The Growing Edge

Just ask my wife, I’m the worst person to watch a movie with. Why? Because I ask question after question after question.

Why did the director choose to cut that scene short?

What makes what he just said ironic?

What are we being taught to believe here?

I confess. I’m a serial deconstructor (holds hands out to be cuffed). But this is what I’m trained to do after all. I’m trained to deconstruct stories. I’m trained to see what stories teach us. And I’m trained to show you what I see.

And stories, my friends, teach us way more than we may think.

From our ancient days of community campfires to the bedtime stories of our youth to the television flickering in front of millions every day, stories continue to shape how we define normal. Stories continue to teach us what we can and cannot do and what we should and should not do. Stories define status quo.

So, why am I telling you this?

Because sometimes the stories that we listen to hold us back from activating the greatest version of ourselves.

For example, there’s a story I’m sure you’ve heard of before that involves a guy named Icarus and wax wings. Do you know it?

Perhaps you do, but very likely you only know half of the story because only half of the story continues to be passed down.

The story goes that a father and son are trapped in a prison in a tower and the father creates wings for both of them to fly away. Wax binds the winds to their backs so they can coast out of the window and fly free.

The son, Icarus, is told that he shouldn’t fly too close to the sun for the sun would melt the wax and he’d fall into the ocean, drown, and die. Bummer.

So what does the kid do? Pretty much what any kid with too much energy would do. He has all sorts of fun: twisting, performing aerial acrobatics, feeling the true extent of his freedom. But whoops, he gets a little too carried away and flies too close to the sun and bam, the wax melts off his back and the teen falls to his grim demise to drown in the ocean.

The lesson: Hubris, overbearing pride, leads to arrogance and arrogance leads to a mighty fall. Don’t push yourself too high to the sun lest you melt your own wings.

Pretty good advice, right? It’s definitely a story I’ll share with my children.

But that’s only half the story.

In The Icarus Deception, Seth Godin points out that our culture continues to only share half of the story and only half of the lesson is learned.

We learn not to become pompous and arrogant in our ways, but because it’s not countered with the lesson in the other half of the story, this dampens our sense of what we can do in our lives. This story holds us back from actually achieving remarkable things, what Godin refers to as our art to offer the world.

What’s the rest of the story?

Icarus was also told not to fly too close to the ocean for the waves would lap up, harden the wax on his wings, and he’d fall to the ocean unable to fly away and would drown.

The lesson: Don’t think too low of yourself. Don’t set your bar so low that you suffer the same exact demise as flying too high.

Since reading Godin’s book, I’ve spent the past few years asking my students the story of Icarus in hopes that students would eventually begin telling the whole story and feel comfortable once again with flying closer to the sun.

But alas, that hasn’t happened…yet. One day I know it will, but for now, my students continue to only share half the story. And I continue to see my students afraid to really push themselves out of fear that they will fail.

And yes, failure sucks. Flying too close to the sun (failing) sucks. But flying too close to the ocean sucks just the same. We’re just not sharing this message enough.

I honestly believe that we (yes, you) are capable of far more than we’re taught to believe. In school, perhaps we should be pushing our students to fail more because what better safe space to fail do we have?

In the world of high-stakes testing and a tracking system that sets some students on a rigid path to Ivy League beginning as young as kindergarten, our students are taught not to fail.

But what if failing sometimes signifies that you’re pushing yourself to the limit? That you’re growing your edge? So that tomorrow when you go to the edge, you can walk out a little bit farther.

It’s like this: When your edge grows and my edge grows, we all walk out a whole lot farther.

Just imagine the beautiful view from there. It’s stunning, right?

Here’s to you growing your edge with me.