What I Made Failure Mean

The subject I don’t want to write about at all — but it follows on from my last post, so it fits.

The feeling I was left with after not getting through my first vision quest at the tender age of 31… was failure.
At 31, you’re supposed to be man enough to get through these hard things, aren’t you?

It’s like music without a voice, incomplete. That’s how I felt.
Half-baked. Not done. And afraid of trying again.

It took me years to find the courage to go back. And when I did, it would be on a beautiful farm in the Western Cape, in my own country.

But before that — back to the version of me that came down from that mountain.

It wasn’t a happy one.

No matter what people said about effort being what counted, or that I had done well all things considered… none of it helped me shake the feeling that I had failed. And more than that — maybe I was a failure.

Something about me. Who I was.

That doubt in me kept saying: maybe you don’t have what it takes.
Maybe it was right all along. Maybe you’re not cut out for this.

Let me give some backdrop to what I put into this.

At the time, I was working at a bank — payroll department, under an extremely uptight manager. Not exactly a place where you just disappear for two weeks.

Getting the leave alone was a push.

Then there was the planning, finding the right materials, figuring out how to stay dry using only natural resources. And the cost… which was significant.

So in my mind, this wasn’t something I was going to repeat.
I had to get through.

And the way I was going to do that was to push as hard as I could.

When the time came, I left with what I had — some beeswax-coated material that I hoped would protect me from the rain, but more from the cold.

Because rain is manageable if it’s warm enough.

This was mid-winter in a Brazilian forest.

Very cold and very wet were my worst fears.
I wasn’t even thinking about what might have been harder, no food and water for four days straight.

So that’s what I went in with.
A half-assed plan, and a boss I wasn’t in any hurry to return to.

And if I’m honest, what I was really hoping for was a miracle.

That maybe this year there would be less rain. That somehow I’d find a way. That something bigger than me would come through.

I mean, I had made the sacrifice.

Surely that counted for something.

And if you read my last post, you’ll know — it didn’t.

But looking back now… maybe that kind of failure is exactly what I needed.
To shake me out of something.

I came back two weeks later with whispers of abandonment from the Brazilian elder — and no badge to pin on any jacket.

I hadn’t even completed the first of four vision quests.

Seven. Nine. Thirteen days still ahead.

And that became part of the story — that I was now behind. That I had already failed at the starting line.

There was no redeeming this one.

I returned not just with all of that, but to my manager, who had very little grace for the state I was in.

Bless her… I can see now I wasn’t always easy to be around.

But she did say something that stuck:
“Ryan, you just don’t seem yourself.”

She was right.

For months, I wasn’t.

I was exhausted. Defeated. Something in me had given up.

And I carried that disappointment in myself. It bled into everything. My work. My self-esteem.

That’s the thing about failure.

It’s not what happens — it’s what you make it mean.

From the outside, this might have been acceptable.
You gave it your best.

But the story I was telling myself was very different.

This was my last chance.
Something is wrong with you.
You’re never going to catch up.

All that from not even completing the first step.

I want to say there was a turning point.

But I’m not sure there was one.
Maybe it was just a dark night I had to sail.

Either way, the light did begin to return.

The failure started to feel less about me and more about how I had approached it.

There were things to learn. And the desire to learn came back.

Because I didn’t want to get through on luck.
I wanted to know that I could do it.

Not by miracle.
But by finding the strength in myself.

A few years later, the opportunity came again.

And this time, I was ready enough.

And maybe more than that I was somewhere softer.
My own country. My own land.

Kinder.

And for the first time, I was able to surrender to nature, and to myself.

Looking at it now, I don’t think it was about getting through it the first time. Instead, it was about becoming someone who could return.