Fail

It’s a new buzz word. Fail, or Epic Fail. I hate it. We’ve created expectations of constant precision. They do not allow for the rawness of creation. The ugly, the malformed, the inappropriate; these are the material of innovation.

Slicing away all that is imperfect will leave only sterility. Fascism begins in the heart with the rejection of our own humanity, our vulnerability and our resourcefulness.

We must make a space to nurture the new and tender. We must push back against the urge to prematurely require exactitude, replication and rigor. This civilization is smothered by industry. It is crucial that we respect the genius of the imperfect.

There are no straight lines in our bodies, and no straight lines in nature. What we think of as perfect- the linear, the planar, the Platonic solids- is not life, but rather death.

Life is messy. When we “fail” ourselves, we are projecting our insecurities onto our creations. Epics are adventures, and adventures contain challenges, moments of fear when the unknown takes center stage. To lose touch with our adventure is to waste our greatest asset.