"Come Prepared to Fail"

"Come prepared to fail." Certainly not the most encouraging words I'd usually expect to hear from a teacher, but turns out, they've actually been pretty positive after all. I started a pottery class last week. It's always been on my "must-do" list. But it's not a "do it once and be done with it" type of thing for me, I really desire to be efficient at throwing pottery. During my first class, my expectations of myself were darn high. So high it became paralyzing. It's not easy to get past the centering on the wheel stage and begin pulling when I'm frozen in the "it's gotta be perfect or life is horrible" mind thought... the result of that thinking: I sat for quite a few minutes at the wheel, with a perfectly centered mound of clay, that span beautifully, but was no work of art. It was certainly easier to acquiesce in the moment than to risk failure.

Then pottery teacher (as I call him) insisted I move to the next step. He looked me straight on and said, "You have to come prepared to fail if you're ever going to get a piece you like. You will have to ruin many pieces before you will create a masterpiece." There really are very few times in my life someone has encouraged me by telling me to fail. Such paradox. So yeah, I failed miserably my first night. My perfectly centered mound of clay pulled hesitantly the first pull, and crashed and burned the second pull. So then I tried again.

Going into class tonight, I reasoned with myself, as I often do, and convinced myself that I was prepared to fail and because of that preparation, I could try again and again. It would be a perfect analogy if I ended this story sharing how I threw a beautifully crafted pot. Truth is, my bowl is quite awkward looking. But she's mine. And I'm choosing to end this story by acknowledging that sometimes failing actually is succeeding.