If you don’t like baseball, I’m sorry, because along with the scorecard example, Kieran Setiya uses Major League Baseball player Bill Buckner to show how failure can affect someone long-term.
Buckner had a long and successful career. But he's mostly remembered for one moment: In the 1986 World series, a ground ball rolled through his legs, leading to MAJOR loss. see video below
What's interesting isn't just the mistake, it's how that one moment ended up defining him in people's minds. Years of success just to get shadowed by a single failure. This shows something important: we don't just experience failure, we give it a kind of weight that often exceeds everything else.
This feels really relatable. Not because i'm some famous athlete, but because the same thing happens in everyday life:
- You remember that one bad test, not all the good ones
- The one awkward moment, not all the normal conversations
- One mistake, not all the times you did things right
We take a single failure and turn it into a story about who we are. Setiya challenges this completely. He argues that this way of thinking is flawed because is assumes life is something that can be neatly measured or summed up (LH, ch. 4). But real life doesn't work like that.
Failure isn't just possible, its inevitable.
The Allegory That Changed How I Think About This
One idea that really helped me understand this argument is the difference between telic and atelic activities (LH, 106-107):
Telic activities are goal-based like finishing an assignment, getting a job, or achieving something. Atelic activities are ongoing like hanging out with friends, learning something, or just living in the moment. It basically life is like a checklist vs a conversation. You either completed the task or you didn't. But if life is more like a conversation, there's no single fail. It just keeps going.
I think back to my high school years at a magnet school. We were all so focused on status and getting perfect grades. That was what defined our success and happiness. If I had an exam or project due I would let that affect my entire mood and perspective on life. Getting a 100 was my whole purpose. Looking at my friends at other schools and how they enjoyed things like football games, dances, and hanging out with each other, made me wish I had spent my years in an environment that valued atelic activities over telic activities.
another perspective: https://figsinwintertime.substack.com/p/telic-vs-atelic-activities-and-the
Some quotes I love:
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
―
more: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/failure & https://blog.stoicsimple.com/stoic-quotes-on-failure-the-best-stoicism-sayings-phrases/
Overall
Setiya's argument doesn't make failure easier. It doesn't suddenly make it feel good. But if does something more important—it puts failure in its proper place. Not as the opposite of success. Not as something that ruins your life. But as something that was always going to be part of it. And once you see it that way, failure stops being a dead end. It becomes.... part of the process.
My discussion question: If failure is something we can’t avoid (and sometimes can’t fully control) should it really play such a big role in how we judge ourselves and other people?
Answer is no. Failure should not play a big role in how we define ourselves and other. I think we all struggle with judging others but we have to understand that we are all human and we all make mistakes. There is also always more to the story than we can see.
My View on Failure
With having gone through finals week, my perspective on failure is as present as ever. First, I do not see myself as a good writer. Hence, why I have pushed assignments like this blog post to the very last second. I don't like the idea of not being perfect so I avoid everything that would make me feel like a failure. But I realized you are not meant to be good at everything. I may not be as articulate as I would like, but the only way to get better is by trying. I've learned that failure is part of everything and getting things right the first time isn't always possible. Setiya helped me understand this,
Something totally unrelated but very prevalent in today's society is the use of Artificial Intelligence. Emphasis on artificial. No experiences, no feelings, no true understanding of the words we speak.
Something that happened to me the other day:
I said to someone: "I wonder if it will be the right weather outside for me to wear my jacket"
Their response: "ask chatgpt-"
I looked a few feet away and there was a door to outside. Why would I ask a robot something they can't even experience. When I can just take a few extra minutes to walk outside and see for myself.
This may be a silly example but it all ties back to success and failure. People are so focused on perfection they would rather rely on ai, which can give you an accurate answer, but living through real experiences is what really teaches you. It's called life.
The use of ai has made me realize the beauty in failure. I want to make mistakes because it's something ai will never have the pleasure of experiencing. Failing is the only thing that will ever allow me to grow. If I didn't study for an exam, then I should fail. It'll teach me a lesson to put an effort next time. If I mess up a titration in chemistry lab, it'll only help me know how to do well on the next one. In Life Is Hard, Kieran Setiya explains that failure isn’t something to avoid or measure against a “scorecard,” but something that is built into life itself and something we learn from.
Poor Bill Buckner. One botched ground ball, and a stellar career is forgotten. Occupational hazard for people who live public lives. But we do that to ourselves, when we overstate the importance of a single achievement or failure. We mustn't reduce ourselves or anyone else to their lowest moment. To err is human, but so is it to rebound and recover and play another day.
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