Fail Better: Break the Sound Barrier

“The question is, are you going to grow or are you going to just stay as you are out of fear and waste your precious human life by status quo-ing instead of being willing to break the sound barrier?” Pema Chödrön from Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better, Commencement Address at Naropa University.

In a year like 2025, breaking the sound barrier seems the only choice. There is no status quo. One of the many questions I’ve been asking myself for the last 11 months is how loud does life have to get for people to wake to reality? It would seem sound barrier quality at least, yet there is a desperate clinging to the same old, same old yesterday be it politics or Christmas.

The “good old days” is the stuff of Currier and Ives’ lush, hand-colored lithographs whose reprints are still available on Christmas cards (as well on canvas); the same is true for the light in an idyllic Thomas Kinkade landscape, also now available as Christmas cards.

Nostalgia sends us to the moments when we knew what to do, who to be and how to succeed. Maybe even be happy. There is no failure in scenes of nostalgia, only the warmth of a moment when life was more a picture postcard than not.

Is there a way to make the magic stay? No thing, no one, no place stays the same. Therein may lie an answer.

Any center cannot hold if its edges, its fractures, its cast adrift pieces are never explored. Think of a kaleidoscope. When light enters its chamber, mirrors reflect pieces a jumble—we can hear them rolling around—as the chamber rotates one unique image into another. So fragile its impermanent beauty.

We are not momentscaptured on canvas or the mirrored light in a kaleidoscope. We are the real deal, flesh and blood, prone to failure.

In America, we just don’t give failure enough credit, if any. It may be why I so eschew winning, for everything is a competition and nothing matters but the win. To be fair, I am constantly contrary, unable to be like everyone else. I’ve tried, not with great conviction, but I have made an effort from time to time. It never goes well for anyone.

But I have grown so weary of the competitive American. In this land of supposed equality, I have never found the exceptionalism so often attributed to us. We are on the edge of losing our democracy because voting is now a competition between two colors, not a matter of who will best represent and serve all colors.

The upside is we have failed—spectacularly, dangerously so—wiping out any semblance of status quo. And we keep failing but we are beginning to fail better. Neither at light speed nor breaking the sound barrier but the November 2025 elections are a definite fail forward.

We are redefining our democracy as we approach the 250th anniversary of our first revolution. Seems we have good timing. This is not a throw out the Constitution with the kleptocrats moment. Our Constitution is us—we the people—an informed and vigilant electorate governed by the rule of law and no other.

Let’s think of it as fail forward because as Americans, forward is our thing. We are not exceptional. We have proven ourselves to be as susceptible to the forces of fascism as any other country on earth. We are a democracy with a Constitution like no other. With that, we can go forward.

Yet, failure, even failing better, is not a rallying cry. I don’t have any of those. I do my best to meet the moment. Having failure as a tool provides another life lens to broaden my perspective.

Before turning to Zen Buddhism some 13 years ago, I replaced the word/idea of failure with many a euphemism. That version of me still dwells within, as does every iteration of who I have been, but the idea of failure, the thought of failure as a fear no longer has a hold.

I can say this with some confidence because I know everywhere I go there I am. I sit and will continue to sit with many versions of me, reflecting on all the moments I cannot change. There’s purpose in reflecting rather than reliving, a kaleidoscope of light turning over one image after another.

Nowhere is this truer than in my writing, a stalwart that continues to surprise. Writing is my one strength that remains fiercely loyal to me. I am more subconsciously loyal to writing than I ever know. I have walked away from writing—or tried to—thinking maybe not this lifetime. Failing without acknowledging the word failure.

As a Buddhist, I’m counting on reincarnation. Especially when it comes to writing. We are inextricable. I’m always writing in my head until my ego steps in to say, ”but you’re not a writer.”

It has nothing to do with the quality of my words or my small list of publications. It has to do with working in an established framework. I neither have the talent nor the discipline to do that. I all but turned myself upside down and inside out when I tried to blog on certain days of the week. Failing again but with curiosity.

There is no one routine, no established writing hours or days. Before my last post, I hadn’t blogged for two years. I’ve never had any problem saying I’m a blogger.

“Oh,” ego is happy to interject. “Is a blogger really a writer?”

“Shut up.” Failing better.

There have been some excellent reasons why writing was not the order of the day, and sometimes, I’m just lazy. Who isn’t? When I meet the reality of my day, I’m a writer whether I write that day or not.

Just recently, I found an excellent placement for an essay I’m working on about my near-death experience with sepsis. Right now, it’s mostly notes and a very raw draft of part one. The issue was the deadline. When I found this publication possibility, I had enough time but not every day would be a writing day for me. Not without getting sick and losing a lot of days for everything in my life. A damaged spinal cord and rheumatoid arthritis dictate how long I will be sitting and even with voice recognition, there is always some keyboarding.

Failing better is knowing my sepsis essay is going to be a good one. I can feel it. And then I’ll see where it might find home. Like the Currier and Ives lithographs or the Kinkade paintings, when I allow the images to wend their way, words tumble like the light of the kaleidoscope, finding their way to one sentence and then another.