Failing in front of everyone is brutal. It’s also where people see what grace looks like on a real person.

Public failure is genuinely painful and is also one of the few places people get to see how someone handles being wrong. Everyone has heard grace described and almost nobody has watched it performed, so when you take a loss without lying about it or turning it on somebody else, the people around you learn something they could not be told. That does not make it less awful. It does mean it is not wasted.

If something of yours has just gone badly in public, say the plain version out loud and add neither excuses nor self-attack. Let people see you keep going.