Go out and fail

On Feb 9 I had the thrilling pleasure of seeing my second child graduate from CES-JDS. Of course, I paid most attention to those parts of graduation, and those speeches, that focused on how wonderful my child is, so it was surprising to find myself also enjoying a speech relevant to our JLI program. Richard H. Smith, a member of the Charles E. Smith family that has done so much for the Washington Jewish Community (and who continues as a supporter of JDS, Hebrew University, as well as University of Maryland, the National Gallery of Art and many other causes) gave what I thought was an excellent charge to the graduating class.

Smith's charge to the graduates was to go out and fail. Or, more precisely, to not fear failure. He emphasized that if you never fail it means you did not push yourself to test the maximum of your abilities, and so you in the end have achieved less than your potential. You have missed the lessons learned from a failure. Smith's deepest insight was that a major reason for our current economic mess was that so many in the business/finance world (and perhaps government, though I am not sure if he explicitly mentioned it) were unwilling to admit failure, and so chose to deceive and manipulate instead.

I think Smith gave the class, and us, a valuable message. We are a people that honor success, but we must recognize the value of failure and, most important, never sacrifice our values and integrity to escape one.

Richard