By Liza Mundy

Now is the time for all good men to fail. Good women,too. Fail early and often, and don’t be shy about admitting it. Failing isn’t shameful; it’s not even failure. Such is the message of a growing body of self-help and leadership literature. “Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them?” asks the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, in which she argues that a willingness to court failure can be a precursor to growth.1. deficiency: 缺點(diǎn)，缺陷；court: 企圖獲得，追求；precursor: 前兆，先兆。Dweck holds, persuasively, that successful people are not the ones who cultivate a veneer of perfection,2. persuasively: 令人信服地，有說服力地；cultivate: 培養(yǎng)，發(fā)展；veneer: 虛飾，粉飾。but rather those who understand that failing is part of getting smarter and better.

The same point is made in Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly (a best seller that borrows its title from Theodore Roosevelt’s exhortation that when you fail, the important thing is to do it while “daring greatly”); Tim Harford’s Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure; Kathryn Schulz’s Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error; and Brilliant Blunders, Mario Livio’s tour of “colossal”scientific mistakes that led to breakthroughs.3. 同樣的觀點(diǎn)你可以在以下這些書中找到：布琳·布朗的《勇敢示弱》（這本暢銷書的書名取自西奧多·羅斯福總統(tǒng)的勸誡——當(dāng)你失敗時(shí)最重要的是要“勇敢示弱”）；蒂姆·哈福德的《適應(yīng)：為何成功總是始于失敗》；凱瑟琳·舒爾茨的《我們?yōu)槭裁磿?huì)犯錯(cuò)？》；以及馬里奧·李維奧的《杰出的失誤》，介紹了那些重大的科學(xué)失誤所導(dǎo)致的突破性成就。exhortation: 勸誡性的講話，告誡；colossal: 巨大的，其大無比的。

In the spring of 2014, Sarah Lewis’s forthcoming book, The Rise: Creativity, Mastery, and the Gift of Failure, will reflect on“flops, folds, setbacks, wipeouts and hiccups,” and the “dynamism” they inspire.4The failure fetish5. fetish: 過分的迷戀，崇拜。is even finding its way into modern parenting. Reacting against the tendency to cushion children with coaches and tutors, authors like Po Bronson, Paul Tough,and Wendy Mogel argue that we need to allow our children to fail, because struggle builds resilience and grit.6. cushion: v. 緩和……的沖擊（或影響）；resilience:（病后或遭受挫折或不幸的）復(fù)原能力，適應(yīng)能力；grit: 勇氣，堅(jiān)毅。Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, the ability to speak perceptively and candidly about one’s past failures has practically become a job qualification.7. 與此同時(shí)，在硅谷，能夠感同身受且直言不諱地表達(dá)自己過去的失敗經(jīng)歷幾乎已成為獲得一份工作的先決條件。perceptively:（因共鳴而）理解地，深切地； candidly: 坦率地，直言不諱地。A prospective employee (or an applicant for venturecapital funding) who has survived a failed start-up is someone who has learned valuable lessons from someone else’s failure.8. prospective: 有希望的，可期待的；venture-capital:【商】風(fēng)險(xiǎn)投資；start-up: 新公司，新開張的企業(yè)。

與以往鼓吹的“成功要趁早”的論調(diào)不同，現(xiàn)在有一種“失敗文化”——以一種更為智慧的謙遜姿態(tài)出現(xiàn)——正在悄然升溫。那些胸懷抱負(fù)的人慘遭失敗繼而又重振旗鼓的故事，似乎聽起來比那些一帆風(fēng)順的故事更要引人入勝。與此同時(shí)，深諳民眾這一心理的政客們也開始因此大打“悲情牌”。這是不是說明“失敗”已從一個(gè)避之不及的“燙手山芋”變成了人們趨之若鶩的“香餑餑”呢？

Given this growing cultural fixation on failure, it was probably inevitable that politicians would begin clambering aboard the pro-failure bandwagon.9. 鑒于這種與日俱增的對(duì)于“失敗”文化的偏好， 政客們很可能也會(huì)不可避免地加入到“支持失敗”的浪潮中去。fixation:【心】固著，不正常的依戀（或偏愛）；inevitable: 不可避免的，無法規(guī)避的；clamber aboard the bandwagon: 〈口〉趕浪頭。

This idea is not entirely new. As the historian Robert Dallek pointed out to me, overcoming failure—bankruptcy, addiction, dissolution,defeat—is part of the quintessential American success story.10. addiction: 上癮，沉溺；dissolution: 終止，瓦解；defeat: 失敗，挫折；quintessential: 精髓的，典型的。Failure narratives resonate with all sorts of deeply held cultural tenets,from Christianity’s focus on forgiveness and rebirth to the frontier mentality’s emphasison prevailing over obstacles both external and internal,including our own imperfect selves.11. resonate with: 與……共鳴；tenet: 原則，信條；frontier mentality: 拓荒心態(tài)，邊疆心態(tài)論；prevail over: 獲勝，占上風(fēng)；obstacle:障礙，阻礙。

In real life, of course, failure is sometimes just that:failure. Truth is, the current catalogue of pro-failure literature does not celebrate failure in all forms. We like failure when, and only when, it ends in victory. “Lots of people never achieve their goals; they do not achieve their dreams, even though they have worked really hard and prepared themselves,” points out Scott Sandage,a historian and the author of Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. “To believe that failure is only a valuable lesson if it leads eventually to triumph really isn’t embracing12. embrace: 欣然接受。failure at all. It’s crossing your fingers13. cross one’s fingers: （把食指與中指交叉）祈求走運(yùn)（或成功）。behind your back that eventually you’re going to succeed.” Victory and loss are often beyond our control,whatever we might like to think about our ability to triumph over circumstance.

And yet we like what we like for a reason. Other people’s failures, served up with the right ratio of struggle to eventual redemption, are interesting to watch.14. ratio: 比例，比率；redemption: 挽救，改造。Failure and recovery make for a grand narrative, transforming an ordinary person or politician into something more like a literary character. Like odysseys and coming-of-age stories and parables of exile, failure gives a life or a career a pleasing dramatic arc.15. 正如歷經(jīng)滄桑的流浪故事、成長小說以及背井離鄉(xiāng)的寓言中所描寫的那樣，失敗為生活或事業(yè)畫上了一條令人愉悅且充滿戲劇性的弧線。odyssey:（歷盡滄桑的）長期流浪，智力（或精神）上的長期探索過程；parable: （說教性的）寓言。Bill Clinton’s failures and flaws, along with his political genius, are part of what make him one of the most compelling public figures of our time.

Success is supposed to come after failure, not before.When the reverse happens—when spectacular success is followed by failure or even just fumbling—the central character seems diminished rather than enlarged,optimism feels harder to come by, and the story just doesn’t have that stirring sense of downfall and digging-out that we seem, irresistibly, to want.16.（理應(yīng)先經(jīng)歷失敗之后再成功，而不是相反。）當(dāng)相反的情況發(fā)生時(shí)——當(dāng)引人注目的巨大成功之后，隨之而來的是失敗，甚至只是一時(shí)的失誤時(shí)——中心人物的地位被削弱而不是加強(qiáng)，因此樂觀態(tài)度更加難以獲得了，而這類故事也就不再具有我們似乎是不可避免地想要的那種跌宕情節(jié)和深度探索所帶來的鼓舞人心的感覺。reverse: 相反的，反向的；fumbling: 失誤；stirring: 激動(dòng)（或鼓舞）人心的，感動(dòng)人心的；downfall:垮臺(tái)，衰落；irresistibly: 不可抵抗地。