• There is an old lesson in Nunyãdume that the young sometimes understand only after the years have introduced themselves.

PART I: Failure is an event and a teacher, not an identity

The young person may see a failure as the end of the road because there are not yet enough travelled roads behind him to know how often yesterday’s disappointment becomes tomorrow’s turning point. With the passage of years comes the wisdom of hindsight, the discovery that some doors had to close, some journeys had to fail, and some dreams had to break before we could understand where life was taking us.

We begin to see that some of the things we once called failures were lessons; some were redirections; some were warnings; and some were the very wounds through which wisdom entered. The years do not necessarily make us wiser merely because we have grown older. But if we have paid attention, the years give us something youth cannot yet possess in equal measure: the long view, the wisdom of retrospect.

The elders therefore say: The drum that has never been beaten may have perfect skin, but it has never summoned a village. Life is much the same. That is why we must be careful what we call failure while the story is still being written. We want the harvest without risking the seed. We want victory without entering the arena. We want the applause without enduring the rehearsal, the criticism, the missed notes and the occasions when the audience does not clap. But that is not how life works. And that is not how greatness is built.

Many successful global leaders like Mandela, Nkrumah, and Kofi Annan experienced significant failures. They did not allow failure to define them, but to teach them. In Africa, the farmer understands it. He places seed beneath the earth without a guarantee that every seed will germinate. Some will be eaten by birds. Some will be washed away by rain. Some will encounter poor soil. Some will sprout and die. Yet the farmer returns to the field. Why? Because a failed seed is not a failed farmer.

Failure is part of the game

Life is a game we enter intending to win. But failure is not necessarily the opposite of winning. Sometimes, failure is part of the price of learning how to win. A child learning to walk does not fall once and conclude, “Walking is not my calling.” He falls. He cries. He rises. He holds the chair. He tries again.

And one day, without ceremony, the same feet that repeatedly betrayed him begin carrying him across the room. Nobody calls those early falls failure. We call them development. Why, then, when adults fall while learning to build a business, pursue an education, lead an institution, raise a family, develop an invention or rebuild a life, do we suddenly regard falling as evidence that they were never meant to walk?

Failure is often simply knowledge arriving painfully.

It tells you: this did not work. It may tell you: not this way. It may tell you: not yet. It may tell you: prepare better. Sometimes it tells you: change direction altogether. But none of those statements means: You are a failure. There is an enormous difference between “I failed at something” and “I am a failure.” One describes an event. The other condemns a human being. And we must never confuse the two.

The successful have graves behind them

Look carefully at almost every great achievement and you will find a cemetery of abandoned drafts, rejected proposals, wrong turns, embarrassing mistakes and ideas that simply did not work. We sometimes admire successful people only after history has edited out their failures. We see the mansion but not the nights on the floor. We see the degree or certificate but not the examinations failed. We see the company but not the businesses that collapsed before it. We see the leader on the podium but not the elections, applications, appointments, promotions or opportunities lost along the way. We see the harvest. We rarely ask how many planting seasons failed.

Yet Nunyãdume knows that the smoothness of the pestle comes from repeated encounters with the mortar. The friction is part of the making.

Mistakes are evidence that we are alive

There is something deeply human about getting things wrong. We misjudge people. We make poor investments. We trust the wrong advice. We choose badly. We speak when silence would have been wiser and remain silent when courage demanded speech. We sometimes disappoint people we love. And sometimes, after doing everything we knew to do, life still refuses to cooperate. These experiences should produce humility, reflection and growth, not permanent shame.

A person who has made no mistakes has attempted very little whose outcome genuinely mattered. The objective, therefore, cannot be never to fail. The objective must therefore be: Never waste a failure. If you fall, collect the lesson before you rise. Otherwise you may have to fall in the same place again.

That is the wisdom of Nunyãdume.

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