an overstatement because I would have to remember it to think about and be fueled by it; but now that I’ve written about the poem and its rejection as if writing about myself in the third person, I will take this affront to the gates of literary hell. In any event, I must have been feeling quite confident at 4:04pm on July 15, 2013; but I was probably feeling then just as I am now, that the poem is worth sharing. As such…

Clear Blue Freedom and a Purple Wake

They have baited the line. 
No longer tied around our necks, 
Cutting into our breath and our backs,
Binding our wrists. 
The lines are thinner now,
Much harder to see.
Especially in the dark,
In the perpetual night. 

They have let us run even farther; however, than the razor sharp point at which we were baited and hooked,
At which we sank our teeth ambitiously in. 

Free, we climb.
We swim through the clear blue freedom,
Until the line jerks down against our weight,
Until it reminds us of tethers and limits,
And the taste of our own bloody mouths. 

Abruptly we are reeled backwards, 
If not all the way in,
If not all the way dead. 
Blue, not all the way clear,
Leaving behind a purple wake.

No longer required to bow down,
Step down,
And step aside,
We thought. 

They have ground on which to stand. 
We without forty acres or even one,
Just a narrow path,
Treacherous, but ours. 
A path generally to a familiar lot and station. 

But we also have ground to stand, though treacherous should we stand it. 
On which to walk,
Stand,
And stand our ground. 
In theory. 

A ground on which we often lay dead. 
Sometimes at our own hands,
But too often by those on neighborhood safari,
And those without sympathy for the truly endangered. 
Those who would out arm nature,
Then complain of the sharp teeth and tusks they themselves eagerly,
And illegally pursued. 

They are those who would shoot
And quiet screams. 
They are those who would defend.
They are those who would free and walk free. 
Bloodshed and blood guilt the only proof that they were ever here. 

Besides of course, the bodies left lying in their wake,
In sticky blood,
And sweets going sticky in the wet, 
In the dark, perpetual night.

When Jorge Mario Bergoglio from Argentina took the name “Francis” as Pope, the world was cautiously impressed. His namesake, Saint Francis, was known for his humility and for giving up his taste for worldly conveniences. There was as little precedent for this in 2013 as there was indication that this would be the new direction of the papacy. In an organization almost 2,000 years old and with an estimated $6B dollars in its coffers, there was little reason to believe that the new pope would adopt such an austere posture. The affluence of the office is customarily highlighted by the expensive cars and residences of his predecessors and others in the positions of responsibility within the church. Yet, here he was. Where others have adorned themselves with the capes and crowns of so called humility, he seems to have disrobed himself with it, truly exemplifying the notion. This is reflected in his speech, interactions and manner. While reverence of the papacy has long since veered toward idolatry, it is fair to say by all appearances that he has rejected those laurels. After having gotten so much right, however; he has recently gotten some things entirely wrong no matter how well-intentioned. 

The Bible says that God himself is love; nevertheless, when correction was necessary it often came in as heavy handed a manner as only God could deliver. Man could not even imagine the consequences that God had in store, and could not replicate today what He actually executed millennia ago. The being who, not HAS love, but IS love is not reluctant to issue guidance codified and abruptly corrective (read: flood, exile, plagues et al). Why, then, would a man whose goal it should be and responsibility it is to coach people towards unwavering standards of righteousness, confuse failing to reiterate guidance with promoting love? He is either dismissing his role as coach, or he is attempting to alter the rules of the game. While he may not actually be advocating fundamental doctrinal changes, he is advocating changes in perception and a seemingly enhanced permissiveness; which is naturally a slippery slope. Emphasizing the linchpins of a doctrine is no more being “obsessed” with them than a parent who spends 10, 15, even 20 years influencing and correcting their children’s behavior. In fact, that’s lauded and applauded.

Love is not the answer to all moral and ethical questions; instead, it is the medium through which the answers ought to be delivered. Mercy and compassion are hallmarks of good leadership and religion, not draconian edicts. Nevertheless; kindness should not be taken for, or treated as, weakness. The standards are strong and firm. One would not expect even the most compassionate lung cancer doctor to give a patient a cigarette just because it’s what the patient yearns for or has grown accustomed to. It would not be permitted just to help them feel a stronger sense of inclusion (which may be the origin of their problem); not even as a final wish. The doctor would be expected to hold firm, as there is no reasonable expectation that the parameters of medicine and ethics be gerrymandered. Such rigidity holds true of most institutions, formal and informal, the benefits of which are as apparent as they are abundant. Equally abundant is the choice of groups to which one could belong. If the requirements are too stringent or unpalatable, the alternatives are many; and by nature and definition, they are not all-inclusive. 

In addition, analysis of the pope’s comments should be expanded to include a critique of the long simmering self-worship that is finally boiling over. Finally a humble pope, but pompous parishioners. No longer is the conversation focused on how one modifies one’s life and behavior to align it with a principle, it is now about how many clowns can be packed in one car. Instead of slimming down, it’s about making bigger seats and wider caskets. Instead of not smoking, some just smoke electronically. We want to bend the rules and keep our crowns, but where is the value in a value that’s been negotiated? A value does not belong in the marketplace, it is not to be bartered. It is steadfast, not a fluctuating commodity. God’s word doesn’t bend. The laws of the land don’t even bend to accommodate individual wishes and to facilitate noncompliance. The mold is fine, leave it be. Find a religion that suits, not who you are today unchanged; but who you aspire to be, a better you. You will fit the mold better without the crown.