The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery
Written and Narrated By: Sarah Lewis
Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
A bit of a hodgepodge but a decent enough primer on how to look at… oops… FAILURE…
But author Sarah Lewis does NOT call it failure.
Rather, let’s call FAILURES Unexpected Results.
Cuz really, if you aren’t failing at something, you’re not trying. P’raps one should attempt, saaaaay, starting a website for audiobook reviews? Try thinking that your over 2000 Followers on Audible are just gonna somehow know you’ve attempted such an endeavor and will simply stop their verrrry busy lives and will come out o’ the woodwork to find you.
Then…
CRICKETS…
But one carries on, does one not, plugging away each week, and instead of the deafening sound of crickets, one starts oh I dunno, finding an audience? One HAS to try!
I like how Sarah Lewis has compiled MOST of The Rise, as it’s chock-full of anecdotes, quotes, and interviews. I always find those compelling. Further, as a person who gets reeeeeally excited and then finds only confusion and CRICKETS whenst trying to learn new things? The idea of failure as Blankness was very appealing. M’ therapist is always getting me to Reframe things, and I did soooo like Blankness: What happens after an attempt is simply an empty space, a void waiting to be filled with more attempts that’ll have different Unexpected Results until one, dares one say it? finds a sense of achievement? But it’s more than that; it’s about each attempt bringing a sense of accomplishment, of motion, of a Rise.
Then too there are accounts of Near Misses bringing on further attempts at greatness. Miss First Place by being just a couple hundredths of a second behind? That gnawing Just Missed It makes a person strive hard, harder than if one got Third Place or the Bronze. At the Bronze level? Heck, you’re just happy to be on the podium. But juuuuust missing it? Oh how that aches! It makes a person strive to do better than what was their best. And Lewis delivers instances of athletes failing then going on to great success.
Then again, that Near Miss could cause a total reinvention of the Self. She asks Al Gore, and of all people, danged if that poor guy shouldn’t be well acquainted with the Near Miss! How does one technically win, then go on to watch someone else plunk themselves down in the Oval Office?
One goes on to become one of the greatest advocates and teachers the world has seen.
Dunno that I’d have the grace to do that, reinvent myself, if I was just eeeeeking out the Near Miss. But we have only two choices: Shrivel up and die, or look at it all as an Opportunity for Different but quite possibly Better. Lewis goes into success found through different paths such as Samuel Morse DESperately trying to be an artist of note, to take the art world by storm, and to suffer defeat after humiliating defeat. But then what does the poor guy go on to do? Reinvents communication via Morse code and the telegraph. Not bad.
She starts with the Women’s Archery Team from Columbia. She spends time with Angela Duckworth of Grit fame. She brings up Frederick Douglass. choreographer Paul Taylor (with his oh soooo humiliating debacles, poor thing, but then goes on to greatness!), and even the winner of the Nobel Prize who has an Ig Nobel Prize to his credit.
Now see, all this is wonderful and fairly inspiring. It’s just that it’s all over the place. It’s kinda sorta not structured that well, and there’s a lot of “poetic” hopping around with “poetic” writing as tho’ Lewis can’t decide whether she’s writing a scholarly treatise on Failure/Perseverance or is writing a lyrical Ode to those who pick themselves up after a stinging defeat and go on to kick some Righteous A**. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge, yes indeed.
Plus, I started wondering about some of the research out there that supposedly can predict resilience and excellence. That DRATTED Marshmallow Test is brought up, and instead of feeling all sheepish and embarrassed cuz I failed it as a kid, I started wondering about the research. I mean, if you’re raised with a sense of scarcity, you’d better BELIEVE you’re gonna scarf that first marshmallow cuz two in the future are NOT guaranteed. So whilst I was getting all miffed with that, I noticed that the vaaaast majority of the studies Lewis notes are done based on individuals who alREAdy show merit, are vying for a spot at West Point and such all.
So there’s that… My personal peeve, and I’ll shut up cuz a Soap Box SUDDENLY sprang up ‘neath m’ feet (Truly didn’t expect all that when I started the audiobook!).
ANYway, as an audiobook, it works pretty well. Lewis has a smooth speaking voice and in no way grates on the ears. She doesn’t come off as smug and all-knowing, is rather affable as a matter of fact. She appears to be open and warm when initiating conversations/starting interviews, and she appears to let conversations go where they might, not trying to shoehorn her preconceived notions in.
It’s just that the openness rather veers into stream of consciousness writing. Which can be vaaaaguely off-putting but is, at the very least, not tooooo terribly confusing. It’s just that here, working on Self-Development Week, I’ve been listening to reeeeeally well-structured treatises on topics/ideas.
Fairly good, made me feel better about my sometimes lame contributions and my whirligig approach to problems, goals. Whirligigging causes chaos and… Unexpected Results most of the time.
But, apPARrently, if I squint my eyes and look at things juuuuuust so? All that “failure” is actually:
Blankness, my joy!!!
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