Andreu says that the meaning of things is not discovered, but constructed. I —like many others, I imagine— believe that we have made a mistake by contributing negatively to the conception of error.
As I explained recently, the main character in Cold Skin, by Albert Sánchez Piñol, is a young orphan. Faced with his potential, the institution that took him in assigned him a personal tutor responsible for his education. This tutor guided him by instilling a very analytical, reflective view of the world through various real-world exercises, outside the classroom. One of these was:
«The bad weeds of the rectangle. I had to clean it carefully. My tutor ordered me to separate the weeds from the beneficial plants. Since I did not know any of them, I was obliged to consult him before pulling them out. This is not a bad weed, I said of some, you can boil the leaves and make infusions. This one neither, I said of others, they are wild asparagus and therefore edible, even exquisite. This one neither, how can it be considered a bad weed if in May it produces beautiful flowers?
At last, only one plant remained. It had no use, hid no secret. Dark, spiky and toxic leaves, a hard and ugly stem.
He sighed: alright, a dreadful plant, but if we pull it out, what meaning would the others have? None, I said. And what conclusion do you reach, then? That bad weeds do not exist. Consider the exercise passed.»
In the essence of the plant, there are no adjectives or labels. That dreadful is our opinion, not reality. Does Mother Nature understand connotations? What about the motor control system? What about the body?
For the latter, is illness something bad, or is it something natural that has run its course, something that was bound to happen? In other words, a simple expression that responds to its context. Is obesity, for the body, a pathology, or is it its most normal way of adapting to a sustained energy intake with no outlet in a calorie-abundant environment? Is it not a natural adaptation, a normal behavior of a body given certain circumstances? Would an alien not see it as something that simply must happen, something inevitable?
And the injury? Is it a misfortune or something normal? The player who experiences a hamstring tear is unlucky… or is he simply undergoing a natural bodily response, in certain circumstances, when faced with demands beyond his capacity to meet? Should we attribute the negative connotation to the injury… or rather to the dysfunctional relationship between the player’s needs and abilities at that moment? Must we condemn the injury that arises as a consequence, or our failure to heed the natural course of the body? And should we denigrate, criticize, attack… the injury: an event from which the body develops better somatic awareness, self-knowledge for future contexts, and an improved relationship between needs and capacities… by preventing it from happening again?
The child who falls while trying to stand, does he err? Perhaps he did not yet have the capacity to achieve it. But does experience not yield a refinement that enhances and improves future functionality? And is that truly bad?
I just see natural adaptations that clash with the cultural beings we are. Something that makes perfect sense to Mother Nature, but for us, who are not plants but beings that are both similar and different, with the capacity to desire, with the ability to bring about change to ourselves or our environments to achieve a goal, we do not want them… but we can still get very good things out of them. Undesirable natural adaptations that can become beneficial. This means they are processes we should not romanticize, nor encourage, nor seek, but we should understand, use, explore, exploit them. Because injury, just like error, is a natural process that no one pursues but from which valuable things can be drawn.
That’s why I wonder whether perhaps injury or error are not the opposite of health, performance or success… but rather something necessary, a price to pay in order to reach them. Maybe an error is both consequence and teacher rather than cause and enemy. It is something that emerges spontaneously, providing us with a wealth of information about the process that makes it emerge. Perhaps we should regard it in a more appreciative way rather than a punitive one.
The player who attempts a three-point shot and misses… has he made an error? I think about the moment: was the shooter unmarked, or did he take the shot with a defender in front of him because he had not touched the ball in a while? I think about the person: was the shooter someone likely to make it, or someone who had not hit a three all season? I think about the context: if, as happens in many areas of life, we forget about the how, when, and where it happened, and imagine a perfect, weedless, world, how can anyone see anything positive in it? But if we respect the how, when, and where… perhaps what happened after that shot —regardless of whether it suits us more or less— makes perfect sense. So, maybe, what happens is not a bad event, an error. It is just an event. And we, after judging its suitability to our wishes, add the adjectives, its connotation: if it is something good or bad. So, unfortunately, if what has happened is not what we wished for, we stop seeing the natural continuum —free of connotations— of which it is a part… and we miss out on all the good, desirable things it can bring us. This, I believe, is what we have done with error: we have built negative connotations around it and we have lost more than we have won.
And if Curry misses more threes than he makes, and if Federer almost loses as many points as he wins… could it be that “error” is simply something usual, habitual… that we just do not like? If the best in history “err” more than they “succeed”, could it be that within human nature, of teams, of societies... we find imperfection, imprecision...? How do we accept this without using it as an excuse to settle for less? I think this is something the genius Ferran understood long ago: “Learn to live with failure, but do not promote it.”
If the error, the imprecision, the imperfection, is something common that I do not know if we will ever eradicate… I wonder what to do with the negative connotation of natural processes we want to avoid —like error or injury. Where do we construct the negative meaning: in the action performed with an undesirable result —the missed three-point shot— or in the negative interpretation of the action and its result —the negative feelings and behaviors generated because a three-point shot was missed? Is the error missing the open shot, or is it lamenting the miss and thereby losing the chance to gain an advantage on the offensive rebound or defensive transition? Should we view the event of something natural in a negative light… or should the negative view arise only if, after it happens, the subsequent actions lead to worse outcomes for the collective you are part of? Maybe the real negative thing lies in misinterpreting past or present reality in a way that negatively influences your attention and future intentions.
So what is an error, really? This negative, harmful meaning that we have built around it... is it fair? I see the error like the procrastinating act. Not a negative act but a signal of an imperfect —so, normal— system; not a flaw to eliminate, but something to understand. I am surprised by the coach who gets irritated with a player’s error. As if someone plays to make mistakes. However, I am still intrigued by those who scold someone for wasting time, for not being productive. As if someone enjoyed wasting the most precious thing —how gold would love to be time.
Why do we have built a negative meaning around procrastination? I think a big part of the blame lies in the constraint at a macroscopic level of organization and a long-term timescale that is the capitalist/consumerist system. It has made us associate something negative with an organic process… from which we could extract many useful things just because it suited someone greedy who wanted to make lots of money.
But… well, according to the GOAT, procrastination is “a natural defense. It is the body rebelling against its entrapment. It is the soul fighting the Procrustean bed of modernity. It is a silent cry to let one play for fun.” Like the error, it is not an illness but information to be understood and used. Procrastination is not a problem to be solved with the latest innovative productivity pill. Similarly, the error does not have to be fixed with the most innovative technical instruction in the world. You see the trees but not the forest. It is not the time one is losing but the body signal telling you that your ambitions mismatch your true preferences.
This means that someone wanting to intervene in procrastination should not do so with a scolding —or maybe they should, who knows, the context will tell us. Maybe it is more appropriate to approach it with a process of exploration. Because the problem is not the act that is unproductive. That’s just a simple symptom. The problem is somewhere much deeper. The problem is not the time lost, but that you do not know what to do with what you have and what is coming. That’s why I believe one should not fight with reality, but intervene in what will happen, in the processes that you believe that make reality emerge.
What happens is what is meant to happen. What must happen. Your desires add the adjectives, construct the connotation, the meaning of what occurs. If what has happened is not what you want, if you do not like it… well, that’s a different story. Learn from it. There is no error. You will never live in a world without weeds you do not like. Desire plays tricks on us: there are no good or bad ones. There are simply weeds we like more or less. But do not call them bad —the negation of good. Be careful with the stories you tell yourself.
If there were no weeds, would we still appreciate the beauty of the flowers? I suppose the addictive “high” we get from success stems from the possibility of failure, from the chance that something undesirable might occur. Just like the risk of failure is what makes success feel so sweet. Just like the desire to live life: what would it be without death?
I imagine error like the movement of a footballer or basketball player slipping free of their defender. Something that —who knows why— happens, shapes the present, influences the future, and defines the way you might try to fulfill your desires. Something that arises naturally, changes the possibilities of action in the present… and you can choose to make use of it —or not— and keep playing somewhere else. The game goes on, and the world does not end.
I see error as something natural in the course of a match as a rock in a river that must be navigated. Simple events in a long, inseparable continuum; peculiar features of the flow of something that carries no connotation whatsoever. I can’t picture a river without rocks, without bends, without rapids… something that could be navigated easily in a straight line. How many of you would see any sense in navigating the river angry at the rocks you have already passed, the ones that made you change course? How many would understand someone navigating while focused on past rocks instead of the ones in front of them, or the ones yet to come?
Maybe that’s why Andreu asks why to complain? Why not receive everything just as it is?
Martí Cañellas | Fosbury Flop
