The Opportunity of Failure Belongs To the Privileged Class
The chance to fail and try again isn’t an equal one.
Is Privilege Only About Money and Race?
One of the most sought after titles and possessions in today’s western society is that of becoming a millionaire. The idea is constantly pushed out from game shows (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?) to books (The Millionaire Mind) and especially through modern music. The message is clear: Get rich and get it as early as you can.
Interestingly enough the average age of a millionaire is around 62. The accomplishments of young millionaires and billionaires get shoved into our faces by media to attempt to make the unicorns of the worlds look like average horses, and thus making jackasses of all of us. Most of us won’t become millionaires statistically speaking, but what is the average person’s chance? I mean to reflect on the average person with average opportunities. The thing that is most interesting about the more common millionaires is that they spend most of their life starting building businesses in their 20s or 30s and continue through to their 60’s trying new business or ideas and failing and trying them again until they finally hit it big. They stick it out until they make it. Modern self-help books implore us to have the tenacity and determination to just see our dreams through. But what if that opportunity to try and fail was not an equal opportunity?
I have worked with children in poverty and I have worked with millionaires. Wealthy people will insist that all you have to do is have the same attitude and actions as them and you will experience the same results. Seems simple enough right? After all, this probably worked for them. Model their behavior; get the same outcome. The problem is achieving wealth could be equated to dieting. In both instances there is a really simple formula to screw things up but to get the positive results you want the results will vary in massively unpredictable ways. That’s why no one has the be all end all formula for both health and finances. The worst part about it is typically in each industry someone that claims they have the “magic formula” to get the desired results will just sell it to unsuspecting hopefuls to further their own financial agenda but still leave consumers frustrated with their results.
When I tried to start my own business I had a lot of upfront costs with the money I didn’t have and the hope of a payout only to find myself failing again and again and shoving more money into the business. My wealthy friends would just tell me to try again until something worked. I would continue to labor doing exactly as they did only to get different results than they did. The bottom line, they didn’t know what worked for me. The biggest problem was after a while the money ran out and that opportunity to fail another time is gone.
The myth that failure is just giving up
There is no failure except in no longer trying. ―Elbert Hubbard
When talking about failure some have defined it as only present if you stop trying. I admit many people have stopped on their dreams when they were capable of moving forward. But what about the system that they are working in? Did African- American’s quit trying to get fairness for wages, property, and rights before the Civil Rights period? Or were they denied? Some say one while others say different. Perhaps it is both. Regardless, it is a truth that people of color have encountered times that they weren’t allowed to even try and fail. They couldn’t even play the game. We must admit that the chance to play in the game of life and to try repeatedly is a privilege that is not equally distributed.
Have you ever looked at your failures as a blessing that you were allowed to play the game in the first place? Where you tried and failed some have never even had the opportunity to even try. Your failure was a gift whether or not you saw it that way. This is a gift that should be given to everyone regardless of age, race, or belief. For some groups, it needs to be increased sharply. To learn that failure is a part of growth is a lesson many never get the chance to truly understand. This is because for those that have one chance or none failure isn’t growth to them — it is death. When I worked with Mexican immigrants that spoke only Spanish they equated failure, whether at home or in school, as death. It was their experience that if they messed up they would not receive another chance to recover. That is not a message we want to pass to anyone, let alone our children.
Businessman and best-selling author Robert Kiyosaki talks about in his Rich Dad, Poor Dad series how he went belly up on one of his businesses but instead of getting a job he and his wife just moved into a friend’s basement until he could build his next business. That is a form a privilege. When my business failed I had a wife and four mouths to feed so I had to find a job to feed my family. Even more than that I had to find extra ways to make money to pay off the debt I had from the business which would take years to get out of and thus preventing other financial opportunities that I couldn’t partake in. I had the privilege of moving my family in with my father for a few months to recover but a condition was that I would get a job and not start another business. I am grateful for the opportunity he gave me to recover from my loss but it was also conditional where I had to stop my trying and failing process to do it.
Fall down seven times, stand up eight.- Japanese Proverb
More Opportunities For Failure Leads to More Success
If people are given the chance to fail unlimited amounts then the probability of learning and advancing to become millionaires increases exponentially. For those that fail and have extra money to rely on, relatives to borrow from or live with, and knowledge of how to use resources to keep going they are privileged to try and fail again. But what about those minority college students that can’t afford to fail one semester while still having to work to provide for their parents at home? What about the average person that puts all their life savings into their dream business only to not have it work out the first time? The chance to fail in our lives isn’t equal and that is widening the wealth and poverty gap.
What if we could help people fail more in order to succeed? What impact could that have as groups and individuals? We can. Teaching people how to be resourceful, connecting communities to resources, and creating greater financial equality laws can help breed generations of people that view failure as growth rather than death. These are the people that can change the world in a very real way that the Wright Brothers or Steve Jobs did. More opportunities to fail remains key to overall success.
If we really want to make a powerful change in individuals and in communities we need to realize the privilege of failure. Student loans aren’t perfect and there is a lot of work to do on overpriced tuition but the silver lining is that it gives people the opportunity to try and fail and learn to grow who come from backgrounds that would have allowed them no experiences to try and fail. We need to see more of this in both business and in education if we are going to talk about handling privilege in society. There are lots of conversations about privilege and equality but we need to start including the opportunity to fail and learn in those discussions.
