By avoiding failure we avoid success

As young people all over the country wait for their Leaving Cert results on Wednesday, Stefanie Preissner has a message for them — the outcome will not define you

If I erase failure from my narrative, I give you an unrealistic version of me. If I give you an unrealistic version of me, then I make it impossible to be real with you. If I make it impossible for myself to be real, then I end up living a lie. Lies are unsustainable, and I will fail to keep the mask of perfection on, and so on and on we go, ardently courting unhappiness.

I was introduced to a group of young people to whom I was giving a talk. This is Stefanie Preissner:

“At 29, writer and actor Stefanie Preissner is blazing a trail as one of the most influential voices of her generation. Her six-part comedy-drama series Can’t Cope/Won’t Cope hit RTE 2 screens in September 2016 and heralded a new era in Irish TV with its sharp observations on youth culture. It has been bought for broadcast by BBC Three and recommissioned by RTE for a second series — due to air early 2018.

“Her one-woman theatre show, Solpadine is My Boyfriend, enjoyed sell-out runs in Dublin before touring internationally to Bucharest, Edinburgh and Australia and — as a radio play — it became RTE’s most downloaded podcast.

“Alongside her career as a screenwriter and playwright, she has been nominated for several awards as an actor. Stefanie graduated from University College Cork with a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies and Spanish. Her work has also been explored in a chapter of Radical Contemporary Theatre Practices by Women in Ireland (Carysfort Press, 2015).

“With support from the Irish Film Board, Stefanie’s next project is a screenplay in development with Parallel Films (Brooklyn, The

Clinic, Intermission). She is also developing a TV pilot with Channel 4 and has recently had a series of short documentaries on the RTE player, called How to Adult.

“Stefanie has also written a book called Why Can’t Everything Just Stay the Same (And Other Things I Shout When I Can’t Cope). It is out this October.”

Seeing that the young people were getting either bored or intimidated, she rushed through most of the introduction. You could catch some of words, the ones she hit for emphasis, like a flat stone skimming the water. Of course they were bored. No one cares about your achievements as much as you do and, frankly, listing them one after the other is the same as that child who lists all the things she got for her birthday.

Notions

I stood at the side of the stage marinating in my own embarrassment and feeling increasingly anxious about the pedestal being erected in front of these young people, which I’d have to climb up. I could feel each of the ‘notions’ being thrown at me as she listed the titles of things I had written and prayed they wouldn’t stick like limpets.

She was giving such a false impression of my life. It was like the heavily filtered photoshopped version of my life that I was being tagged in, so when I got on stage in real life I felt utterly inadequate to myself. You know when you go abroad and you buy a knock-off Gucci bag? Then you bring it back and someone compliments it and you don’t tell them it’s fake. You know that feeling? When you know it’s fake and they don’t, and you feel like a dirty, disingenuous pirate? That’s how I felt in front of those young people.

I wanted to correct her. But I didn’t. I wanted to get up and say, “That was a fine introduction but let me tell you my own biog”.

This is what I would have said. This is the unfiltered, 100pc real, no-notions, straight-up introduction to me:

“At 29, Stefanie Preissner is still afraid to answer the front door if she doesn’t know who is there. She will often go out of her way to avoid having to talk to strangers. She doesn’t know how to punctuate her sentences and is still unsure if it’s ‘independent’ or ‘independant’.

“She doesn’t know how to tell if a watermelon is ripe and has wasted more money on under-ripe ones than she cares to admit.

She is uncompromising and quite a control freak and never meets people in groups of more than two for more than an hour. She has written several scripts which have never been published, performed or produced including: I’m Fianna Failing for You; The Junction; Cape Clear; What

Does the F Stand For and The Hedgehogs Dilemma. Some of these were terrible.

“She doesn’t know how to iron. She’s needy and has a propensity to manipulate. She is bad at lubricating social situations with politeness and often offends people with how blunt she is.

“She failed to get into several of the world’s most prestigious drama schools including Rada, Lamda and East 15. She was accepted to Central Saint Martins and Guildhall, but was too afraid to move to London. “She has poor circulation and is always cold. “She has penalty points for speeding. She has auditioned for several acting roles in television, film, and voiceovers and not heard anything back. At all.

“Her hit TV show failed to get through two funding rounds before finally being accepted on it’s third attempt. It has been nominated for, but not won, an award.

“She is a slow reader and gets her friend to read a book first and give her CliffsNotes. She desperately wanted to get an A1 in Leaving Cert English but got a B1. She is intimidated by people who appear more intelligent than her.

“She has had people ask her to stop texting them. She has been ghosted. She has been heartbroken.

“Among other failures, Stefanie has eaten a whole sliced pan because she was sad; worn pyjamas outdoors, and bought a Nickleback album.

“She paid someone a deposit for an apartment via money transfer and found out too late that it was a scam. “She has missed a flight from Dublin to London.” I do believe that unfiltered biography of me makes me infinitely more ‘real’ than the one that is normally used to introduce me. I would love to hear the unfiltered biographies of some of my heroes. If you read between the lines of peoples successes that’s when you can see what makes them great. There’s nothing impressive about skipping through life from one gentle, cushy success to the next. Greatness can only occur when people take risks.

Discoveries are made, gadgets are invented, great dialogue and literature are written only when people are on the edge of failure. If we stop people moving toward failure because they are afraid it will destroy them, ruin their relationships, change the perception of them in the public, unravel their futures then we are stopping progress. By avoiding failure, we are avoiding success. We all just live on a rock floating in the sky Months and years go by and then you die. Tick tock. We’ve forgotten what it was like when life was breezy When we were younger and it was easy peasy. Remember that you’ve forgotten Try to remember dreams you dreamt on Egyptian cotton. Remember when life was just make-believe We turned sticks into bows and arrows and shot them at trees. There was a lit flame inside that burned small and hot and Stayed lighting while you told people what you wanted to be when you were a grown-up. Own up. You have forgotten. You’ve forgotten that a milk carton used to be a boat And how long it took to learn that paper doesn’t float. There was a little flame inside that got a little bigger When you played dress-up — just a tiny flicker Of a bigger flame When you called yourself ‘superman’ instead of your name Because you had hope. Remember the first girl you kissed. The first boy you missed When he didn’t come to school. How you were too cool To ask about him, so you just waited, Before mobile phones, you debated Asking his sister when he’d be back, but you backed out. Remember you’ve forgotten how you adored him. But how you ignored him when he did finally come back. ‘Were you gone? Didn’t notice.’ Know this, you’ve forgotten. You’ve forgotten how the flame got bigger, You mistook that for stronger and maybe you didn’t protect it. Maybe you rejected it Because bigger means more light And more light means more dark if the light goes away. One day. It may. Remember that you’ve forgotten. Sitting around on pillows telling ghost stories, Kings and queens of the school yards afraid of nothing. Except ghosts. Becoming ghosts in hallways that you no longer walk. Into a bigger school with older girls, you were afraid to talk. The flame is smaller now because there’s too much light. Too many older kids all trying to do it right. And the stakes are too high to get things wrong, Because it’ll be way too dark if you get it wrong. Remember you’ve forgotten. You’ve forgotten the day you sat on your bed, A poster of the rough one from Boyzone behind your head. How you wrote in your diary, scribbled it down, That you wanted to be the Garda Commissioner but you felt like a clown Because if anyone knew, they’d laugh, you couldn’t handle it, So you just exhaled at length to stop the candle being lit. Remember times gone by when you wanted to be a grown-up Own up, you’d give anything to go back. Before fizzy cans of drink turned to alcohol in bars Before free bicycles from Santa became overpriced cars Before kisses in the playground turned to expectations of sex And how you’d still get invited to the birthday party of your ex Before you realised that Dad’s shoulders aren’t actually that high Before you realised Mum was wrong for the first time. Remember when race issues were about who ran faster And war was just a card game, before you knew the meaning of disaster When the most pain you felt was when you cut your knee And a plaster and a kiss made it disappear for real Remember you’ve forgotten that sadness didn’t always turn to sorrow That goodbyes used to mean, see you tomorrow. So remember now. We’ve gotten this far and it’s no mean feat. Because it means not once did we admit total defeat. Somehow we stayed going Somehow we carried on. I’m six foot tall, for now, That’s twelve foot higher than where I’ll finally rest Having done my best to make a mark So embark on a path full of branches and brambles Ramble around knowing that you’re forging your own way Don’t wait for a guide, or a Sherpa to point and say, this way. Remember what you’ve forgotten. Remember the first kiss, first dance, near miss, last chance, he said, she said, but before you’re dead remember what you said. What you wanted when all around you shouted their counter arguments. Remember the point, like it’s something you can get and get to And not do what’s easiest for those around you. Remember to remember That there may still be an ember, a tiny little burning thing Waiting for a spark of hope to light the fire Of dreams and desires you’ve forgotten. Remember where it was you wanted to go Keep trying to get there, hail rain or snow You’re not a failure because it’s not going to plan And you won’t find happiness in a white sliced pan

Mistake

I would love to live in a country or, better yet, a world where people in power roles — politicians, leaders of state, captains of industry — are allowed to say: “I made a mistake”. This is the first step towards them being able to say: “I don’t know the answer”. At the moment, we are so unforgiving of the weaknesses of people in power that we force them to lie to us. We force them to pretend like they have it all under control when, actually, if they we allowed to admit they were only human and needed some help to find solutions, maybe we would all be better off.

I am afraid of failing. I’m afraid I’ll never be the best. I’m afraid I was a one-hit wonder. I am afraid that my career is going to end abruptly with one slip-up. The reaction I get to a typo in a tweet leads me to believe that I could lose it all in a second. I don’t want to live like that any more. Let me keep failure as a pitstop I may or may not make on the road to success.

If I judge failure harshly in others and condemn them for their imperfections, then I have to reconcile the same reaction when I fail. So I’m going to go a little bit easier on people in the hope that if the time ever comes, people will go a bit easy on me.

If you happen to be waiting to open your Leaving Cert results on Wednesday, I won’t do that awful thing of trying to convince you it’s no big deal. I hate when people who are older than me undermine my current reality by telling me they lived through it. The Leaving Cert is the most stress and pressure you guys have ever had in your lives and I’ll give that the respect of my silence.

I hope for you all that you are happy with your results, and if not, that you know, at the very least, that you are not an exam result, the same way I am not a typo in a tweet.