Let me preface this post by saying that Louis CK inspired today’s musings. Why is that pertinent, it’s not really, but I’m not so secretly hoping he’ll google himself and end up here and then we’ll go down to the Comedy Cellar together and form a two man tribute band which only plays The Seeds Mr. Farmer and PUSA’s Peaches, or least co-write it as a story line for season three of Louie.

 

I’ve always been a firm believer in the power of fail, or to put it more crudely, the ability to suck out loud.

Sports fans, or anyone one born after 1980, know to well about Michael Jordan being cut from the high school basketball team and then roaring back on grit and determination to become arguably (Wilt? Magic? Oscar?) the greatest player and root beer aficionado ever in the NBA.

We’ve all seen the widely circulated Ira Glass videos, where he admits he sucked when he started, but the lesson he and we learned is that fearing failure will keep up from pushing forward.

Sucking isn’t a modern construct, Abraham Lincoln was sucking it up from way back when, losing elections and failing to get nominations to the ticket in various elections (although not as many as some would have you believe) before becoming one of our most admired presidents.

Failure or sucking is something we fear or look down upon, but in reality it’s only by stumbling and falling and looking stupid do we learn to walk and succeed.

That’s the odd bit about sucking, we always forget that it’s a step toward success. You can’t just skip over the lot, you have to struggle and learn and fail a lot (a whole f’n lot if you do it right) and try to fail, because trying to fail means you’re taking chances and growing. Remaining in your safety zone is when you stop swimming and start wading or worse sinking.

It’s not a revolutionary epiphany, we all know this, it’s rather intuitive despite how many times it’s packaged by the next self-help guru, motivational speaker, Oprah or a Chicken Soup for the Albino book.

Still, doesn’t hurt to be reminded and I was reminded of this recently while getting my lol on with some YouTube.

How this:

Became this:

Just watching this these two videos reminds me that sometimes you can suck real bad, like horrible-what-the-hell-it-hurts-to-watch-I-can’t-believe-this-guy-became-that-guy… but that’s the point, Louis the awkward, lame voices and painful to watch jokes about peaches and dolphin noises guy kept at it and became evolved into the witty, painfully honest, observant mirror and hilarious man we churned out a million dollars in profit for.

Inspiring. I mean, Louis really sucked!