{"id":6760,"date":"2015-01-06T10:04:17","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T17:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/speeches-dev.byu.edu\/?post_type=speech&p=6760"},"modified":"2024-03-01T10:40:13","modified_gmt":"2024-03-01T17:40:13","slug":"successfully-failing-pursuing-quest-perfection","status":"publish","type":"speech","link":"https:\/\/speeches-dev.byu.edu\/talks\/kevin-j-worthen\/successfully-failing-pursuing-quest-perfection\/","title":{"rendered":"Successfully Failing: Pursuing Our Quest for Perfection"},"content":{"rendered":"
This is my first opportunity to address you in a devotional as president of the university. Let me begin by telling you, \u201cYou look really good.\u201d That is different from being good-looking, though you are that as well. I hope that each of you has some inkling of the spirit you carry with you and the light that radiates from you. It is evident to visitors to the campus\u2014who sometimes struggle to come up with words to describe what they see and feel in your presence. I thank each of you for your individual contribution to what is the real Spirit of the Y that those who come on campus experience so profoundly. It truly is an honor to be your president.<\/p>\n
Those who have heard me speak these past few months will not be surprised that I begin by quoting a portion of the BYU mission statement, which was approved and adopted by the board of trustees more than thirty years ago. That mission statement describes well both the process and the anticipated results of a BYU education. I urge each of you to read and ponder it, as well as the BYU Aims, as this new year begins.<\/p>\n
The most familiar line of that mission statement summarizes, in general terms, the details that follow. \u201cThe mission of Brigham Young University,\u201d it states, \u201cis to assist individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life.\u201d1<\/sup><\/p>\n My remarks today focus on one reality about that quest for perfection. It is a truth that is hard to deny, yet difficult to accept. It is this: We will all fail. More than once. Every day.<\/p>\n I know that may sound startling and not the most optimistic of messages, so let me be quick to add that this does not mean that you or I are failures or that the quest for perfection is futile. There is a difference between failing, even repeatedly, and being a failure, as I hope to explain.<\/p>\n Failing is an essential part of the mortal phase of our quest for perfection. We don\u2019t often think of it that way, but that is only because we tend to focus too much on the word perfection<\/i> and not enough on the word quest<\/i> when we read the mission statement. Failure is an inevitable part of the quest. In our quest for perfection, how we respond when we fail will ultimately determine how well we will succeed.<\/p>\n My plea for you today is to learn how to fail successfully. To help you in that regard, let me provide a little broader context for the quest for perfection and the role that failure plays in that process.<\/p>\n The primary purpose of our mortal existence is to help us become like our heavenly parents. One of the things we need to do in order to accomplish that purpose is to learn and apply truth in our lives. The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that \u201cit is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance\u201d2<\/sup> and that \u201ca man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge.\u201d3<\/sup> Thus learning is an essential part of not only our BYU experience but also this mortal phase of our quest for perfection.<\/p>\n The scriptures teach that there are three main ways we can learn: one, by study;4<\/sup> two, by faith;5<\/sup> and, three, by experience.6<\/sup> A lot has been written and spoken at BYU about how we learn by study and by faith,7<\/sup> but we talk much less about how we learn from experience. Yet learning from experience is one of the essential purposes of our mortal existence.<\/p>\n In the book of Abraham the plan we all accepted in the grand premortal council is described as follows:<\/p>\n We will go down . . . , and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell;<\/i><\/p>\n And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.<\/i>8<\/sup><\/p>\n This earth, the setting for our mortal existence, was created so that we could \u201cprove\u201d ourselves. But I believe we may not appreciate the full meaning of the word prove<\/i> in that scripture. In everyday usage the word prove<\/i> means to demonstrate something that already<\/i> exists.9<\/sup> Thus we take final exams to prove what we already know about the material we have been studying that semester. But the Oxford English Dictionary<\/i> provides an additional meaning for the word prove.<\/i> It indicates that prove also means \u201cto find out, learn, or know by experience.\u201d10<\/sup><\/p>\n I believe the opportunity we have to prove<\/i> ourselves in this life was not designed to allow us to demonstrate to God how obedient we already were before we came to earth. He, and we, already knew that. God formed this earth and gave us this mortal existence so that we could \u201cprove\u201d ourselves in the other sense of that word\u2014so that we could \u201cfind out, learn, or know by experience\u201d truths that we did not already know and that we could not learn in any other way.<\/p>\n I believe there are certain things, some of them essential to our exaltation, that we can learn only through experience. We could not have remained in our premortal condition, memorized all the attributes of godhood, and then, after passing a written exam, become like our heavenly parents. We came to earth to \u201cprove\u201d ourselves, to learn from our own experiences how to know good from evil and other important lessons we could learn only by our own experience. And one of the best ways we can fully learn those essential lessons is by failing in our efforts.<\/p>\n Let me illustrate with a simple experience from my own professional life. Two years after I graduated from law school I found myself working on a tax law project for a partner in a law firm in Phoenix, Arizona. By that time I had not only finished law school but had completed judicial clerkships for two very good judges at two of the best courts in the country and had passed the bar exam. In my mind I knew how to be a lawyer. Even though I had not had any tax law experience before I received the assignment, I knew quite well where to begin looking for the answer to the question posed to me by the partner. After extensive research of the applicable statutes, regulations, and cases\u2014and after revising several drafts\u2014I confidently presented to the partner a memo that I felt answered his question.<\/p>\n The partner quickly skimmed the memo, read the conclusion, and then confidently opined, \u201cThis can\u2019t be the law.\u201d<\/p>\n I was quite taken aback and a little offended. \u201cI\u2019ve read the statutes, the regulations, and the cases,\u201d I responded. \u201cThat\u2019s what they say.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t care,\u201d he retorted. \u201cTax law in this area can\u2019t work the way you\u2019ve described it. Go try again.\u201d<\/p>\n It was, to use the term my children often use to describe my less glorious moments, an \u201cepic failure.\u201d<\/p>\n After further discussing the issue with the partner, I examined the problem from several angles that started at different points from the one at which I had first begun. Over time a different analysis appeared\u2014one that changed the answer to the question in a subtle but important way. When I presented a revised memo to the partner with a more in-depth analysis and a different answer, he was satisfied. I asked him at that point whether he had known the answer to the question all along and was just trying to make work for me.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d he replied, \u201cI really didn\u2019t. I just know how these kinds of businesses work, and I have a pretty good feel for tax law. Your earlier approach just didn\u2019t seem right.\u201d<\/p>\n I knew how to acquire abstract legal information; I even knew how to analyze that information in theoretical terms. The partner, however, knew how to be a lawyer\u2014and there is a difference between those two things, just as there is a difference between knowing the attributes of God in an abstract sense and making those attributes a part of our character, which is what our quest for perfection requires.<\/p>\n How do we learn that latter important skill? The partner helped me understand that as well.<\/p>\n When I asked him what it was that allowed him to almost intuit the right answer to the problem, he replied, \u201cIt takes good judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd how do you acquire good judgment?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cGood judgment,\u201d he said, \u201ccomes from experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, after pausing for just a few seconds and with only a hint of a smile, he added, \u201cAnd experience comes from bad judgment.\u201d In other words, from failing.<\/p>\n As one motivational speaker observed:<\/p>\n We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn\u2019t. Success often lies just the other side of failure.<\/i>11<\/sup><\/p>\n The lesson is so prevalent in life that three years ago the Harvard Business Review<\/i> devoted an entire issue of that publication to the topic of how to learn from failures. 12<\/sup><\/p>\n We can see the same lesson in the familiar experience of Nephi when he was given the assignment to obtain the brass plates from Laban. As we know, his first two efforts failed, but he persisted and ultimately succeeded. In the process he discovered the power of being \u201cled by the Spirit,\u201d 13<\/sup> a critical lesson that he may not have learned if the first effort to persuade Laban to release the plates had been successful. Nephi\u2019s life was forever changed in a positive way because he failed twice\u2014and, more important, because of the way he responded to those failures.<\/p>\n