It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Failure and Success -- of a Man and a Mouse

Anyone who has ever visited Disneyland has probably read or heard the quote from Walt Disney that “It all started with a mouse.”  I’ll admit it, I was raised on a steady diet of Disney.  We took family trips to Disneyland; the Disney Channel was the first cable channel I remember.  My husband, who was raised in Anaheim, was even more immersed.  Yet, until this past weekend, I didn’t realize that the mouse would never have come into existence if his creator had not first failed.

Mike and I recently visited the Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio on an anniversary trip to San Francisco.  In the museum lobby, visitors are confronted with an impressive, and intimidating, array of awards – an entire case of Oscars, the French Legion d’Honneur, and a polyglot mosaic of certificates medals, and trophies.  By any fraction of these awards, the bearer would be judged a success.  However, as we entered the museum exhibits and wandered chronologically through the life of Walter Elias Disney, the thing that struck me over and over was not the mind-boggling success, but how often the man had failed.

We aren’t talking small, niggling failures.  His first animation company went bankrupt – the papers are posted in the exhibit.  In recorded interviews played near the exhibit, Walt says that when he arrived in California, he and his brother Roy (recently discharged from the VA Hospital) had more than brotherhood in common.  “We were both unemployed.  So we decided to start our own business.”  This second company, for which Walt and Roy encouraged friends from Missouri to relocate to California, flourished for a while – until some unfortunate business dealings with a distributor.  One letter from that distributor contained sentences like dagger thrusts.  The “gentleman” wrote that his company had seen no financial returns from any of the films Disney had sent them.  He then followed with the excoriating phrase “you should be heartily ashamed.”  Words to make most of us curl under the covers and hide, words to make us flee from that which we had failed.  Yet, Disney kept making films.  Ultimately, this distributor wrested away the rights to Disney’s main character, a rabbit named Oswald. 

Disney and his wife traveled back to the east coast in an attempt to retain the rights to Oswald.   On the train trip back to California, after their efforts had failed, he didn’t drink himself into a stupor, apparently didn’t moan to Lilly about his failures.  Instead, he started to think about mice.  Mice were “cute and could do anything” and until then had been supporting characters in animated work.  Walt began to sketch and soon developed a little guy he called Mortimer, a name his wife declared “terrible” and that was soon changed to …yes, you know.

Disney’s success may have started with Mickey, but it didn’t continue along a golden path from there.  There were other setbacks, other unscrupulous business colleagues, a union strike that bitterly divided the Disney studios, the second World War, films that were less than successful.

But the resonating theme of the museum was the extraordinary optimism of a man able to retain vision, ambition, and creativity in the face of failure and defeat.  That sort of optimism requires not naiveté, not simple-mindedness, not calculation, but raw courage.

We saw another offshoot of the Disney machine this weekend – the Disney/Pixar movie Brave.  For once, we saw a princess not only unwilling to submit to her fate, but one who chooses to change her fate herself. Merida recognizes the damage caused by her mistakes and, rather than waiting for someone to save her, works to right the wrongs herself.  In the end, she says of fate that it lies inside us, “you only have to be brave enough to look for it.”

Too often we see our failures and mistakes as negatives, as reasons to quit, as indications that we are “on the wrong path.”  We expect success to be golden and smooth, the soul-crushing patches to be magically edited out.  We envy the “luck” of those who appear to have achieved success easily or completely.  But, finding and fulfilling our destiny depends less upon luck than it does upon resilience and courage – and those are available to anyone.

Last Day Lessons

Today is the last day of school for my kids.  At the closing ceremonies today, Caitlin will stand with her class and sit down as an 8^th grader; Aidan will stand with his and take his seat as part of the new 5^th grade; Sierra will hand a red rose to her 8^th grade buddy, just as her buddy welcomed her at the beginning of the year, and will sit down as a second grader to watch “the buddies” leave the school the same way they entered in 1^st grade – under an arch of flowers.

There is a beautiful symmetry to the closing ceremonies, tradition and predictability.  The ceremony doesn’t so much provide false security and safety as it supports and embraces all that has been learned and all that is still unknown.

May troubles be less

And blessings be more,

And nothing but happiness come to your door.

And may you have luck

Wherever you go

Your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow.

 

May wind be at your back

And sun be overhead

May friends be at your side

Wherever you are led.

 

We sing this song at closing every year – parents, kids, faculty, and staff.  The words blend farewell, see-you-later, and I’ll-always-be-here.  And for all the well-wishing in the song, there remains a sense of journeying into the unknown where there will be troubles (hopefully less) mixed with the blessings (hopefully more), that the wind will blow and that friends will be needed. 

As the kids step away from school today, they won’t stop learning.  None of us will.  Yet, despite the work of teachers, parents, and peers, some lessons must be learned alone.  Here are some of the things I want (and try) to teach my kids, but that I know they have to learn on their own.

• Everything is a choice.  Every choice has a consequence.  Whether you do a thing or leave it undone, you will have to live with the result.
• Use your words.  When you speak from your heart, it has a greater impact than you can possibly realize.
• People who are “mean” are often hurting.  Sometimes if you can find their hurt, they can no longer hurt you.
• Someday you will be most grateful for the teacher you complain about most today.
• Don’t be so quick to brush off that kid who annoys the crap out of you.  You two may someday have more in common than you will with the person who is your “best friend” today.
• The “weirdoes” often become the most interesting adults.
• Everyone has pieces that connect – the punk and the cheerleader, the cowboy and the Goth, the bookworm and the skater – underneath the clothes, hair, and accessories, we have common stories, pains, and desires.  (The Breakfast Club should be mandatory viewing for all 14 year olds.)
• No one can fix your argument with your friend – no one but the two of you.
• Yes, you’re right.  You absolutely will not remember that homework assignment 20 years from now.  However, the discipline muscles that you trained in completing it well and on time will support you throughout your life.
• Yes, you’re right again.  It’s not fair.  Life is neither fair nor easy, but it’s that way for everyone.  So, do you think maybe that means it really is fair after all?
• When someone rejects you or says something cruel, they aren’t exposing your shortcomings, they are revealing their own insecurities or capacities.
• Sometimes you get the most out of the lessons or activities that “suck.”
• Yes, pushups really are important.
• You don’t know yet who you are or what you really like.  You won’t know for years, if ever.  So try everything and learn what you can from it before rejecting it.
• You are your only reliable mirror.  No one else can show you your true self.  Not your classmates, your teachers, your siblings, not even your dad and me.
• You don’t find yourself when you are doing the safe, easy things that you know well.  You find out who you are when things are hard, scary, or just plain crappy.
• The only feet you can stand on and still balance are your own.

Firebrand or Ditz? What's in a label?

Thirty-plus years ago, I had white-blonde hair and glasses.  Today I have platinum-blonde hair and glasses.  The similarities are unsettling, yet I have been many people in between.  Hair color isn’t a big deal.  These days, few of us – even women in our 40s – attempt to pretend that grey-free is “natural.”  Hair is just another element of style; something we change at our whim or to make a point.

When I posted a “poll” on Facebook yesterday, the question seemed frivolous, perhaps a touch narcissistic, but innocuous: Finally getting my hair done; should I stay red or go back to blonde?

 I began coloring my hair between the births of my two oldest children.  Pregnancy (or age) had darkened it to a weird non-color.  My hair was no longer blonde, but it wasn’t brown, red, or grey either.  It was just there.  I had always accepted that someday the blonde would give way to brunette.  Both of my parents, tow-heads as children, developed dark brown hair as adults.  I was willing to accept brunette as my fate, but not mousy.  With an infant already draining (I felt) the remnants of my identity, watching my hair fade into oblivion as well was unacceptable.  So, in a desperate leap for self-confidence, I started coloring my hair – a deep, rich, dramatic auburn.

I’ve been a redhead for the better part of a decade.  Because I have three children and a weird inhibition when it comes to making appointments, the shade has varied from mahogany to strawberry with some stops at brass.  But, red it has been.  Thanks to the complexion passed along by my Scottish ancestors, more people buy me as a redhead than they did as a (natural) blonde.  And I embraced my ginger identity.  A friend once told me, “You dye your hair to match your personality.”   But, what I never told anyone was that I was afraid I was dyeing my personality to match my hair.  Somewhere along the line, I began to link all of my “new” confidence, creativity, and fire to my hair.  Redhead was a costume, a role I was playing, and if I went back to blonde, it would mean a return to the shy, mousy, (in my mind) undesirable wimp that I had been. 

Most of us do this to some degree.  We like to think ourselves above stereotypes and labels, but the labels still lurk under the surface, even if they’re only visible to our subconscious.  There are obvious examples, of course.  Take a six-foot-plus, heavily muscled man.  Now give him tattoos, piercings, shave his head, and dress him in leather.  What happens when you meet him on the street in the evening?  Ok, now take the same guy, cover the ink with an ironed button-down tucked into a pressed pair of slacks.  Let his hair grow to business length.  Take away the piercings, except maybe one small hoop that just says ‘I’m individual enough to be hip.’  How do you react now? 

As soon as I left the beauty salon as a redhead, I noticed that people treated me differently.  Most of my life, those around me, even those dearly loved, treated me with an amused tolerance and protectiveness, bordering on patronization.  As a blonde, my idiosyncrasies weren’t quirky, they were ditzy.  I don’t blame anyone here; I’m absent minded to the point of literally being capable of putting my phone away in the fridge, and my thought patterns have rarely met a straight line they could walk.  Yet, folks who met me after I began dyeing my hair seemed to see a whole different person.  “Don’t mess with her,” I heard.  Casual friends and acquaintances would say admiring things about how confident I am, how I “always seem to have it together.”  And I embraced the new image.

Then, one response to my Facebook poll yesterday took me by surprise and made me wonder – how much do others label us, and how much do we embrace the first hint of a label and make it our own?  Like it or not, stereotypes are safe.  They give us an identity, and consequently, a script.  You don’t have to risk being real if you can hide behind a role.  But here’s the thing that I hadn’t realized.  We aren’t always good actors, and people may interpret our roles very differently than we do.  The remark that threw me was a casually sweet comment from a grade school classmate I haven’t seen in over 20 years.  “I will always remember you as the cute intelligent blonde…”  Thankfully, I was alone in my car when I read that, because what I did next shocked the hell out of me and would have been impossible to explain to anyone else.  I burst into tears.

My sister and I are six years apart.  I had already entered my gangly phase by the time she was a rosy-cheeked toddler.  She has a peaches-and-cream complexion with olive undertones.  I burn between my freckles and call it a tan.  She has long, thick hair that falls in ringlets down her back.  My hair was once referred to by an ex-boyfriend as “fluff.” (For the record, he was an otherwise nice guy, and that wasn’t why we broke up.)  As my sister and I have aged, I still consider her the more beautiful of the two of us, but the differences have grown less dramatic.  However, one trip to the grocery store set our labels in stone as far as I was concerned.  A woman stopped my mother and beamed down at my four-year-old sister.  “What an adorable little girl you have,” she said.  Then she looked at me with my pale, poker-straight hair, anemic-looking skin and coke-bottle glasses.  “And you must be the smart one.”

Well, there it was.  I was the smart one.  I had the report cards overflowing with A’s to prove it.  I sucked at sports and embraced my ineptitude.  Why practice?  I wasn’t athletic; I was the smart one.  As I entered junior high and high school, I watched other girls date and go to dances.  It seemed inevitable and appropriate that no guy would ask me out.  After all, I was the smart one.  And yes, I got great grades that enabled me to follow exactly the academic path I had set for myself, but never once did it occur to me to challenge that label.  It never once occurred to me that I might get better at sports if I actually did something other than read at recess.  It never occurred to me that for the boys to notice me, it would probably have helped if I’d talked to them.  It never occurred to me that to have fun in life, sometimes you have to take chances.  After all, I was the smart one, the shy one, the good girl, not the risk-taker.  I was the slightly ditzy, klutzy nerd who needed others to look after her because she was too quiet, too shy, not strong enough, and couldn’t get her nose out of a book long enough to take care of herself.

Anyone else see the problems with that paragraph?  Interestingly, I didn’t – until yesterday.  In spite of all of the work I’ve done on reaching beyond my comfort zone, embracing my self-confidence, my strength, and accepting myself, I’ve forgotten to do one thing.  I’ve forgotten that the girl that I was is still here, still inside me, and in rejecting and labeling her, I’m eliminating a part of myself.  You see, I am the blonde and the redhead, the shy one and the assertive one, the smart one and the sexy one, the geek and the athlete, the ditz and the capable woman.  I’m all of those things and a lot more that can’t be labeled.

A friend reminded me yesterday that even a rejection of labels is a way of labeling oneself.  He’s right. 

I can’t help wondering if perhaps the trick is not to toss out the people that we have been, discarding them like shed snake skins, but to bring them along with us as we grow, to nurture them, forgive them, and love them.