When to Celebrate Failure (and when not to)

We have a real temptation to celebrate when someone we don’t like fails at something.

Yesterday was an Election Day, and I can’t think of a better example of this idea than what tends to happen around every election. One side typically tends to dominate over the other, and then they like to rub it in by crowing and castigating and cat-calling. The failure of the other is cast as an indication of how right the winners were. “See? We’re right, because we won!”

Kind of nonsense though, right?

Because win or lose, what was at stake in an election was whether the people voting believed in one philosophy or another, or were disappointed by the actions of one side, or were alarmed at what one side was doing or not doing or proposing to do… there are a lot of factors. But what is not true is “winning mean’s we’re right.” We can look at a couple hundred years of elections and see that.

Now I’m as guilty as the next guy when it comes to this. I have my own perspective on things, and there are outcomes I’m hoping for. And when I (or my team, or my party, or my business) “wins,” that is absolutely something to celebrate. Celebrate every success.

But why would you ever celebrate failure?

Well… ok, maybe you’d celebrate failure if you were more like Thomas Edison—who famously told his son to go find his mother and bring her to the site where Edison’s Orange County workshop was burning to the ground. “Go get your mother! She’ll never see a fire like this again!”

Edison had the debris and ashes cleared by the next morning, and started right back at it. Failure was a setback, but it wasn’t the end.

“Celebrating someone else’s failure, or misery, or pain is like telling the universe, ‘I like this stuff. Give me more of that.’”

And of course, Edison is famous for other failures. Like the lightbulb. I mean, I know… the lightbulb ended up being a huge success that literally changed the world. But to get to that success, Edison had to wade neck deep into a sea of failure. Thousand of tries, thousands of duds. And then, finally, he had his literal lightbulb moment. The idea that evolved humanity into creatures who could see into even the darkest spaces.

Failure can be worth celebrating. It tells us what not to do, to get the result we want. It marks our progress. It gives us feedback.

But the failure of others… celebrating that is the worst idea.

I don’t know what you believe, but here’s a guiding principle in my own life: Celebrating someone else’s failure, or misery, or pain is like telling the universe, “I like this stuff. Give me more of that.”

Our highest command is to love, and celebrating someone’s pain isn’t love.

Of course, nobody said we had to like each other.

But the decision to exclude your annoying neighbor from your Christmas card list is a very different thing from popping champagne and toasting to the fact that his business failed. You believe what you want, but I think it’s dumb to tempt fate. Or karma. Or God.

So as election results roll in, maybe (maaayyyybeee) those of us who got what we wanted from those results can have some empathy toward those who are feeling a keen loss and an existential sting. We do not have to agree with each other, but we should at least go out of our way to avoid hating each other.

Don’t tear people down for what they’ve lost. It’s always going to come back to bite you.

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