Second efforts count

The annual Miss Universe competition lives on as a riveting television event. The once Donald Trump owned beauty pageant is littered with memorable moments, none more infamous than in 2015 when host Steve Harvey announced the wrong winner – out of two contestants. And although Miss Universe is, on one hand, a ceremonious objectification of young and attractive women, producers do attempt to use the competition as a vehicle to convey important messages about social justice, peace, diversity and respect for individuality.

At the most recent Miss Universe competition, the final three contestants were asked a humbling question:

Name something from the course of your life that you failed at, and tell us what you learned from that experience...

Personal failure and the disappointment that ensues is generally a private struggle that remains with an individual. You only have to look as far as social media to see that the distribution between ‘good news’ and ‘bad news’ is totally asymmetrical. Social media content generally relates to holidays, weddings, childbirth, job promotions etc. and would rarely (if at all) dip into morose topics like redundancy, bankruptcy, relationship breakdown etc. As Simon Sinek put it in his talk about millennials, social media is leading to social isolation among some users because it creates a distorted reality where good news stories completely blanket the reality of everyday failure and disappointment. As a result, people keep failure to themselves in fear of violating social norms of perceived power and success.

It may be obvious but failure – whilst disappointing and painful in the short term – provides us with two important things; feedback from which we can learn from and the opportunity to make a second effort. History will remember household names such as J.K Rowling, Colonel Sanders and Oprah Winfrey for their incredible accomplishments just as much as the difficult journeys each took on their respective path to success.

So for me, the Miss Universe question was a refreshing fall from grace from the superficial glitz and glamour of the competition. I liked the question because it was, for a lack of better of word, innately human. It required contestants to show vulnerability in a public domain, something incredibility difficult to do. But most importantly, it was a completely universal question that didn’t discriminate on age, gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. It was and will continue to remain a question that everyone can answer.