The Art of Failing Boldly
How a Defiant Failure Formed my Life
Growing up, I moved a lot, not to new neighborhoods but new continents. A couple of these moves occurred overnight. I wrote about my sixth-grade move from German “Gymnasium”—an upper secondary school—to a U.S. elementary school. I came home on a snowy day with plans to go sledding with my friends to learn we were moving to Los Angeles the next day.* The other move occurred three and a half years later just as I was starting high school. I spent the first three days of high school in a new private school in North Hollywood where I didn’t know anyone. My mom sent me there to get away from bullies at the public junior high school. After three days, I met a couple of friends to ease the lunch anxiety, and I began to settle in. But then another disrupter jolted me, an abrupt move back to Germany. My dad had remained in Germany for the three years we were in California, except for occasional visits. Now it was time to join him again. It was there that I made a deliberate decision to fail.
I was sent ahead of my mom to a strict Mennonite missionary boarding school in Loerrach, Germany on the three-country corner of Germany, Switzerland, and France. My dad picked me up at the Frankfurt airport and deposited me at the school, another place where I knew nobody for the fourth time in three years. Soon I found out I didn’t want to know the people there, except for a few other misfits. I felt alienated, and the commute was monotonous. Every day we rode from the French apartment where the dorm was through the Swiss border and into Germany where the school of about 50 kids was located—elementary through high school. The border guards waved us by, smiling at the minibus of expatriate kids. From the outside looking in, we seemed like sophisticated globe-trotters, but we were all children away from home in three strange lands.
On my first night at the dorm, the house mother, Velma, a severe Mennonite missionary from Morocco, apprised me as a rebel with unacceptable clothes. She was right about my being a rebel, but wrong about the clothes. She dressed in light cotton belted dresses with abundant pleats descending to the calf, like a prairie woman from a bygone era. Meanwhile, the world of fashion embraced sculpted hip-huggers and mini-skirts with go-go boots, and I embraced fashion. My colorful hip-hugger jeans, sewn in at the crotch to wear low with a hefty Mexican leather belt, offended her sensibilities. I especially loved my purple jeans. On my first day there, she took out the seams with efficient disdain, and the contrast between the faded and unfaded parts made it look like I peed in my pants. I shed inconsolable tears alone in my room that first night. I felt lonely and angry. Subsequent nights ended the same way.
Strict rules, regimented schedules, and a pervasive joylessness ran through the days, weeks, and months there. A highlight of the week was the delicious Sunday bread pudding made from humble French breadcrumbs that we meticulously saved throughout the week. Talk about being frugal! Nevertheless, the bread pudding was a French culinary delight, but it didn’t keep away the hunger for a different kind of life.
On one occasion, I was overcome with a laughing fit during a prayer meeting, the type that gets worse when you try to stifle it. My punishment was writing a Bible verse about obeying one’s elders over and over. As I watched my pen mimic these words in detached repetition, a bitter resolve to be done with that school at the semester break seared itself into my heart. I made a choice to flunk out of that school. My grades dipping precipitously, I reached my low aspiration by Christmas. I was elated to be released from that prison! But what about my high school transcript? Thankfully, the entire semester was expunged from my record, a small victory in the quest to find my voice.
After the bumpy start of high school, another disrupter smacked me, another new school, community, and set of challenges, but this time I had some say, some control. The only option left for an American education—I was now too far into the American system to return to the German one, and I preferred it—was to attend a DOD school near Bonn, the capital of Germany at the time. An extended commute of three to four hours a day was a part of the new arrangement, but it was better than the boarding school. I agreed to it with mixed feelings.
At Bonn American High School, the kids were smart and urbane, diplomat kids from all over the world who spoke two or three languages. I spent time with an Israeli friend who lived behind a gate secured by her own guards. I interacted with an Ethiopian boy who aspired to be a leader in his country. There was a boy who aced tests without studying and a girl, whose dad worked for the CIA. Lee Ann and Wendy became close friends, and I often spent the weekend at Wendy’s house in Plittersdorf, the American “Siedlung,” a neighborhood of homes for American diplomats and officials provided by the U.S. government. This was my reprieve from the drudgery of the long commute.
BAHS opened my world and unlocked a desire to learn, which lay dormant in six years of severe German education and three years of American education in four schools. Energized by the new environment, I started to invest in my own learning, and I loved it! My learning gaps were wide—and embarrassing—like the time I didn’t know the answer to, “Who sailed the ocean blue in 1492?” This was not something taught in German schools. Avoiding shame had a way of motivating me to play catch up. I became especially interested in English taught by my favorite teacher, Mrs. Geyer. I started to write again, which I had dropped after the first abrupt move to the U.S. That school closed after the German government moved to Berlin, but its influence continued in my life until this day decades later. BAHS birthed my life-long love for learning.
Failure is not final. In fact, it is often a gateway to something better. Failure is one of the most effective teachers because it unearths latent desires, clarifies priorities, and holds out new dreams. If we refuse to take risks and fail, we stunt our growth as individuals. Most disrupters eventually end, and we’re left with ourselves and the question of who we will become. What will we do with our failures? Will we fall forward or back?
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*https://lifeafterwhy.com/blog/harness-the-potential-of-disrupters