The Joy of Failure

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or, what's a heaven for?

Last night, a friend and I watched Dolemite is My Name, a movie about making a movie, Dolemite.  Afterwards we stood outside and smoked a cigarette and my friend wondered where the planets that are in alignment with the moon were.  He's kinda woo-woo and into astrology.  I pointed to the ground to the southwest and said they were set.  'How could I know that?' he asked, and took out his phone to check with an app.  I said that the moon is new, and therefore close to the sun, which had set about five hours earlier, and since it's winter it would be towards the south and not just the west.  We talked whether Venus was on this side of the sun or the far side.  (It's the far side, and I used an app for that.)  He wondered how I could know that.  I recounted the tale of my adventures as an amateur astronomer when I was in high school, of the telescopes I built and used, back in the dark ages when there were no apps for anything.  He was impressed and said that I could have been something, a reference to the theme of the movie about achievement being possible for those who really work for achievements.  I said that I had never wanted to be something, but to know something,

That statement is not completely true.  Like Dante , 'In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.'  For an unfortunately long number of years after high school I tried to be a average American husband/citizen.  Wife.  Kids. Dogs. Cars.  As Zorba would say, 'the whole catastrophe.'  Oddly, perhaps, one of the most satisfying things of that period of my life was a Jeep Wagoneer.  In McLuhan's terms, this was an exceedingly powerful extension of myself, a strong carapace.  But, alas, it was a dominatrix, costing more than I could really afford and being quite unreliable.

But, in my forty-first year, I returned to the path of an aimless wanderer seeking data.  I again made discovering facts and ideas the main occupation of my life rather than seeking 'success."

Of course, I had accumulated a lot of facts and ideas even while I was in servitude to the American dream.  There's data everywhere.  One odd piece of anecdotal data is that when my wife and I broke up, several people expressed their dismay because they thought that we were the happiest couple they knew.  I'm not sure if that meant that we were very good actors or that a lot of other people were miserable in their journeys.

It would take a few more years before I stopped feeling vaguely guilty about not being some thing and comfortable with wanting to understand things.  I supported my habits with a number of quite assorted jobs because that let me know a lot of assorted people whom I would never have met if I had stayed glued to the oculus of a telescope.  (Although now astronomers mostly look at screens much like the one I'm using to look at my 'writing' now.)

I didn't really figure out what I keep trying to do until about six years ago when I had dinner in Fayetteville with a friend from high school whom I had hardly seen since graduation.  He is very successful in his craft, has plenty of work which he enjoys, and has also made several millions of dollars along the way.  He mentioned another of our class mates whom I had found somewhat loathsome, who was now the second richest man in Arkansas.  I felt rather sorry for him.  He still has wretched taste in cigars, and he was only the second richest man.  My dinner friend , who recognized that I had not made any millions but was too polite to mention it even though he insisted on paying the bill, saying he could put it on his expense account, had a question for me.  What did I want my legacy to be.  That has proved to be a very helpful question.  I told him that I didn't particularly want to have a legacy, that in the long view of history most of what we consider are great events and great people are just blips.

But, I have thought about that question a lot, because I realize that I am on a quest that cannot be successful:  I want to understand how things work.  (At the time my friend and I had dinner, I had gone to the University of Arkansas thinking I would learn about quantum physics. Ha. Cue Dick Feynman.) Who knows:  someday human beings may understand how things work, but I certainly don't expect to live that long.  But in the meantime, I am enjoying watching the process.

I am not, however, often impressed by men who leave big legacies.  The cell phone almost certainly have been developed even if Tony Nadell had not nudged Steve Jobs to push Apple in that direction.  The theory of relativity was just waiting for someone like Albert Einstein to connect the dots left by many others whose names and equations are not famous.  And slavery in the United States would almost certainly have ended without Abraham Lincoln allowing the war that killed 620,00 people, a few of whom are buried under the snow on a hill overlooking Fayetteville in the Confederate cemetery.  (There are many more folks buried in the US cemetery, but it isn't nearly so picturesque and doesn't encourage reverie and reflection.)

Now another winter is beginning.  It is certainly far past the middle of the journey of our life.  And by the standards of becoming famous like Dolemite or making astronomical discoveries like Virginia Trimble, someone else who looked into the skies as a kid, I suppose I am a failure.

But, I am insofar as I can figure it out, living my own life.  I don't want to be rich; I have enough money even though perhaps if I were to do my life again I would have realized that I might live a long time and gather up enough gold to live in New York where I could go to the MoMA and the Guggenheim.   But even if I dd, most of my time would be spent the same way it is now in the other corner of the country.  I don't care about being famous. I just want to follow the devices and desires of my own heart, realizing that that will as often as not lead to disappointment and failure as to joy.  But why settle for being the second richest man in Babylon when I can reach for the heavens.

But I do think that I might now wish to have a legacy.  It would be to encourage any kid I meet, whatever age, to live his or her own life and avoid distractions.  Even if that kid is someone I rather loathe and who wants to be the richest man in Babylon.  It's his own life, too.