Being Dopey led me to more failures in life
So why am I confessing this litany of failures? Why open up old wounds
I HAVE a long history of failure, starting with missing out on the coveted lead role in my Grade One production of Snow White and
The Seven Dwarfs.
I was desperate to play Snow White – desperate – and spent a great deal of my time leading up to auditions singing loudly whenever Miss Smithers, the music teacher, passed by, so as to show off my range.
Sadly, despite my pitch-perfect rendition of Row Row Row Your Boat, I did not get the role of Snow White, no I did not; what I did get was the role of Dopey, Snow White’s smallest and stupidest dwarf. It was a blow, but more were to come.
Let’s see; all throughout primary school, with the pattern repeated in high school, a breathtaking lack of sporting ability and co-ordination meant that I was also not chosen for any of the various netball/ softball/tennis/swimming/ athletics/elastics teams I tried out for, and spent most sports days providing water for those who did.
I was not a roaring success in matters of the heart either, and while I did ultimately get my happy-ever-after ending, the truth is I was dumped more times than I care to remember.
The main problem, as far as I can tell when I go through the index cards of boyfriends who “let me go” as one of them sadly put it (as if I was a much-loved employee at his firm) was that I was “too nice”, “more like a sister”, or “too much of a good friend”.
Also, that it was “not you, it’s me” – which was, of course, a blatant lie because of course it was me, as no one else, as far as I could tell, was being “let go of” outside Hungry Jacks.
Career wise, I’ve had some great, big, heart-cleaving blows.
I’ve missed out on jobs I really wanted and, in some cases, clearly deserved. Not all, but some, and that – as anyone this has happened to knows – really, really smarts.
So why am I confessing this litany of failures? Why open up old wounds, and leave myself open to readers saying to each other across the breakfast table: “Who knew Frances Whiting was such a loser?”
I’ll tell you why. Because I am a loser. And chances are so are you. We all are, at one time or another.
Nobody wins all the time. Nobody. There’s a reader I’m writing this to specifically, someone who contacted me recently, upset at a recent failure or, as they put it “a complete fiasco”. They had never, as they also put it, “made it”, not in the way they thought they might. Too many knockbacks, bad choices, roads not taken or just plain bad luck. “Not like you” they wrote to me. So I’m writing back to say: “Exactly like me”.
Because I have lost. And I have won. That’s life. Sometimes we stride all the way to the front, and sometimes we stumble. I was walking with my friend Trish and she said something that stuck with me about her own recent setback.
She’d failed, she said, but she intended to keep going. “Fail forward”, she said.
Fail forward. Don’t fail backwards. Don’t let it topple you. Fail forward, people, fail forward. And onward and upward as we go.