At year's end, Jonathan Simon, a senior in my class, gave a talk about personal fitness. In that talk, he kept using this term "work to fail" in relation to lifting weights. The idea is one fairly simple and familiar to us all: you lift until you can't any more if you want to get stronger.
It's a challenging notion: failure as the goal. But his point is: that's where your boundary is, your limit; that's what you must aim at if you are to surpass yourself.
The other day I was reading David Perkins' book Making Learning Whole, which I liked very much and recommend. One of his principles of learning echoes Jonathan's lesson about failure. Perkins says we must "work on the hard parts," the ones we would rather avoid becuase they are not fun or easy.
If we do not work on the hard parts, if we do not embrace failure (in order to transcend it), we can only remain where we are. For me, tonight, the "hard part" is figuring out which of the many different "hard parts" I should choose to work on this year.
It is a vague response, but I think the one I need to focus on is managing myself better, not just in terms of time and logistics but more in terms of energy and emotions, attention and priorities.
Here's to the new year which is coming quickly. Wisdom and courage to us all!
