The Foundry of Failure
confessions from the furnace
The following post is part of a Seed Pod collaboration about failure. Seed Pods are a SmallStack community project designed to help smaller publications lift each other up by publishing and cross-promoting around a common theme. We’re helping each other plant the seeds for growth!
When it comes to failure I’m a huge success. Failure is an engine for growth, a methodology for learning, and a process for self-development. ‘The way of failure’ is not for the faint of heart, not for the proud, not for those overly concerned by the opinions of others, and not for the greedy. What I’ve sacrificed in riches, fame, and accolades has been rewarded with ever-deepening character, humility, integrity, self-awareness, and an ineffable inner cosmos. The following is a curated selection from my robust cannon of failures and some of the resulting lessons I have learned.
The GPA Monster Under the Bed
After attending 12 different schools in 11 years of education I finally had enough. For grade 12, my final year if high school, my parents moved us to a small town in the interior of British Columbia; a place where everybody had known each other since kindergarten and where I knew nobody. I tried to make my life work as best I could but I ran out of steam about five months into the school year. I pleaded to my parents to let me drop out, promising to finish by ‘correspondence’ (government-provided home schooling). Eventually, my parents conceded and helped to set up the process. A huge weight was lifted from my heart but a new one landed on my head; without structure, I struggled to complete my coursework. If I recall correctly, I finished three courses, Creative Writing, English, and another that escapes me. The remaining stack of course workbooks sat untouched under my bed - monsters mocking my self-esteem in the dark of night, daring me to hang my toes out of the blankets.
After working for a few years - in a Dairy Queen, a window factory, and Costco - I returned to a different public high school as a ‘mature student’ to finish my final credits (I really wasn’t very mature). After an awkward year, I finally graduated. My grades were all over the place but I had enjoyed much of the learning, some of the students, a couple of teachers, and a great adventure to the Cayman Islands where I had learned to SCUBA dive as a part of an Environmental Science elective.
Dropping out of high school in my final year taught me to listen to my heart; to care for myself when I crossed my thresholds, and to search for a different path forward. Failing to finish my correspondence courses taught me that good intentions and perseverance will only get me so far; I require structure and accountability to reach my goals. Returning to high school after dropping out taught me to become comfortable with being an outlier, and that I will always find a path forward and upward, even when I lose the trail for a while.
A Wabi-Sabi Heart
Several years later, I returned to Canada and began working in an Italian restaurant in the same small town. I found myself working with a girl I had dated for a minute several years earlier, and after bumping into each other a few times in the walk-in cooler, we were right back where we had left off. After a time, we left the restaurant to work the season together in party pub atop a local ski hill, and when we came down the mountain in the spring we decided to get married. It all happened very quickly - invitations, white dresses, a small church wedding, and then we flew off, husband and wife, to work in the Cayman Islands.
We found work quickly in a local restaurant/bar and spent the next four years with sand in our toes, slinging diner food, foo-foo cocktail, and cruising the island on our little red scooter. After some time, we grew restless and ready for new adventures, so we bought plane tickets to Tokyo, where we had been invited by friends to stay for a while. After working some very odd jobs, we toured Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, before setting up shop in Freemantle, a small coastal town outside Perth, Australia.
When our visas ran out, we moved back to Canada where I enrolled in a business programme in a respectable technical university in Vancouver. About two months into school, my wife surprised me with the news that she wanted a separation. Things had felt a little rocky for a while but I was blind-sided by the news. I fought to make things work but only made things worse, as her heart had already decided to leave; it was only a matter of time before her ship sailed out of port, charting a course of her own. I was 27 years old and devastated. Not only did my ideals of love and marriage crumble, my paradigm for life completely collapsed.
Once again, I dropped out of school before my plummeting grades would have crashed onto my permanent transcript. Alone and rudderless, I packed a small book bag with some flip-flops, a cd player, the collected works of Nietzsche, and a change of clothes, and flew back to Thailand. I parked myself in a little grass hut on the island of Ko Pha-ngan, swinging in a hammock on my front porch while journaling the shattered whimperings of my heart. Nietzsche’s words, “…one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”, planted a seed inside of me that continues to grow today.
Through this failure, I learned that I had misunderstood the nature of love, setting me on a life-long quest to know Love fully. Thanks to a lecture in my critical thinking class during my short stint at university, I came to understand the nature of dogma, discovering my own indoctrination and determining to walk the long path towards autonomy. I learned that sometimes relationships don’t work, not only because of my flaws but also because of the unfulfilled longings of others. My wife had never lived outside the small towns where I found her, and our adventures had unlocked insights into herself that she didn’t know existed. She had begun to expand beyond her borders and needed time and freedom to discover her potential; and while I was flawed, her leaving had as much to do with her as it did with me. Love is about liberation, not control.
Several years later, my divorce cleared the way for my relationship with my current wife; a love so profound that I have pinch-me moments every time I look at her, 23 years into our marriage. Had my first marriage not ended, I never would have known the transformative fulfilment of this deep relationship.
His Excellency the Ambassador, Rolls Royce & Quails in a Rose Pedal Sauce
My first job after moving to Poland was as Executive Chef for the British Ambassador. I had never worked as a chef before but loved to cook. I had worked in all manner of restaurants and bars, had lived and eaten in cultures throughout the world, and food was becoming my language for self-expression.
The ambassador used dining as a tool in his diplomatic practice. He had mastered the art of talking while eating; he would catch his guests with full mouths at critical points in conversation, seizing those moments to impose his ideas. We had a constant stream of heads-of-state, dignitaries, special talents, celebrities, and occasional royalty flowing through the residence and I was responsible for planning, preparing, directing service, and executing the meals.
The second meal I prepared was for over 200 guests, including the President of Poland; I was still figuring out how to turn on the oven. A few months into my position, I was informed that about 20 executives from Rolls Royce would be visiting the residence for dinner. I tried to imagine what would be the most ‘Rolls Royce’ menu I could prepare, scrolling through meal options in my mind. After a few sleepless nights, I arrived upon a menu of roasted quails in a rose pedal sauce; decadent and suitably pretentious. My wife began calling local suppliers looking for quails, and after a frustrating hunt, managed to find a farmer willing to sell me the last of their fowl.
The next morning I arrived to the kitchen early and got to work pairing; prepping stocking, saucing, baking and roasting. Finally, the hour of service arrived and I began to plate my food. The first course went out and the plates returned licked clean. I finished the quails with a sprinkling of rose pedals and a garnish of edible gold leaf. The plates looked exquisite; I got straight to work on dessert.
After about ten minutes, the head server came to the kitchen to inform me that she thought there might be a problem; the guests had eaten everything on their plates but the quails were hardly touched. I ran up to the service kitchen where there was a very small viewing slat used for timing the courses. I placed my eyes against the wall and a cold fever of dread settled over me. I watched as the guests tried to pierce the birds with their forks; as they put pressure on the quails they slid across the plates in the sauce. A guest with a determined look on his face tried to pull meat from his quail’s thigh with a fork and knife, but the same thing happened. The birds resisted the most brazen attempts of the guests to eat them. While the quail I had tested seemed to be cooked properly, I could now see that I had under-roasted the meat. After a few more minutes, I gave a signal of surrender and the plates were cleared - all the birds returning to the kitchen, some with a few battle scars, but the rest largely intact. I served dessert and the hungry guests devour the final course.
After the guests had left, I waited in crushing defeat for the ambassador’s impending visit. Always gracious and diplomatic, he arrived with a warm smile on his face. “I’m not sure what happened out there but it was rather embarrassing. Not to worry, you’ll get it right next time.” I could hardly breathe. He left and I collapsed onto the prep table absolutely devastated. He never mentioned the event again.
Even as I write this, my face is flush with embarrassment and my heart wants to escape to a safer place - sometime, shame lingers on, as though the folly happened only moments ago. I continued to cook at the ambassador’s residence for another few years with barely a mishap. That was a wonderful time in my life, in the company of the ambassador and his family, finding rich expression through gastronomy and feeling privileged to serve their distinguished guests.
From this failure I learned not to allow my fantasy to over-reach my ability to deliver. I learned to double and triple check my work before I share it with my audience, particularly when the reputations of others are involved. I learned from the example of the ambassador to be gracious when others fall short of expectations - not adding insult to injury. I learned the recover quickly and to never make the same mistakes twice.
Hives at The RCA
In the first year of my PhD research, I was keen to realise every opportunity I could as a doctoral student at Oxford Brookes. Our family had recently moved from London to New Delhi, where my wife was posted as Director of the Polish Institute in the diplomatic mission of the Rep. of Poland in India.
My research question challenged the standing position that the chemical senses (taste, olfaction, and chemesthesis) had nothing to contribute to art. My research synthesised current knowledge from the natural sciences, psycholinguistics, philosophy, gastronomy, and art, providing a framework for the application of these senses in contemporary art practice. I was still at an early stage in my research when The Royal College of Art invited me to present my paper, Art per Os: Can Art be Tasted?, at the conference, Research from the Edge of Our Thinking.
The Royal College of Art is an institution of great renown, and I accepted my invitation with a combination of excitement and deep insecurity. While I had recently been conducting research for the UN World Food Program in Rome, I hadn’t presented before a public audience since high school. I maintain a position that I will never allow fear to prevent me from doing something I believe in. Girded with this ethos, I packed my bags and boarded the plane from Delhi to Warsaw, and then to London for the conference. Two days before my talk, (for the first time in my life) I broke out in blistering hives across my body. I didn’t feel particularly nervous in my mind, but the hives were telling me otherwise. Fortunately, the hives stopped at my neck, so they couldn’t be seen under the collar of my shirt, but they they were painfully uncomfortable.
I arrived at RCA on the day of my presentation with blood pumping in my ears, muffling the words of my hosts. Having been born into a family of charismatic preachers, I decided that I didn’t need visual slides, I was going to deliver my talk old school. There were several hundred people in the audience and I made an awkward attempt to open with humour; something about camel milk in my corn flakes in Rajasthan, which went down like the Hindenburg. From there, my talk puttered along unconvincingly before running out of gas completely shortly before the end. It’s hard for me to assess exactly how bad my talk was received, but it was apparent to me by the sympathetic applause that I had wasted the time of my audience. After the talk, I couldn’t leave the building quickly enough, making my polite farewells before escaping into the anonymity of London’s streets.
From this experience, I learned that failure is the quickest way to learn, rapidly transforming the quality of my subsequent talks. I learned that just because I can reach a stage doesn’t mean I should accept the role. I learned to allow the awkwardness of failure to soften my heart, not harden it; allowing my lessons to burn away pride and self-importance. And I learned to prepare by placing myself into the mind of my audience, as best as I am able.
An Honest Way to Live
These are only four of a great number of spectacular failures in my life. I fail often, not because I’m a failure but because I choose to live differently from others; I don’t follow predictable paths. I’m an outlier, a lone wolf, unwilling and unable to conform. I see my life, both personal and professional, as an adventure and I’m willing to take calculated risks to explore all of its possibilities, which often leaves me vulnerable to failure. I trust in the guidance of my heart, not because life always works out but because it has proven its worth, and because this is the most honest way I know to live.
I’m a student of the path of failure, not as a victim suffering myself, but as a pilgrim in search of meaning. I embrace the posture of humility and am lured by the sweet fragrance of vulnerability. I thrive in the furnace of adversity, shedding the slag of my life as I allow myself to be reshaped upon its anvil, tempering my qualities into an instrument of grace.
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