A Scoutmaster Minute is a short talk the Scoutmaster gives at the end of a troop meeting: one idea, a story or two, and a challenge for the week ahead. This is one I gave to our troop.

Good evening, Scouts.

What do Lady Gaga, Tom Brady, Thomas Edison and I, Mr. Sal, all have in common? We are not afraid to fail.

Lady Gaga. Before she was famous, she spent countless hours writing and recording, then writing and recording some more. A record label signed her and dropped her just three months later. She ended up writing songs for other artists just to get her name out there and pay the bills. Her first attempts as a singer were not successful. But through all those failures, she found the right path, and today she is one of the most famous musicians of our time.

Thomas Edison. He’s the inventor behind the light bulb, and he ran thousands of experiments that didn’t work. When people asked him how he kept going after so many failures, he said, in so many words, that he hadn’t failed at all. He had just found thousands of ways that won’t work.

Tom Brady. Some people consider him the greatest football player of all time. He went to Serra High School, right here in the Bay Area. I went to Archbishop Mitty, and we got to play against each other. One game in particular, Tom ran a naked bootleg, rolling out to the side all by himself. I was playing defensive end, I came around the corner, and I sacked him. Most people don’t believe me, but there’s an article in the San Jose Mercury News from the ’90s that shows it. We beat Tom Brady and his team that day, so you could argue he failed. That failure didn’t stop him from a great high school career, a college career and an NFL career. Sometimes you have to dust yourself off, stand back up and keep going.

Me. In my line of work (coding, data engineering and business intelligence) I welcome failure. I fail constantly until I find the right way to write the code. In fact, one of my favorite things to do is build a quick prototype and let it fail, just to learn how not to do it.

That’s a lot like Scouting. Your adult leaders work hard to create a place where you can fail safely. A knot that doesn’t hold. A tent that’s pitched wrong. A fire you can’t get going with flint and steel. Failure is one of the most important parts of Scouting.

So here’s my challenge to every Scout here tonight: go out into the world tomorrow and don’t be afraid of failure. Embrace it. Nothing you’re doing right now is brain surgery or launching a rocket to the moon. You’re at a point in your life where you can fail and learn. Failing and giving up is the worst kind of failure. Failing and learning should be celebrated.

Good night, Scouts.

More Scoutmaster Minutes are collected under scoutmaster-minute.