The Beautiful Failure

Today, I watched as two twelve-year-old boys worked together to build an aerodynamic car that could soar twelve inches off a press-board jump to land in a basket of blocks. This effort was at once humble and Herculean in stature.

The boys considered the track they built: Should it have sides? Should it be taped? Should it contain the plastic official Hot Wheels track? Together they sculpted a vehicle: weight, wings, propulsion, aerodynamic design. Their ideas toppled out into the space between them, then were considered one by one from all angles. They asked for more tape, paper, and elastic. I brought them balloons in lieu of rubber bands, and they used them sling-shot style and as wind propulsion for a vehicle that first looked like a car-plane, then a car-biplane and finally like a car-biplane-sailboat as more and more Lincoln Logs were taped into place to firm up the paper sails and wings.

Sideline experiments took place: Paper airplanes were tested for aerodynamic design to be incorporated, alternative materials and pathways were put into place for a smoother, more effective track. They shared the creation in all ways from inception to closure.

And they pronounced it a failure.

They did not offer this observation in dismay. It was merely a fact, stated plainly as one might observe an overcast day. Nothing to spoil anyone's picnic, but not the hoped for outcome either. One boy told the other that they needed to have a playdate again soon, and this was agreed upon heartily.

What can we make of it? Is accomplishment achieved after successful trials or after many highly creative ventures? Is there a different sort of accomplishment that is born of each?

I remember, as a teenager, deciding to spend the day building a raft that my girlfriend and I could float onto our local slough. It was a rather strange idea from the get-go; neither of us had any building experience, and we never would have dreamt of going out in the mucky, highly polluted slough on any other day. We somehow did not compute that the project might entail getting wet.

I remember that we hauled to the water's edge something that resembled a souped-up pallet. The slats would obviously let water through, but in a moment of unsinkable pride in our creation, I volunteered to be the first to push off on our "boat."

It sunk.

Not too deep. Up to my waist in brownish-gray water and up to my calves in suctiony silt, I determined that I had merely mounted the vehicle incorrectly. Giving the thumbs up to my girlfriend who watched wide-eyed on the bank, I clambered aboard from the other side and managed to stay on top of the wooden flat, even as it sank a few feet below the surface. In this way, I effectively deep-water surfed downstream.

I remember laughing. I remember the weight of my overalls moving through the muddy water stiffly and the moment when I realized that my head, too, was going to go under. The event is elevated in my memory -- relinquishment in the face of ecstatic creation.

It did not matter that my boat did not float. The entire venture became a sort of performance art. The gray sky laughed down at the brownish-gray me, and we were one in our mirth, awash in the bowels of creativity.

I always wonder, no I sempre wonder (Italian captures the longing in "always") what the goal is, anyway. We humans measure our efforts and our accomplishments neatly into units, indeed we measure the value of a creature, of a soul this way at times. For what are we but the energy that finds its path in the world, creating and being created? Who are we to measure the value of outcome when the means itself is born of our deepest truths, our perfect grace?

The boys saved their car-biplane-sailboat for the next passersby to take note of -- a monument to  creative failure.

I myself am humble witness to the wonder.