Losing

I was reading the September issue of “National Geographic” the other night and found a story about failure. The author’s contention was that failure is a necessary part of life and ultimate success. There were photos of George Mallory (lost as he attempted to scale Everest), and Amelia Earhart, and Ernest Shackleton. The author summed it up this way, “Failure – never sought, always dreaded, impossible to ignore –is the specter that hovers over every attempt at exploration. Yet without the sting of failure to spur us to reassess and rethink, progress would be impossible.

            

In 1914, Irish-born explorer Ernest Shackleton led a twenty-seven man team on a trans-Antarctic journey in the ship “Endeavor.” His attempt to cross Antarctica failed when the ship became stuck in ice. Thousands of miles from help with no way to get word out of their predicament, Shackleton faced the real possibility that he and every man with him would die. It was one of history’s great exploration miscalculations.

            

But that wasn’t the end of the story, Shackleton refused to give up. He couldn’t change what landed the “Endeavor” on the ice, but he could bring the men home safely. Persistence, resilience, and adaptability. Shackleton exhibited all three characteristics and he turned his failure into success. In 1916, two years after leaving on his Antarctic exploration, Shackleton and all twenty-seven crew members returned home. Did he accomplish what he set out to discover? No. But what he did accomplish was as important.

            

Failure can define future success. Writer Pat Conroy’s non-fiction best-seller, “My Losing Season” tells his story as a basketball player on a very bad citadel team. Conroy was a student at the all-male South Carolina military college in the sixties as the school struggled to integrate and finds its way in the turbulence that defined the decade and the protests over America’s involvement in Vietnam.

           

Conroy’s attendance at the Citadel conflicted him. The son of a Marine Corps fighter pilot, Conroy always felt outside and apart from his father. He did what was expected and attended the Citadel, but he wasn’t the typical Southern cadet. And, as he details the losses, one after another, and the conflict surrounding him, you begin to understand where “The Prince of Tides,” “The Water is Wide,” and “The Great Santini” were born.

            

Conroy, for most of his adult life, struggled with depression. His books reflect human frailty, and pain, and failure. Now? Now, Conroy is happily married. He’s even penned a cookbook on low-country cuisine. While he’s never said so, I can’t help but think it was the losing, the struggling through the pain, that has made the happiness of his later years so much more enjoyable.

            

Failure, loss, it seems, is part of the human condition. How we persist, how we bounce back when “all is lost” ultimately defines who we are. I’ve thought a good deal about that the past few weeks as two friends left this place after lengthy terms of incarceration.

            

Dre (short for Andre) went home two weeks ago after ten years. For the past two years, he and I never missed an episode of CBS’s reality show “Amazing Race.” We decided some time ago we could win that competition. Dre was the fastest man on the compound. I have never seen a man run with such explosiveness and energy. And, he was fearless. Perhaps that came from negotiating his way as a 5’8” man through high custody prisons while avoiding gangs and other distractions.

            

“I’ll take on any heights,” he’d tell me. “You eat anything they throw at you.” (My “talent” or weakness – I can eat almost anything). Dre had been in the service at the time of his arrest. “It was 2^nd degree murder, and I’ve regretted every day since.” The jury must have believed him; his sentence was at the minimum level for the crime.

            

Still, twelve years (he did a little over ten) is a long time to be away, to think about what was and what might have been. You can’t help but think about it, you know, how different your life had been “if only.”

           

Dre came to this low-level facility in 2010. We hit it off almost immediately. He was a college student and in May earned his degree. Two weeks ago his father arrived out front and picked him up. They drove back to New Jersey and “home”. Dre has college and a job waiting on him. Prison was not a good use of those years, except … except look what Dre did with the time. Like Shackleton, he turned his goals in a different direction. He had to survive, overcome, endure. And he did. And he found his way home.

            

Then there’s Mark. Mark leaves in twenty-four days. Seventeen years and a little over a month after he entered prison, he’s heading out.

            

At age 26, barely able to read, living in one dilapidated trailer after another, Mark was arrested on a serious charge. “Testify against your co-defendant and you’ll get two years,” the commonwealth attorney told him. Mark wasn’t a snitch. “I took my chance in court, got convicted and they asked for life.” Instead, the judge gave him twenty years.

            

Mark was, as he put it, a trailer trash redneck, who read at a first grade level. He started out at Nottoway, notorious for stabbings, and gang violence, and death. “And you know what Larry? I never had a finger put on me. For some reason – I guess it was God – I came through this time unscathed.”

            Unscathed. Psalm 118 says “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear.” It means simply, “that God is with me no matter what the circumstances may be. Mark told me that a few months ago and I smiled. It was that verse that helped me fall asleep each night as I struggled with the violence and mayhem of the receiving unit.

            

Mark had nothing when he was locked up. He lacked family support, job skills, even rudimentary education. Then his life took a turn. He was sitting in church one Sunday at Nottoway when an inmate he barely knew approached him. “My girl’s coming for a visit next Saturday and she’s bringing a friend. You seem like an alright guy. Want to visit with her?”

            

A week later he was sitting in the visitation room with Sharon. For the next year they exchanged letters and then phone calls and more visits. His friend stopped seeing the other girl; Mark and Sharon, however, grew closer. Two years later, with Mark still doing ten years, he and Sharon married in the Nottoway Prison chapel.

            

Mark started school and in less than eighteen months earned his GED. A year ago he joined our IT program and completed that. Along the way, he learned CAD (computer assisted design).

            

Mark’s whole life was one of disappointment and failure until he hit the worst he could imagine. “I never would have met Sharon, never would have gotten my education, if I hadn’t turned down that two year plea. God brought me through the valley.”

            

The past two months have been tough on me. Life in here ebbs and flows and during these few months I’ve been thinking a good deal about where I started and where I’m headed. And it’s strange. I struggle a good bit, feeling every bit the failure. Guys in here, however, view me in an entirely different way. I have everything – according to them – going for me.

            

So the other night Mark, who lives in the bunk right next to me, leaned over to say something. “I wouldn’t have graduated the college program if it wasn’t for you,” he told me. “You’ll never know what you being in here has meant to the guys until you forgive yourself and let God move you forward.” That’s what got me thinking about Shackleton, and Conroy, and failure.

            

I think what Mark was saying to me is failure is in the present. We miss out, we screw up relationships, and dreams, and assignments, and we face a crossroads. We move forward or we die. And you know, you can die without being dead. Or you can struggle and go on, and end up in a different place than you expected, but a good place none the less.

           

It took Shackleton almost two years to cross the ice; it took Conroy almost twenty years and a half dozen novels to sort through his depression; sometimes it takes the horror and waste of this place.