A Philosophical Meditation on Failure & Success
Invited by the Phi Tau Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa
TCC-Northeast, 17 April 2024

Fellow colleagues and representative of our beautiful campus, good students—a good many of whom I’ve had in a class—Good evening! 

Before I begin my surely riveting talk, I want to thank the local leadership of Phi Theta Kappa for inviting me to give you a philosophical reflection on success and failure. I pray that I am successful at it. But I am okay with failing the assignment as well. 

I appreciate a great deal how Phi Theta Kappa goes beyond recognizing your academic success to open you up to many other opportunities. This is important because the academic successes you have had are preparatory to engaging all these years of training to apply your know-how for your own good and the good of humanity. You should justly be proud of yourselves because I know that I and all of my colleagues at TCC-Northeast are very proud of you. 

There is a quote from the playwright and essayist Samuel Becket that has been memeified and motivational posterized for quite some time:

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

The statement was misappropriated from Beckett by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who saw in it a quick summary of their “gospel of disruption” that paves the path to innovative success. But Becket was much more of an existentialist than Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Mark Zukerberg. For the old Irish playwright, all life ends in failure. 

I know, I have started right off with some really strong optimism, haven’t I?

The issue really is that failure is certain while success is uncertain. And even when success has been achieved, it requires further action either to keep it going or to find another avenue for success. The uncertainty of success offers no guarantees; the certainty of failure ensures we must keep at it… or else give up. 

And so that is why I will be veering away from misappropriating Becket’s words and instead pivot to misappropriate Master Yoda’s words: 

TRY NOT! 
DO! OR DO NOT…
THERE IS NO TRY. 

Already there is a disagreement with Becket in one sense: The Irishman makes “trying” important. The little green Jedi says it is not even possible. 

And this is why it is important to learn from the humanities and the arts how to unpack notions that might seem so far apart. We ask, are Becket and Yoda using “try” in the same way? No. The words sound the same, but they mean something completely different. 

Becket’s “try” is about the inevitability of failure. Failing while continuing to try is not really an excuse—it’s just for him how things really are. 

Yoda’s “try” is about the need to properly engage in the situation without any excuses. Because that is what Luke Skywalker is doing. I know that you did not come expecting that some old guy was going to blather on about STAR WARS, but I am hoping you will be patient. 

Let me just set it up and then I promise we will get back to our considerations. 

In the film EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980), from which the famous quote comes, Luke Skywalker has gone to a swamp planet seeking the ancient Jedi: Yoda. Of course, when he gets there, he does not recognize the barely 3-foot-tall green person as the Great Warrior who once led the Jedi Council. To this confusion, Yoda tells him, “War NOT make a person great.” 

Again and again, despite often showing his wisdom and strength, the young Luke judges the old Yoda by his size. At one point in their intensive training, Luke is balancing upside down on one hand with Yoda sitting atop Luke’s feet. [That probably sounds like what some of your science or history professors have asked you to do for some of your exams or class projects.]

As they practice, Luke’s ship—the only means he has of getting to and from this backwater planet—begins to sink into the waters of the swamp. Luke loses focus, causing both him and Yoda to tumble. Luke panics and begins to wonder how he will get the X-Wing ship out of the swamp. He is now stranded on the planet. 

Luke: Oh, no! We’ll never get it out now!

Yoda: So certain, are you? Always with you, what cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say?

Luke: Master, moving stones around is one thing, but this is… totally different!

Yoda: No! No different! Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned.

Yoda is not worried or even concerned. He just tells the young trainee, use the Force to lift the ship out of the mud and guck. And even more importantly, he points out the key to lasting success: 

You must unlearn what you have learned. 

Many times, as students, folks will see the lesson plans they follow and the technical skills they learn as giving them a regular path. The thing about regular paths is that they are fixed. So, interpreting these exercises as regular can often mean that once learned, the skills/knowledge require little or no change. 

But really, everything that can be taught—even the most advanced skills—is rudimentary until you make it part of yourself and engage the knowledge or skill in a real practice woven into your very being. 

Yoda here hopes that the young trainee sees this. Luke at first balks, but then turns to the task.

Luke: All right, I’ll give it a try.

Yoda: No! Try not. Do… or do not. There is no try.

[Luke tries to use the Force to levitate his X-Wing out of the bog but fails in his attempt.]

Now we have Yoda’s most famous saying. But the bland delivery the quote usually gets is not what Yoda says. Yes, my intrepid young colleagues: Words can change their meaning by the emPHASis. 

What the Jedi Master actually says is…

NO! Try NOT!

DO! Or do not… 

There is no try. 

Certainly not something that you would want somebody to say to you as you watch your only means of escape being sucked into a swamp. 

Luke focuses his will and begins to lift the ship from where it is sinking… only to lose control and the ship fall even further into the dirty crud. 

Yoda stands by watching the failure which brings Luke to offer: 

Luke: I can’t. It’s too big.

But Yoda, of course, was ready with a lesson (almost like it was written to happen this way…)

Yoda: Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.

Luke: You want the impossible. 

Yoda turned then to lift the large ship out of the muck and set it down quietly on the shore a bit farther away from the waters. 

Luke: I don’t… I don’t believe it!

Yoda: That is why you fail!

Okay.. I thank you for your patience in letting me share all of this.

Why do we fall into a pattern of excuse making in failure? Because we do not believe: In ourselves, in others, in our shared humanity. 

Notice I say “we fall…” Failure and fall actually derive from the same word. To fail is to fall. I might advise you: When you give up belief in yourself or in others, you enter into a free-fall. 

Here at Northeast as well as at colleges and universities around the country, you are surrounded by folks who want you to succeed. They work alongside you to be sure you are ready. By being committed to your education—and becoming a member of Phi Theta Kappa demonstrates that level of commitment—you are laying out a path on which you will succeed beyond the ivy-covered walls of the academy. 

But more importantly it keeps you in contact with your fellows who have also joined Phi Theta Kappa—it is a community that can remind you to believe in yourself, to believe that you have the capacity to put your knowledge/skills to work. What you have been doing all these years of being in school is not just preparing for a job but preparing to face failure without giving up hope. That is, you have been learning how to take your successes here at this small college and use those as a basis for future achievements. 

If I may paraphrase old Yoda: Beings of enlightened belief are we, not this crude materialism. That ideology of successfulism that equates a good life with financial success. We are all of us journeying together; on the way to our individual fulfillment, we fulfill the greatest work of humankind: true liberty through community. Indeed—and through our deedsd–a great work. 

In fact, our burden is that we are free to make of life what we will. And freedom while a great gift is a very great burden. That word “freedom” is ironic. The etymological sense surprises many: Doomed to be free. We literally are doomed to be free. 

There I go with all that optimistic language. LOL

But let me get playful with that knowledge because we can go further, deeper. The word FREE itself derives from the word FRANK and that same word give us the term FRIEND. In a sense, we can say that our burden in life is that we are duty bound as humans to make good friends. And in making good friends, to be good to them because the good friends we make will be frank with us and expect us to be frank with them. Thus, the doom—or if you will “duty”—of enlightened belief is to be open to how frank friendship keeps us as free as we can be in any circumstance. 

Many will and probably have already told you that getting ahead in life is about who you know. But this goes beyond just people with the power to hire you or others with the power to fund your innovative idea. It situates each of us fundamentally. Your success, your ability to move forward in your life by your achievements, is grounded in those who befriend you. And this is because the frank friend believes in you to the point of loving you. 

And what is love if there is no belief in the beloved? And what is life without those beloved who believe in each other?

So, I can paraphrase Yoda further: You must feel the LOVE around you; here, between you, me, the tables, the walls, everywhere, yes. Even between failure and success. 

So I ask—playing around with some pop music—

• What’s love got to do with it? Everything! 
• Can you feel the love tonight? Everywhere!
• Do you believe in life without Love? I really pray not!

If we are talking about success as achieving a milestone or if we are meaning success as a great outcome to an endeavor, we are talking about living in a way that we move onward through love by belief. 

Your work at TCC has given you skills. It has instilled into you a set of knowledge. It now offers you this community of Phi Theta Kappa as a place of both individual and community betterment. Soon enough, you will go on to a university or maybe into a new career. Yet this place abides as part of your family journey, an extension of those who helped to bring you to adulthood and now watch proudly as you succeed here at Northeast. 

I am really proud to be a part of that free, friendly community that often stops to speak frankly about how things are and where things may be going. 

Take pride in this day because it is the very essence of improving yourself. To improve does not originally mean to make yourself or even things function faster or more conveniently. To improve literally means TO PUT YOUR PRIDE INTO IT. Of course, there is that ugly pride the Greeks called HUBRIS and the Romans VANITAS. That is, Vanity. This is not what we mean when we say, to take pride in your work or your endeavors or even yourself. That overweening vanity blinds you to your natural limits. It allows you to succeed at the cost of harming others and, in the end, your own self. 

Rather, the pride that parents and teachers have worked to instill in you is the self-awareness to give your all once you decide you are going to do something. 

You should be very proud to be inducted into Phi Theta Kappa—and those who are already members, don’t lose your pride either! This is an event that demonstrates to others a measure of how hard you have worked and therefore received the recognition due to you. 

And now… this is where I remind you that success and failure need each other. Only a profound commitment to keep going allows you to learn from failure on the way to success and warns you neither to wallow in your failure nor to rest on your success. 

As you go forward, you will continue to improve. But self-improvement will also need you to learn how to improvise. You might think two words like IMPROVE and IMPROVISE must derive from the same notions. but that would not be correct. 

As I said before, to IMPROVE is to PUT PRIDE INTO your action. 

To IMPROVISE actually means TO NOT SEE WHERE YOU ARE GOING!

This is why belief is so crucial. You have some sense of where you may be after this is over tonight. Where you may go next semester. Even where you will be in a few years. 

But you never really know where you are going. There is no objective future that will be just like the past. There is no subjective position you take that will not need to be amended in some way at some time. 

Taking on your ability to improve and practicing the power to improvise does not make your plans work without failure. Rather, it gives you the ability to successfully learn from your failures even when you are not totally certain about where you are going to end up. 

And this is why I encourage all of those who study with me to never stop learning from philosophy. My definition of philosophzing is THE WILLINGNESS TO BE UNCERTAIN AND THE WILL TO QUESTION. 

Because the future is open—ALWAYS MOVING THE FUTURE IS—you must be open now, tomorrow, and through life. In openness alongside friends, you can handle the uncertain and not choose to turn away for a false sense of security. Because you question from your uncertainty, you can discover opportunities that would be closed up and hidden in any kind of false security. 

And this is why, in finishing up, I want you to take your induction into PTK as jumping off point to practice improvising: Be a full, free project. A project rather than a product or a brand. A project that aims to the unknown and takes that leap of faith that is belief in your own self, belief in your fellows, and belief in this wonderful world with all of its beauty and ugliness. 

To fail means to fall. You have known this since you first tried to sit up in your crib and kept falling back until you didn’t. And then when you went to pull yourself up, but kept falling back until you didn’t. And then when you stood to walk, but kept falling over until you didn’t. You have been learning how success comes from failure since you started on this human journey. Success is awareness that you have gotten closer to that which you desire. That is where the term comes from: To move up, to get closer, to find how this moment yields something new… and begins the next stage of the journey. 

Surely some of us are tired. As I get older, as my spouse gets older, we are often very tired. Very exhausted. It can be overwhelming. But what helps us—how we frankly help each other as friends find freedom—is reminding ourselves that our failures have made us strong even as our successes—sometimes few and far between—give us something in which to believe: A way to hope, a path for continuing in the loving struggle of life. 

We are all singularly tired… but together, we have enough energy to get up when we fall and to keep up with each other as we succeed. I have failed so often in life, it is a blessing to be in community that shows loving support. Thank you all so much for inviting me to give this talk tonight and for you giving to me your precious attention.