The Lessons in Failure
On the surprising teachings of clay, a yoga class to book tomorrow and the last two rooms on my late summer yoga retreat outside Barcelona.
Thy right is to work only, but never to its fruits;
let not the fruit-of-action be thy motive,
nor let thy attachment be to inaction.
Bhaghvad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 47In what I am acutely aware is a very cliched response to middle-agedom, I have started a pottery course. It is not entirely hormones. Pottery was one of the only art forms- aside strangely from Chinese brush painting- that I showed any aptitude for as a child. And I was never especially good at either. I have never been an artist in any finer sense of the word.
But even that very relative flair for working with clay seems to have been lost to my much younger self. Admittedly I am only a beginners course in, but I seem to be getting worse as the weeks go on rather than better. As is so often the case, an accidental ease in week one- classic beginners luck- has been replaced by one misshapen pot after another. And I am loving it.
To give myself a little due, anyone who has attempted to throw clay on a wheel will testify to the near impossibility of it at the beginning. An experienced potter makes working at the wheel look not just easy but near poetic. I could watch them for hours; the seeming dance between soft hands and clay, their lightness but also deftness of touch, how a minute alteration creates so much artistry. It is both mesmerising and meditative.
And it is the opposite of my experience so far. I am having to think and think hard. Like starting to drive a car, I can’t imagine ever being able to do it without its’ being an immense and overwhelming juggling act. Every Tuesday evening I spend an hour and a half completely immersed in the gymnastics of trying to sit over the clay, lock in my elbows, get the right combination of hard and soft hands, have them tethered, remember the shape of them, watch the clay but feel it more; on and on and again and again. I am acutely aware that my mind is probably getting too involved, that it will eventually be a felt experience rather than a rational one- which is the exact allure- but at this stage there is no flair. Just failure.
Which - it turns out- is the very thing I am finding the most compelling.
The first week, in an instruction that felt more philosophical than perhaps he intended, our teacher Dillon instructed us deliberately to fail. It was, he suggested, an essential part of the course. And of learning. So much so that if we produced anything that looked like a pot, anything that we became prematurely wedded to, he planned to collapse it with a sharp poke of his finger and ensure that it ended up where he wanted all our pots to be; in the slop bucket.
Letting yourself fail is harder than I imagined. A woman who has the wheel next to me and who is admittedly a little further ahead than the rest of us, dutifully displays her slightly less misshapen pots above her wheel every week and looks at them longingly -before very reticently throwing them away at the end. And when she does, it is with visible and squirming misgivings. I get her. The first time I made something that hadn’t collapsed in the making, something just worthy of the label ‘pot’, I too felt inclined to display it, found myself wanting to keep it as proof that I wasn’t entirely hopeless. But then I noticed Dillon looking over, with a wry smile, and so I dutifully forced it into a ball and flung it into the bucket. Which felt momentarily hard and then immediately and intensely liberating. Do the work and let it go. Yogic teaching in action.
Our instinct - when doing anything- tends to be to try and do it well. We are the products of a schooling system and a society that rewards results, grades output, measures everything we do by its productivity and its point. And yet this need to ‘do things well’ not only stops us from starting so much in the first place but then limits us when we do. The temptation here is to quote the basketballer Michael Jordan on failure and success, where he says 'I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.’ Which I have no doubt is wholly true. But it is also not the point I am trying to make.
Because the intention of failure there is still towards success. And what is proving such an unexpected marvel about doing pottery for me is that we are being oriented towards process pure and simple. Towards the doing of something for the sheer sake of doing it. Yes, perhaps skill might be the eventual aim. But for now we are being instructed, perhaps accidentally but also beautifully, in the simple art of working with our hands for its own sake. In the making of something, anything, and then in the letting it go.
It is possible that we will end the course and have no pots to show for it. Dillon says if he was in charge then that would be his aim. Which would make the last six Tuesday evenings, spread as they have been across a glorious spring, a lot less but also a whole lot more than I had bargained for.
YOGA CLASS TOMORROW
Tuesday 3rd June 9-10am GMT
We are back to the Zoomed mat tomorrow morning from 9am-10am and we are dwelling in the heart space- always amongst my favourite places to hang out. Join me live or sign up to receive a recording. Which will- as always- last a full week.
YOGA RETREAT at Soul Fram, Es Ingols ( just outside of Barcelona)
Monday 29th September - Friday 3rd October 2025
Make your summer run and run with a four night retreat at the end of September in Spain.
Set within a beautiful artists residence, this will be a deep dive into our feminine and creative selves as we follow the cycles of the moon. All new material which I have just started to work on and which should be really beautiful. As well as yoga there will be the option to do an afternoon of ceremics, go on long bike rides and walk to and swim in a waterfall. Four days to rest and rejuvenate after the summer and as we tip into the autumn.
Only two rooms ( one twin and one triple so perfect for duos or trios of friends) left.
Email me ( nicolecroft@me.com) or hit reply to this message for a brochure or to book. Deposits are needed to secure bookings so if you’ve had a brochure but haven’t confirmed then message me asap.
