When Future Plans Don’t Happen, Can Failure Be an Act of Kindness?
Image via Unsplash by @eth_gaaar
Guest post by Christiana Peterson.
“Let us look into the future.”
These were lines I wrote in 1989 in the Future plans section of a book called Through the Years. This was either a class assignment—a book that tells all about me, my hobbies, my family, and yes, future plans—or it was a really elaborate gift for my mother.
I was eleven years old.
Maybe the fact that I wrote such a detailed book and dedicated it to:
“My loving mother who’s held on through the years”
should’ve been a hint at my real future: to write a few books some thirty years later, one of which was dedicated not only to my husband but to my mother:
“for giving me life and so much love.”
(On a side note, those dedications, written thirty years apart, are unnervingly similar. Either I was a precocious eleven-year-old or my writing style still resembles a preteen).
Are you waiting with bated breath to know what my eleven-year-old self, so wise to the ways of the world, had planned for her future? Was she prophetic?
Here it is:
“My career will probably be as a singer.”
Oops. Not such a prescient precocious child, I guess.
That future didn’t come to pass any more than my plans to live in L.A. or Hawaii did. Or to make peace throughout the world and stop war and destruction. But a girl can dream.
To be fair to my adolescent self, I did and still do sing a lot. I lead music at our small church and I’ve written and recorded music for decades (albeit with a small podcast mic and Garage Band). But would my childhood self be disappointed to see me now, not as a famous singer? Not as a famous anything but as a writer nonetheless. Not living in Hawaii but in, well, Ohio.
Would she still think I/she/we failed?
An Unspoiled Endeavor
In [a recent] newsletter I talked about my failed career as a poet.
Over a year ago, I wrote a post about my failures as a writer.
I seem to write about failure without meaning to. So, today, you might think I’d be lamenting my failed career as a singer.
But despite what my eleven-year-old self might think, I don’t see my lack of singing career as a failure. On the contrary, the act of creating music feels, in some ways, a more unspoiled endeavor than writing a book.
Let me explain.
I don’t create music to have a career. I don’t do it to make money. Now, those things aren’t wrong, and in fact, I think creators and artists of all sorts should be paid for their work. But I do know from experience the spiritual and emotional cost of trying to make a career out of art.
When art is your career, it is easy to lose sight of the reasons for creating in the first place. When the art you love becomes enmeshed with publishing, promoting, money, marketing, and trying to sell yourself in order to sell your work, it can be a messy weaving that becomes difficult to untangle.
Is it still possible to hold onto the beauty, truth, or hope of creating art if it is tangled up with all the other stuff? Of course it is! People do it all the time. It’s just hard for me to manage.
But that entanglement has never happened with music for me. If I had them as a child, I have no illusions about fame or glory anymore. I have no illusions that I will ever have a career as a singer. That ship has sailed, even if it were possible at one time.
The Joy and Love of Creating
The truth is that I love to lead worship, I love to record my music, I love to sing with my family or in a choir. But I do not love to perform. I always get so nervous my voice is never as clear as I want it to be. But when I lead music at church, it doesn’t feel like performing. It is something I do to serve and I rarely feel nervous anymore. Because I’m not doing it to prove myself. Though I have sometimes seen singing as part of my identity, I know that it has nothing to do with my worth.
All I have is the love of singing, the joy of writing a song to completion and recording it, the joy of singing in worship or in a chorus or for a special service. The joy and love of creating and sharing music with a congregation or my mom or, well, you.
I think what my childhood self got right is that music would always be a huge part of my life. I simply sing and write music for the love of it.
And if that’s a failure, well, I don’t mind it so much.
What do you create just for love of it?
Christiana Peterson
Christiana Peterson is an author, a mother, and a teacher. She writes about things that start with the letter M: mystics, misfits, music, motherhood, and memento mori. You can find her at her site.
Here’s an interview about monastic bells and the interrupted life I did with Christiana in 2020. And do check out her podcast on Memento Mori: Til Death Do Us Part.
This piece originally appeared as “Future Plans: On failed careers, a few books, and a playlist of songs I wrote” in Christiana Peterson’s newsletter “Mystics and Misfits,” Dec. 8, 2023.
