Failure Is Always an Option
Diana Nyad is a marathon swimmer known for amazing feats achieved in her youth that include swimming the 28 miles around Manhattan and the 102 miles from the Bahamas to Florida. While still in her twenties, she attempted to swim from Cuba to Florida, which she did not complete.
Her accomplishments are astonishing. Imagine swimming for eight hours and eleven minutes as she did when swimming around Manhattan. That’s hard enough. Now try to picture swimming for 27 and a half hours as she did to complete the Bahamas to Florida swim. It’s almost unfathomable (sea pun).
Beyond her accomplishments, though, what Nyad did so well was fail.
She failed to finish that first swim from Cuba to Florida when she was 28. At 60, she decided to try again, but the swim was canceled due to weather. She had to postpone a year and attempted the swim at age 61. She failed. So she tried again. She failed. She tried four times and failed every time. Various factors were involved: shoulder pain, asthma, currents, weather, and jellyfish stings.
So much was out of her control that failure was always more likely than success.
The goal was to swim unassisted, which means that Nyad could stop to tread water or float but never touch the side of the boat accompanying her or be touched by any of the crew.
But it is a dangerous goal, impossible to do alone, so each swim involved a team to support her, including, among others, her best friend who served as a coach, a navigator, a medic, and a crew who used specialized equipment to protect her from sharks since she swam without a cage.
Her failure was the failure of the entire crew, who were risking their own well-being and financial welfare on her behalf.
Every attempt was a public failure. The swim was newsworthy. The failures were reported on the news.
She persevered anyway.
Nyad has written her own account of her eventual success, which happened in late summer 2013. The swim took 53 hours. To mark the tenth anniversary of the swim, Netflix released a film chronicling her adventure from when she conceives of the idea until she at last succeeds.
I watched the film Nyad last night on an auspicious occasion. Nyad first attempted the swim at 28, and it was 28 years since the day I got married. She succeeded in 2013, the year I was divorced. There was no 28th anniversary. In other words, my marriage failed.
I’ve been thinking too much about failure of late. Someone I care about is needing to pass a major exam and is struggling with the fear of failure. I’ve been worrying about my own failure as I write a second book. My first is a success in so far as it was published, but it didn’t sell well. Will this new book even find a publisher? If published, will anyone read it? Am I wasting hours upon hours of my life to write a book that never meets the public?
I’m a writing teacher, so I know better. I’m not following the advice that I’ve given to my students repeatedly over decades of teaching. I’m not taking to heart the advice given by writers I admire such as Ann Patchett and David Sedaris who say just write. You write for the sake of writing. Thinking about all the rest only makes the writing unpleasant, if not impossible.
Diana Nyad succeeded because she was willing to fail. To succeed, we must risk failure. Success and failure are inseparable.
In an odd way, swimming figured into my divorce, and as I contemplated my failure to reach my 28th anniversary while watching this incredible woman fail and fail until she succeeded, I felt gratitude that I had failed at marriage. I’m glad I took the risk because I have a wonderful daughter. I’m glad that I knew when to quit because to leave — to fail — was to succeed in my situation.
After I dried my tears from watching Nyad, I texted the friend who recommended it. She responded that the movie made her want to be strong. I replied “same.”
Now that I’ve thought about it some more, I want to revise my response.
I want to feel strong enough to embrace failure.
