It’s not often that I find myself on the anticipatory end of trends.  Most of the time on Tropophilia, I am summarizing or lightly editorializing on stuff that has already been thoroughly discussed in the media or in the blogosphere.

Well, humor me, but I so called this one.

At the end of October, I wrote a post called “In Science, FAIL = WIN.” I preached that the awesome thing about science is that even if your experiment implodes, you can still learn a lot (and maybe more than you would have if your experiment succeeded).  A failed experiment is not a useless experiment, and a crushed hypothesis is not one that was formed in vain.

Lo and behold, Wired magazine chose “FAIL!” as the theme of their December issue.  The tagline?  ”Why Losing Big Can Be A Winning Strategy.”  This piece takes the same basic tone as mine: embrace the FAIL, because it can lead to new (and perhaps better) opportunities.

One thing that both the magazine and I leave out: in the moment of the FAIL, it is tough to embrace it or see the opportunity.  Sometimes the benefit of the FAIL does not manifest until much later.  Certainly in both a failed relationship and failed employment over the past two or three years, I was not able to see that both would lead to much better and healthier possibilities.  Trying to keep a long-term perspective will make accepting and embracing the FAIL much easier.  But that’s easier said than done.