`Failure' Is Such a Relative Term

Stop laughing. Wouldn't a red carpet, silver-spooned, served-on-a-platter existence be more boring than Ferris Bueller's math class? Isn't it the rich kid who has all the toys he could ever need, but nobody to share them with? The perks ain't worth it.

You don't want that! You want struggle, tragedy, triumph! It's a better story if you crash 'n burn before putting it in cruise control. Muck it up in the corners now, chuckle when looking in life's rearview mirror later.

So, I figure being a fall-flat-on-my-face, good-for-nothing, down-and-out loser is the way to be, or at least how to start. People who persevere after tremendous stuggles are giant sequoias among a forest of pine trees - head and shoulders above the rest.

But how do you get there? Simple. Just climb off the canvas before the 10-count. If you must, grab the ropes and pull yourself up.

Still unconvinced?

Enter Exhibit A, Michael Jordan, who was cut from the Laney High School (Wilmington) boys' varsity basketball team as a 10th-grader. He reacted by spending his free time working on his game. Safe to say it paid off.

After donning a Laney jersey for his two final high school years, Jordan attended UNC, where, as a freshman, he clinched the 1981-82 national championship with a game-winning shot. He's since won six professional titles, two Olympic gold medals and the unofficial title as the greatest player ever to lace up a pair of hightops. But he didn't even ride pine at his own high school!

More recognizable than the back of your hand, MJ can't crack open his car window without fielding an autograph request. So when Jordan checks into hotels and wants a sliver of anonymity, he lists himself as LeRoy Smith, the guy Laney coach Clifton "Pop" Herring kept instead of His Airness. Hey, Pop, done kicking yourself yet?

Contrary to what has manifested into popular belief, success wasn't a birthright for Jordan's college coach, Dean Smith.

Following a 22-point loss at Wake Forest in January 1965, his fourth season as UNC's head coach, Smith - whose 36 seasons at Carolina produced a Division I men's basketball-record 879 victories - was hanged in effigy by the students. Not a week later, after a three-point home loss to N.C. State, a Dean dummy was strung up again and lit on fire - while a trumpeter played "Taps." Quite the cry from Doherty's Disciples, don't you think?

With Jordan's jumper Smith finally won his first national title, 20 years into his career. After the game Jordan's father, James, was seen kicking at the ground. Asked what he was doing, James said he was kicking the monkey that'd been on Smith's back. That monkey's been long gone.

Then there's John Elway, who all but singlehandedly led the Denver Broncos to three Super Bowls in four years - only to lose them all by an average of 32 points. Let's see: 6:14 p.m., National Anthem; 6:18 p.m., opening kickoff; 6:19 p.m., Bronco burgers.

Eight years after suffering a 45-point spanking by San Francisco in 1990, the worst defeat in Super Bowl history, Elway eventually reeled in his white whale. He did it again the following year when he was 38 years young.

Beethoven - perhaps you've heard of him or, better yet, heard him - was described by a music teacher as "hopeless." Teachers labeled Albert Einstein, who didn't learn to speak until he was 4, as a "bad student."

Thomas Edison was told as a youngster that he was too stupid to learn anything. But he had an idea - it'd hardly be a stretch to say a light bulb came on - and, 3,000 hypotheses later, proved his theory on the electric light.

Of course, history rarely recognizes its most famous failure, Abraham Lincoln (yes, that Abraham Lincoln), as the flop he was before he became president. You can bet your top hat that Lincoln set the modern-day standard for fizzling.

Examine a terse biographical timeline: 1831 fails in business; 1832 defeated for legislature; 1833 failed in business again; 1834 elected to legislature; 1835 sweetheart dies; 1836 suffers nervous breakdown. And the 1930s were supposedly rough.

The 1840s and '50s weren't exactly parties for Honest Abe, either. From 1838 to 1859, Lincoln was elected to Congress once, in 1846, but lost bids to become speaker (1838), elector (1840), congressman (1848), senator (1855 and 1859) and vice president (1856).

If the Union hadn't been saved, would his picture reside on the $5 bill? I think you'd instead find it in the dictionary - file "F," subfile "ailure."

So stick-to-itiveness is the key. Knowing that, comedian Jerry Seinfeld, in his book "SeinLanguage," classified a new category of failures: those unsuccessful at committing suicide.

"Why don't they just keep trying?" Seinfeld wrote. "Is their life any better now? No. In fact, it's worse, because now they've found out here's one more thing you stink at. And that's why these people don't succeed at life to begin with. They give up too easy.

"I say, pills don't work? Try a rope. Car won't start in the garage? Get a tune-up. There's nothing more rewarding than reaching a goal you set for yourself."

Keep your chin up. There's always something to shoot for. And remember what T.S. Eliot once wrote: "Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things."

Dan Satter agrees with John Wooden's philosophy about making failure your friend. Send your compliments, comments or criticism to Dan by e-mailing him at satter@email.unc.edu.