Failure is mud beneath the feet.

It clings to a traveler’s boots, weighing down every step as it threatens to suck the very soles away and down into the morass. The exhausting slog through the mud of failures past inhibits forward momentum—the drying cakes of old disappointments crusting around the calves, the dripping slurry of fresh defeats splattering not only the traveler but nearby travelers as well.

Failure can be a quagmire. Dangerous. Festering. Deadly.

But mud

can be turned

into bricks.

And turning mud into bricks takes only three things: time, patience, and fire.

It takes time,

because first the traveler must pause for a spell, halt this plodding through the muck and address the mud itself. What was once hopes and dreams and ideas may now feel like slime in the hands, but it is not useless. In fact, it has great potential. But it must be gathered up and given new form.

And this process takes patience,

for the medium is not always easy to work with. It is raw and cold and uncooperative; the reek of decay can sting the eyes, blurring one’s vision and inhibiting the endeavor. Remnants of what once was may even emerge from the sludge and compromise the delicate integrity of the new shape it is being given. It may take the traveler many tries to assemble bricks from mud, one by one, a laborious task. They won’t be pretty. They won’t be uniform. But, eventually, they will exist.

Finally, the traveler needs fire.

A catalyst. Sometimes, a fellow traveler can offer to share their own fire and swiftly ignite a blaze for the weary, mud-caked brickmaker. Sometimes, however—more often, perhaps—the spark must come from the traveler alone. It may be a torch, still asmolder from past experiences; a lighter, buried deep within the traveler’s pack; a small fleck of flint fortune laid on the path; or a soggy book of matches that will require yet more time and patience to dry out before use. But whatever the source, a fire must be lit to cure the bricks, to transform them.

Which takes more time…

—Clean your boots.

And more patience…

—Get some rest.

And the flames must continue to be stoked…

—Cook something nourishing.

And once that mud has been shaped and cured—transformed into something useful—those bricks can be used to build something new, to laid new solid ground upon which the traveler may tread, to create stairs to climb to higher ground, to forge some bold new path forward and out of the woods.

And from the ashes left by the kiln itself, even new life can emerge.

Thanks for reading.