Failure Personified

The Man with the Hollow Eyes

When out on a training run, I am at times haunted by a memory from my early days as a construction superintendent. It is the memory of a particular man.

His eyes were hollow and complexion pale as though it hadn’t seen the sun in days. He stood on his porch, hands dangling over the rail. A cigarette drooped from his bottom lip, wisps of smoke drifting around his creased forehead.

It was a hot summer day in downtown Dallas. I was building a bank and noticed this man occasionally step onto his porch to watch the construction. The skin on his forearms and chest placed him in his mid-thirties, but the deep creases in his cheeks and around his eyes said fifty. They stood as a testament to the difficulty of his life. I didn’t need him to tell his story. His countenance said enough.

Failure had been his mistress in an oppressive manner. I could see it on him. I could feel it roll off him from across the street. It had crushed him. Whether failure by his own hand or the indifferent hand of chance, it didn’t seem to matter. The effect was all the same regardless.

Failure is a finicky thing. We know it by necessity. It’s a part of life. A little can spur us to heights we never imagined. But a lot of it becomes poison that destroys us by degree.

No one can rescue us from it. In fact, handing a failed man something he didn’t earn only makes the condition chronic. Sure, mentors can light the path away from failure and toward success; however, they can’t travel it for us.

As my feet pound and legs burn deep into a training block, I sometimes think about this man. He has become a cautionary tale, a motivation to meet failure head on and turn it into success.

When I’ve made decisions as a husband, as a father, and as a Christian all these years, he’s been somewhere in the background looking on with those hopeless eyes. Is it a surprise he should accompany my runs as well?

Perhaps his presence was so shocking because I realized my potential to become him myself. After all, the history of a young man locked away in prison seems on par with that kind of future.

So, I run on and believe beyond reason.