by Don Hall

I was thinking about the botched horror of the Fyre Festival the other day. This lead me to thinking about the Chicago Fire Festival, created by Red Moon Theatre, where the City spent a whole freaking truckload of money and, on the night of the event, no one could get anything lit on fire.

The research done claiming the overwhelming benefits of allowing for mistakes is tantamount, yet we still punish anyone who makes them. We love nothing more than for someone to make a huge error so that we can then weigh in on how we wouldn’t have done that and what a huge piece of shit the mistaken party has become.

The disconnect is boggling.

I recall seeing a play in Chicago decades ago. It was huge and sprawling and a fucking mess. The ambition was obvious. A young theatre company with dreams of doing something epic fell flat on their faces. They really blew it in the show’s excess and attempt to bring something huge and amazing into the world. A few years later, that very same theater company had grown into their dreams and managed to snag a lifelong, one dollar per year lease with the City in the heart of downtown.

The thing is, I loved the huge mistake. I admired the sack it took to try. It was truly a horrible piece of theater but it was so obvious how hungry this company was I could only grin and hope things went well for these folks.

It’s one thing to admire a plucky group of Northwestern University graduates in a storefront theater for dreaming big and failing — after all, the number of people who were afflicted with the thing was pretty small in number. It’s another to admire the mistakes that affect a larger grouping of the tribe.

In the heat of the moment, we all fuck up once in awhile. In the wake of possibility to get busy with someone, maybe we step over a boundary or two. To get a laugh, we push an edge just a bit too far. In the comfort of our homes, we tweet something we might regret later. 

I work in a casino. The culture from a corporate standpoint is that everything is being surveillance 24 hours a day. The purpose of this originally was to catch those seeking to cheat the casino. Nowadays, it’s more often used to spy on the employees and catch them slacking off or offering the wrong person a company drink or taking an extra five minutes on their already meager break time. A mistake on the casino floor can cost you your livelihood in an instant.

I had a younger sports writer who cashed his tip tickets without a manager present. He didn’t really know better, they were his tips, so he figured why not? He was dismissed within two days for this. My cocktail waitresses are told that only players spending $10 or more get a free drink or they’ll be written up for over comping. The result is that they are afraid to give anyone comp drinks (which is a huge detriment to coming and playing).

My policy is, and has been, to go for it every time. Risk big failure or stay home.

The benefits of this approach are, at least to me, evident:

You begin to see that everything is just an experiment.

If you’re paying attention, you’ll learn multiple lessons from every single fuck up.

When you aren’t afraid of making mistakes, your choices will become bolder and more confident.

While more confident, you’ll also understand what true humility feels like.

The boundaries life will start to appear as flexible as they are and with that flexibility, comes freedom.

We’re all going to make mistakes, step on our dicks, act an ass, blow it in both small and huge ways. It’s unavoidable. Either you embrace that fact and learn from each one or you beat yourself to death over every cut.