Just things I have been thinking about this last week…
I was struck recently by reading that it takes 400 repetitions to build a new synapse in your brain, but only 15-20 repetitions if it is done in play, joy, pleasure or laughter. Apparently, the dopamine released solidifies the new pathway. It sounded familiar, and I realized I had heard it said before to validate play therapy with children. I got really curious about what that means for learning new skills as an adult.
How do we as adults learn new things? Change patterns? Change habits we have curated for many years, sometimes the majority of our lives? If we shift in joy or pleasure, can we learn skills quicker or disrupt old patterns with more ease?
Then I got curious about FAILURE as an adult - times when we didn’t achieve an expectation or goal someone else set for us or we set for ourselves. I imagine we all have shame around past failures, some from adulthood and others from childhood. Some obvious. Some sneaky, more hidden.
If we thought of failure as A GAP, then would failure simply be unfinished actions or part of a process?
maybe…
Failure becomes something you accept as learning. Curiosity.
Failure becomes something we need to cross through. Actions.
Failure becomes something that demands new approaches. Novelty.
Failure becomes something that requires you to take risks. Leaps.
Would this make failure something we could eventually achieve or accomplish? But, then, doesn’t viewing it from that perspective make failure transform to the potential for success?
Kind of like failure is an ellipsis (…) instead of a period, and it exposes possibility. Failure becomes a conversation between destinations, between actions. Are we ever truly arriving anywhere? Or are we just continually moving between points we create or identify, or points society chooses for us?
Then…if you believe you failed or are failing as a parent, or as a partner, or as a friend…what would it look like to succeed? To not fail? Couldn’t you just be in the IN BETWEEN, between one action and the next? A new pathway between destinations. The gap.
Is it then more important where we place meaning or where we place the parameters of failure? Is failure only temporary, if we want it to be?
How do we exist within the gaps? We transform - failure allows space, creation, change, and metamorphosis - and when we play or experience joy within that space we build more new pathways faster. We keep trying, committing and dedicating and it will become something else. We learn to value playing in the gaps, instead of surviving the gaps. We open our eyes. Get Curious. Try something new. Sometimes even take a risk. And keep allowing one action to talk to the next.
(The brain synapse research was from Dr. Karyn Purvis. The conversation on failure was influenced by the book I just finished: The Blue is Where God Lives by Sharon Social Washington. It is a book about “Afro-Magic Realism that reclaims the promise of a family’s destiny through the bending of time”.)