July 15, 2016
Andy Murray
Source: Bigstock
Or take Richard Nixon. After eight years as Eisenhower’s vice president, he lost the 1960 presidential election narrowly to Jack Kennedy. Two years later he failed in a bid to be elected governor of California. In a resentful press conference he told journalists they wouldn”t have him to kick around anymore. Most people thought that was the end of Nixon. Some rejoiced. But Nixon, whatever his other failings, had grit. He won the Republican nomination again and was elected president in 1968 and again in 1972. In most respects he was a better president than his enemies allowed. The man who had made his reputation as a scourge of Communism”a “Red-baiter””went to China and ended China’s isolation. Watergate brought his presidency to an end; Nixon was now disgraced. Yet he didn”t disappear. He continued to work, read, and write. In his last years he repaired his reputation as an authority on international affairs, consulted by other world leaders. Like him or loathe him, you have to admit that the old Nixon, bruised and battered by failure, was a wiser man than the strident Cold Warrior he had been in his youth.
Failure and success are blood brothers, or two sides of the same coin. Kipling knew that. Lines from his poem “If” are inscribed above the main gate at Wimbledon: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same…” Indeed, success may itself be a sort of failure. Every artist or writer knows this. The painting or novel is never as good as what you had in mind. But you can improve only if you recognize and admit your failure. So try again, fail better next time.
The compelling drama of sport is all about success and failure. High aspiration risks failure, but without such aspiration, you condemn yourself to mediocrity, which may be comfortable but means you lose the ability to improve, and so condemn yourself also to be less than you might have been. It is the recognition of failure that can breed determination and so prepare one for success.
Take Andy Murray again. His supporters and admirers sometimes say he has been unlucky to belong to the same generation of tennis players as Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, and Novak Djokovic. It’s tempting, indeed easy, to agree with this. If they hadn”t been about, he would surely have won more of the Slam titles. He might now be celebrating his fifth or sixth Wimbledon title rather than his second. But I”m pretty sure Murray wouldn”t agree, even if he may very naturally wish to have more titles to his name. I think his response would be very different. He would say that trying to meet the challenge laid down by Roger, Rafa, and Novak has made him a much better competitor than he would otherwise have been. Failure has helped him grow as a tennis player. I would guess that, though he wouldn”t say this himself, it has also helped him grow as a man. And I”m certain this is equally true of Stan Wawrinka, the man who takes to the court with Samuel Beckett’s words tattooed on his arm. Fail again. Fail better. But keep going and learn from failure. Then you may even succeed.
