Defying Our Dreams and Overcoming Failure

In April of 1882, an Alabama doctor approached the homestead of a desperate mother. Her name was Kate and her 19-month-old daughter was desperately ill. It was an era when medicine was still a burgeoning science. There were no x-rays, there were no MRIs, and there were no antibiotics. The infant mortality rate in the United States was hovering around 20%. Kate expected the worse. And as the doctor examined her ailing child, the best he could suggest was some form of congestion affecting the stomach and brain, an ailment with no effective form of treatment in 1882. The situation seemed dire.

Despite her expectations, Kate’s daughter survived the illness. But as her daughter grew older, Kate noticed odd behaviour. It turned out that the illness had left a lingering reminder: it robbed her daughter of both her vision and hearing.

This was a troubling turn of events. Children with such physical impairments had little to hope for in 19th Century America. Most became charity cases. Kate’s daughter, however, would defy these expectations. She would become one of the most celebrated authors and lectionaries of her day.  She would also become a notable advocate for woman’s rights and for others with physical impairments. Her name? Helen Keller.

Helen Keller represents a radical contradiction to our human conditioning. We are taught from an early age that failing to meet expectations is unacceptable. The low grade on a test, the inability to behave in a restaurant, or the out of place joke in the middle of a serious conversation; all of these social expectations lead us to view failure as disgraceful. As we age, the social expectations increase. If we don’t achieve our dream job, or dream home, or dream car, we feel that we’ve failed at life. Somehow, along the journey, we unintentionally set astronomical expectations on the shape of our lives. Failure to meet these expectations often results in a sense of personal catastrophe.

What makes Helen Keller such a mythic figure in our world is simple: She defies this self-expectation narrative. By all accounts, she was taken out of the race of life before it began. No one assumed this deaf and blind girl from Alabama would amount to much more than a charity case. Certainly, she wrestled with similar feelings. How did she undermine the self-expectation narrative to become such a prolific figure?

We Get to Carry Each Other

U2 is arguably the most legendary four-piece rock band in history. In 1989, during the height of their fame, they did something unthinkable: they walked away. They didn’t breakup, or quit music, but they had to take a break and “dream it all up again.” Throughout the 1980s, U2 had pushed the standard of rock music to a level even they couldn’t exceed. The expectations for their next album were astronomical, both outside and inside the band.

By the autumn of 1990, U2 had set up shop at the legendary Hansa Studios in East Berlin. But soon after, divisions started to form within in the group over the direction of the next album. Arguments broke out between band members, and the songs that were recorded lacked U2’s typical polish. Members of the band became increasingly isolated. U2 was failing their own expectations, and they could only blame each other.

Then something incredible happened. During an impromptu session, The Edge – U2’s guitarist – was fumbling around with two seemingly disjointed chord progressions. There was something in the music. Something that beckoned the others band members. The rest of band gradually joined in. Bono – U2’s lead vocalist – began skating a lyric over top. In the middle of tension, in the middle of the strain, in the middle of this scene of mutual support, a new song was written. A song which gave birth to an entirely new genre of music. A song called “One.”

This unscripted jam session was the beginning of what would become U2’s greatest rock album: Achtung Baby! It was messy, yet beautifully prolific. It was only made because four souls decided that supporting one another was the only route to defying self-expectations. Rock artists are prone to isolation, and many bands have disintegrated over competing expectations of how the band should sound. U2 learned something that day in East Berlin: defying our self-expectations can only happen when we abandon our self-expectations, and depend on others in the midst of our failure.

Helen Keller’s journey was not unlike U2’s experience in Berlin. The early years of her childhood were difficult, filled with great uncertainty. It was like being “at sea in a dense fog,” she would comment in her autobiography. While she had some success communicating in a very basic form of gesturing, it wasn’t until she met Anne Sullivan in the Spring of 1887 that Helen’s life began to turn around.

Anne Sullivan was 20-years-old when she arrived at the Keller homestead. She was also visually impaired. A former student of Perkins Institute for the Blind, Sullivan immediately went to task with a radical approach of educating Keller. She would help Keller spell words with her fingers and then associate them with objects. The process was exhausting. How do you tell someone what something is when they have never seen it, and don’t even understand the concept of language? Keller was frustrated with the approach. But Sullivan persisted. Within a month, Keller had an epiphany as Sullivan ran her hand under water:

“Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten — a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free!”

Keller not only became aware of the power of language, she looked at in a way few of us with our full senses will ever see. It was all thanks to her teacher, and soon-to-be confidant, Anne Sullivan.

The relationship between Keller and Sullivan reveal to us a unique truth: when our expectations fail, only the constant support of community can lead us to a new and profound vision of our potential. U2 could have easily quite when they failed to exceed the self-imposed expectations of their next album. Helen Keller could have easily allowed the failed expectation of what her life could be to turn her into a charity case. In each scenario, it took companionship to exceed expectations by walking the road of life together. Our potential is not defined by a laundry list of failed expectations, it is defined by the different yet intimate voices around us. Voices that are willing to paint a picture of who we truly are in spite of our failures. The lyrics of “One” seem appropriate: “We’re one, but we’re not the same. We get to carry each other.”

Chasing Dreams

Most of us will never encounter the level of hardship endured by Helen Keller. But we will face moments when our lives seem a pale reflection of our expectations. Life throws more curveballs than Nolan Ryan. We should anticipate this better. Yet many of us sink into misery at the moment reality hits us square in the face. When our expectations about life crumble, we don’t take it well. Why?

In 1931, James Truslow Adams wrote a book called The Epic of America. In it he used a unique term: “The American Dream.” The idea of the American Dream has long outlived Adams and has since become synonymous with a certain philosophy of materialism. In summary, the American Dream advocates that anyone, regardless of their social class, ethnicity, or gender can come to America, and through hard-work, become incredibly successful and wealthy. At the very least, it is the middle-class dream of a three-bedroom home, two cars, well-being, and a healthy retirement. This dream has infected most of Western culture and as a result, sets up a basic expectations about life in all of us. The moment any of these things become unattainable, when life looks more like an over-whelming mortgage, student debt, an endless stream of bills, and terrible health, we instinctively view our failed-expectations in dramatic fashion.

The interesting part? Adams didn’t believe in the American Dream as material success. He saw it as freedom to experience the fruits of life and healthy spirituality. Success was deemed by the quality of life one could achieve in a democratic society, not simply because they were rich in material wealth, but because they were rich in spirit. Material dreams were not to be the focus of life, only the means to enjoy it. Over the years, this messaging has been distorted.

Adams reveals a fascinating connection between our self-imposed expectations and how we perceive our lives. Many of us have allowed our material dreams to become the focus of lives. When the dreams fail to materialize, we believe our life has no meaning. Our lives should actually focus on healthy spiritual living, then our dreams / expectations and reality will come into alignment. There’s a Gospel-esque resonance here.

How many times do we see Jesus emphasizing the need for Spiritual treasure over earthly treasure? How many times does he confront the inability of avarice to bring genuine fulfillment? This is the challenge posed by Christ: place your expectations in God, not your material dreams. Only one of these things can fulfill you.

Many Christians – dare I say, many pastors – wrestle with failed expectations about life. Some of us suffer financially, some of us suffer physically, and some of us suffer emotionally. For whatever reason, life threw too many curveballs and we haven’t adapted. We’re standing at the plate, sitting on strike two, and we’re ready to approach our swing the same exact way we always have, hoping this time we’ll hit the ball. What if we need a new approach? Maybe this involves re-evaluating our failed expectations. Maybe our lives aren’t perfect, but maybe it’s not bad either. Remember, most of our self-expectations about life are built on the definition of success known as the American Dream. Its hard-wired into our democratic and capitalist upbringing. What if we defined our lives by a different set of expectations? Maybe the only expectations I should concern myself with are these: do I know Jesus and am I serving him.

Approaching the Curveball

In the end, defying our failed expectations about life is difficult. Both Helen Keller and U2 demonstrate that it’s nearly impossible to achieve a breakthrough that looks and sounds like the life we expected. If we are to defy our failed expectations, it’ll only happen when we allow others to help us. Those who are close to us are the only ones who see us for who we really are. They can help us adapt to the curveball. We may not hit the home run we’ve dreamed about, but perhaps a double or triple will do. To me, I’ve always found those types of hits extraordinarily more impressive than a home run.

We are also called as Christians to abandon our dreams. Not to fill them with “God’s dreams” or some other New Age feel-goodery, and to recognize that life is not rooted in the American Dream. Some of the poorest people in the world, are wealthier than Solomon. Why? Because they see life worth the living in the work of the Kingdom. James Adams was right: spiritual wealth fare exceeds material gain.

*Photo by Oscar Keys on Unsplash