I never lose. I either win or learn – Nelson Mandela

In an apposite article in Saturday’s Weekend FT, Janan Ganesh wrote about failure after watching Can You Ever Forgive Me? The film is based on the life of Lee Israel, who has seen a promising writing career dry up. She resorts to literary forgeries to enable her to make her rent payments. Failure, writes Ganesh, “is the natural order of life”. It left me wondering. First, is that true? Second, if it is, why are we so driven by the need to succeed?

All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure – Enoch Powell

Perhaps Powell did not need the qualifying word ‘political’. The Cambridge English Dictionary defines failure as ‘the fact of someone or something not succeeding’. So, it is the inverse of success. Is success important? Ganesh writes about marital failures, business failures, about books and films. I thought first about businesses. Take the example of a local retail business that runs out of cash flow. It closes. It has ‘failed’.

However, that same business has provided services and pleasure to its customers, possibly for many years. Were the efforts of its owners and employees really failures? In the years when its cash flows exceeded its cash costs, it was commercially successful, and it was a successful contributor to a community. After closure, would its former customers regard it as a failure, or nostalgically, as a success albeit for a limited duration?

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better – Samuel Beckett

Ganesh references marriages. I am fairly recently divorced. I think a good deal about whether my marriage was a failure. In my mind it has become rationalised as a successful 25 year union. It is a shame that it is not going to be a successful 30 or 50 year union, but it had ceased to make either me or my ex-wife happy. We thought it appropriate to end it. It produced three wonderful children and a series of delightful shared experiences, before no longer satisfying each of us. It did not mean it was a failure. At least, that is what I think. Despite Beckett I doubt I will try it again, though.

There is also the elusive time element of success and failure. There are many examples of artists whose success came late, in some cases after they had died. The image of the writer starving in some inhospitable garret comes to mind. My mind is drawn to the image of Chatterton, poet, forger and suicide, by Henry Wallis Stock. Does the longevity of a writer or poet’s work mean that they were successful, merely unrecognised in their lifetime, or does a squalid living existence mean they were failures? An alternative thought: Is every life a failure, punctuated by successes? Churchill, who endured many failures, may have thought so.

Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm – W S Churchill

A few years ago a long forgotten novel, Stoner, by John Williams, first published in 1965, suddenly became a bestseller after a recommendation by Ian McEwan in a radio programme. Its initial publication had sold fewer than 2000 copies. Failure? Julian Barnes loved it and wrote an article in The Guardian in 2013 describing it as ‘the must read novel’ of the year. It became Waterstones book of that year and is now (rightly, I think) regarded as one of the finest novels in the C20 US literary canon. It covers work, marriage and passions, and all of them are profoundly disappointing to the protagonist, William Stoner. It is achingly sad and I defy any reader not to be affected by it. In a way, it is a long hymn to the effect of failure(s) on a man’s life. At times the sadnesses mean it is a painful read, but a remarkable one. Now though, it is a publishing success.

In the film which Ganesh so enjoyed it catalysed the need to write his FT article, the supporting actor is brilliantly played by Richard E Grant. He is probably still best known for his role in the film, Withnail and I, even though he won an Oscar nomination for Can You Ever Forgive Me? Withnail and I is about two unemployed actors. It reeks failure. The film itself did poorly after its 1987 launch, but subsequently acquired a cult following. In the past decade it has regularly featured in surveys of ‘Best Ever British Films’. Was it a success? It would be regarded as one now, I think. A success dwelling on failure, in keeping with Williams’s novel.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail – Confucius

So, failure remains an elusive thing, although most people will tell you they want to avoid it. We worship success, but in many cases cannot identify what it is, either. Not every person measures things alike. Is not being successful, which requires a whole new set of definitions, automatically a failure? When I was going through the county schools cricket system, I played for Essex’s U15 team alongside the precociously talented Paul Prichard, who was a calendar year younger than the rest of our team. He single handedly won us a game at Middlesex with an outstanding unbeaten century. He turned professional in his mid-teens, and went on to captain the Essex first XI after a few more years. Paul never won a Test cap, though. In his teens, it was expected that he would scale the game’s heights. Was he a success? He was certainly a fine player.

If failure is the inverse of success, does the magnitude of failure reflect how close one is to being a success? In Mike Brearley’s excellent book ‘On Form’ he discusses the sporting phenomenon of ‘choking’. He writes elegantly about Jean van de Velde’s meltdown on the 72nd hole of an Open Championship he had all but won. Choking is contagious and seems to affect teams more than individuals, and Brearley writes about the remarkable inability of the South African cricket team to win the World Cup from positions of great strength in critical matches. Being an eminent psychoanalyst allows him to bring it into the personal sphere of non-sportsmen and he references the destructive way it can impact the most intimate of relationships. People seem to be predisposed to sabotage their own happiness, their prospective success. He, himself, is almost a perfect study. He is revered as England’s finest ever captain, but regarded by many as a batsman whose batsmanship did not merit a place in the team because he was not considered Test class.

In the same edition of the Weekend FT that offered Ganesh’s thought-provoking words, was an article by Murad Ahmed about footballing genius, Zinedine Zidane. The piece had the words “An Obsessive Winner” in the title. Zidane has just accepted the offer to return as head coach to Real Madrid. After enjoying unparalleled success in leading the club to three successive UCL titles, he left. The need and inability to replicate his success has cost two men their job in a matter of months. Now he is back. His success as a coach was to deliver something unprecedented. He is also one of the most decorated players of all time. Not only was he successful, he played with balletic poise and a remarkable vision that set him apart from the other twenty one on the pitch whenever he played. Or so it seemed. So if Real do not recover next season to reach another UCL final, or deny great rivals FC Barcelona another La Liga title in Spain, will he be deemed to have failed?

If the definition of success, especially sustained success, is so impossibly demanding, should we really aspire to be successful? Top performers demonstrate obsessive will. Federer’s tennis, Woods’s golf at his peak, top team coaches like Warren Gatland and dance’s prima ballerinas, the great opera voices, the outstanding jazz virtuosi. Yet there is a remarkable correlation between these elite performers, athletic and artistic (and also large business CEOs) and psychopathy. Is that what we want in our lives? Zidane and peers often demonstrate the power of being an outsider. He is Kabyle, a Berber ethnic group and classifies his identity as Kabyle first, Algerian second and French third. Do we desire the solitariness that frequently accompanies not being a failure? He reminds me of Martina Navratilova, who had national and sexual ‘outsider’ identity to both handle, but to use as a motivator. Generally society prizes sociability and networking skills. In the Big 5 personality traits we appreciate agreeableness. There is no use for or appreciation of, ‘single mindedness’. Perhaps what society prizes is incompatible with success. Perhaps we are unconsciously promoting failure?

Studies have shown that achievement is a relatively straightforward composition of ability, environmental factors and effort. Yet we compare people’s achievements as though all have equal opportunity. We do not celebrate someone of apparently lower ability, but who may have been constrained by environmental factors like quality of teaching and/or facilities. We make a false comparison. It may be why there is so much strain on the university selection procedures, especially for elite universities. As the US is now embarrassingly proving, even when the environmental factors are good, the need to be seen to succeed and then benefit from the leverage a best in class education can offer, leads to cheating and larceny on a grand scale. Perhaps the only way we can truly decide on success and failure is to measure effort. All other qualities are too loaded with immeasurable advantages.

The musician known as Plan B gave a wonderful interview last year to journalist James O’ Brien for his podcast series ‘Unfiltered’. In it, he described the challenges of his educational environment and introduced me to the term PRUs. A Pupil Referral Unit is a sort of crowd control exercise for kids who are too inattentive and disruptive in a traditional school. He and his cohort would definitely have been tagged ‘failures’, or at least as ‘failing’. He has gone on to make a huge success of his career, but has continued to devote time and money to PRUs, mainly through supporting the provision of music teaching. That, to me, is real success. Music is a great release for those who find themselves inarticulate in a traditional school environment. I am a big admirer of Plan B, and he is definitely someone who merits the tag, success, but clearly that was not always the case, and highly unlikely at one time in his life. My point is that failure does not endure, just as success is fleeting. I regard myself as a ‘half-empty’ man much of the time, but this is a message of optimism.

I have come to think of ‘failure’ as an opportunity to consider what it is about ourselves that may have contributed to not being a success. Not getting that job. Did you really want it? Not winning that tennis match. Do you really want to invest time on practising that backhand? Not speaking up in a room of debaters at work. Do you really care enough about the company’s policies? In my early career I managed to bring one phase, when I was a trader, to a swift halt by using an expletive to describe my boss, when I was attending a social event. Unfortunately, he was in earshot. Or was it unfortunate? I had little respect for him and I was frustrated that he had a cohort of favourites and sycophants. My career took a fresh turn, which subsequently earned me promotions that I doubt he would have ever awarded. Later, I seemed adept at driving over career pot holes and undermining my own progress with a little too much attitude, but I earned an income, and achieved a level of responsibility, that exceeded my early ambition. It allowed me to realise my ambitions for my family. I had a few failures, but I think my City career was a success.

What do I think of failure now? I think it is less frightening than I would have imagined when I started work in the City in my teens. In those early 1980’s days I was very anxious not to fail, and to try to be a success. Thatcherism and yuppiedom were celebrators of individualism and success. I was going to be a success. Now I am an unperformed playwright and a trainee psychotherapist, but I do not feel like a failure. Change is normal in our lives and success is fleeting. Failure may be more about sins of omission. Failure to take good advice. (Guilty). And failure to grow by being complacent, and operating in a comfort zone. My children are of an age where they have fine, mature minds. They also have a little of my stubbornness. They may not feel they need much advice, but if I were giving some, and believing that it was being listened to, I would highlight Mandela’s view of learning, and Churchill’s retention of enthusiasm. They will have many rich experiences ahead, some which will be uncomfortable. But all will be well. In other Churchillian words, “keep buggering on”.