Page 64 - Mistranslation Laboratory: An Unfolding

Failure
(Longley circles the word on the board)
How does it feel? Shameful, psychologically painful, plunging, raw?
We are here to support you.
To break these vicious, hungry cycles.
So we ask you to take 3 of these pieces of paper, and to write three things – one on each piece.
Firstly, we’d like you to write down something you want to change about someone else.
Then, we’d like you write down something you want to change about the world.
Finally, we’d like you to write down something you’d like to change about (in a whisper)
Yourself.
To be clear – no one is going to read what you write on these pieces of paper. It is completely private to you and you alone.
While group are writing,Longley and Smith pull out Change Failure Support Group banner and sing David Bowie’s Changes, out of tune, forgetting most of the words.
(They get the soap suds, two large bowls of water, hand beater and dirty glass ready) .
Now, it is time to release the failures.
If you could join us please. What we need you to do is
to rip your little collection of failure into tiny pieces, and place it, along with these soap suds into this bowl. Okay if you could put in the soap suds, and any more failure.... Great.
And now we add a bit of water to the mix, and if you could just give this a bit of a beat up. Great. And pass the beater along – whip the mixture up, whip it up. Okay and now we take this dirty, clouded glass and we will wash it in this failure paste – and give it a rinse, rinse all the failure away... and dry it with this towel...
BEHOLD we have transformed failure into light. This is a magical alchemy of transformation.
Lets’s have a round of applause, pat yourself on the back – feel your achievement. Thanks to each and every one of you for your contributions to emotional science today.
Dwelling with failure is not easy – but it is possible, we have proven, together.