Embracing Failure

The picture at the top is of Lake Atitlán, in Guatemala, where I am writing from this week. I left Tapachula, in the South of Mexico, early yesterday morning. At the border with Guatemala, I ran into a drunkard that was upset I wouldn't pay him for his fixer services and after trying to take my GoPro decided he would instead steal a small gas vent cap from my motorcycle (fortunately I had several spares). I thought that would be my adventure for the day. As I rode into Guatemala the landscape changed into a tropical jungle, and then beautiful mountains, and then the winding roads of the Pan-American Highway. I was 40 minutes from Panajachel (where I would stay the night) when my rear tire went flat.

I was in the outskirts of a small town and asked about a tire repair shop. The closest was 2 miles away, and I wasn't able to get the bike to roll very far without losing control. I was carrying all my bags and gear, so I decided to just repair the thing myself. A group of children gathered to see what I was doing (I counted 11), and I started to work on the tire. Removing a tube and putting a new one in is a grueling process if you haven't done it many times (and I haven't). Between the physical effort, and keeping the kids away from my tools, I finally managed to change the tube. As I was pumping it up, I realized this one was leaking air too. I had damaged it while I was repairing it. I fortunately had one more spare (for the front wheel, but it would have to do). So I redid the whole thing, and the second time I was able to get it right. This took me about 3 hours, and it was now around 6pm, and the sun was starting to set. I continued my journey in the night, down winding roads to Lake Atitlán, tired, starving, and afraid, until I got to my destination.

I thought about failure that afternoon. I had ridden from Colorado to Guatemala without a flat tire, but the entropy of the universe struck again. In business, and in life, that's how things go. We build success upon success, but failure is inevitable. Sometimes it's small, and sometimes it's large. I was thankful that my tire went flat near a town, with people, in the daylight, and not at night on a highway. I saw it as an opportunity to get better at repairing flats, and I was thankful I had 2 spare tubes after I screwed one up. I'm better because of it, even though I was exhausted at the end of it. I learned a few things. I hope I don't have another flat tire, but something else will happen, that's just how things go.

My first thought was "dammit, so close to the end of my journey, and I have to deal with this". After accepting what it was, I decided to deal with it. I had practiced changing tubes before leaving, so I knew what to do, in theory at least. I also thought that it would be better to do this in a place with houses, in the daylight, with people around, then it would on a highway, at night. This is part of why I try to travel early in the day. I got a chance to practice some more, and get better at a skill that I might need again.

Failure is to be expected. Contracts will be lost, relationships will fail, mistakes will be made. Our attitude when things go wrong makes a big difference. Take a failure as practice, a way to get better, a lesson to learn. Embrace it, and you will become better at everything you do.