On Failing

My dear friend,

I am writing tonight from a room that is almost empty. No desk. No bookshelf. No framed photos. Two suitcases in the corner, a backpack, and a mattress on the floor so thin I can feel the wood beneath me. I gave away most of what I had to survive the coming months. I am watching every dollar. It has been a hard year. I want to write to you tonight about failing.

I have been applying, meeting, trying, presenting, having conversations, and still I have not found the role I truly want. The one where I can build something meaningful and stay loyal to my purpose. Some days I feel as if I am moving backward. Tonight I felt it strongly. I felt like I am failing.

So I decided to write to you. Maybe I am writing to myself too.

Failure is not always loud. Sometimes it looks exactly like this. A quiet room. Fewer things. A bank account that demands humility. A future that is not yet open. A heart that is tired but still awake.

As I sat here, I remembered another time when I had to start from nothing. A very different time. A much louder time. The day I became displaced. The day I left home. I lost my house.

I still remember the sound that woke me. It was a steady drip of water from the bathroom tap. I got out of bed to check it, still half asleep. At that exact moment, everything changed. A deafening explosion shook the building. The windows shattered into thousands of sharp pieces that flew across the room. The metal frame of the window tore loose and crashed onto the bed. If I had stayed where I was, I would have been under it.

Then came the gunfire. Fast, loud, echoing through the streets. I dropped to the floor and crawled toward the kitchen, the only room without windows. I closed the door behind me and hid under the sink. My hands were shaking. I tried to call someone, but the network was gone. The internet was gone. The entire area was under attack.

In that moment of panic, I started doing what I had seen in movies about wars and disasters. I filled every pot, bottle, and container with water. I counted the food. I moved furniture to reinforce the wall behind my bed. I prepared to stay hidden for as long as I needed. It was all I could do to keep my mind busy. I didn’t pray. I talked to myself instead. I said, “You are alive, so you are meant to stay alive. If the universe wanted you gone, the glass or the bullets would have done it already.” It was my first attempt to fight fear with reason.

Then came the pounding on the door. Heavy knocks. Shouting. Armed men yelling for everyone to leave. “Evacuate now!”

I froze. I didn’t know what to take. My home was everything to me — my books, my guitar, my movie collection, the photos on the wall, the Christmas lights that made the room feel warm. The furniture I had saved for piece by piece. The quotes I had written and stuck to the walls. I couldn’t carry any of it. I went down four flights of stairs with nothing but my phone. The street outside was chaos — tanks, smoke, people running, shouting, crying. I ran too, empty-handed, away from the only home I had ever built for myself.

That moment felt like failure in its rawest form. Not because I had done something wrong, but because I had lost everything I had worked for. I had lost control of my own story. I was no longer Ali who had a home and a rhythm to his days. I was Ali who was running and didn’t know where he was going.

I managed to find a bus. It was packed with people. Mothers holding children, men shouting, people crying, trying to call loved ones. I had nothing but my phone. I didn’t know where to go. My family was far away, and I had no money left. I sat there, silent, feeling small.

When the bus stopped, volunteers were shouting, “Are you displaced?” I didn’t answer the first time. I didn’t want that word to belong to me. Displaced. It sounded like something that stripped you of identity. But eventually, I followed the others to a nearby school that was being turned into a shelter.

Inside, chaos again. Families sitting on the floor, volunteers cleaning classrooms, moving desks to make space. I sat on a bench with other men, waiting for my name to be called, waiting to be told which classroom would become my new temporary home. Hours ago, I had a furnished apartment. Now I was waiting for a spot on a classroom floor. That is what failure can feel like — one day you have a home, the next day you are waiting for a space to sleep.

I remember an older man sitting next to me. He looked at me and said quietly, “Swallow the pain and put salt on the scar.” I didn’t answer. I was angry. Angry at what had happened, angry at what I had lost, angry that someone was telling me to accept it. He didn’t know what I had left behind.

After a while, I couldn’t sit anymore. I stood up, left the line, and walked back toward the bus station. I saw trucks arriving with blankets, volunteers unloading supplies, families still fleeing. And in that chaos, something inside me shifted. I turned around. I walked back to the school — not to seek shelter this time, but to help.

I found someone in a red crescent vest and said, “How can I help?” Within minutes, I was carrying desks out of classrooms, unloading supplies from trucks, and lining up food packages. I worked through the night, without stopping. At some point, a volunteer handed me a vest and said, “Welcome to the Red Crescent.” That was how it started. That night, I stopped being a person in need of help and became a person who could help others.

That night I learned something about failure that I did not understand before. Failing is not only about losing something. Failing is also about losing a version of yourself. The boy who collected movies and hung posters and played guitar in his room did not come back from that day. The man who walked into the Red Crescent compound to volunteer did.

I have thought about that day for more than ten years. I still think about it now, in this small room, with my two suitcases and this cold candle. I think about the boy who had to leave everything and the man who had to start again. And I ask myself. Was that day a failure. Or was it a beginning in disguise.

This is what I have learned.

Failure is often the moment your story changes shape. You just do not know it yet. Failure rarely looks noble in real time. It feels messy. It feels unfair. It feels like regression. It makes you question your choices, your faith, your intelligence. It makes you compare yourself to people who seem to be doing better. It makes you angry at the world. It makes you angry at yourself. Sometimes, like today for me, it makes you move to a smaller room and sleep on the floor.

But failure is not always a verdict. Sometimes it is a clearing.

When I look back at the day I was displaced, I can now see that I failed to protect my home. I failed to keep the life I wanted. I failed to stay where I had rooted myself. But I also see that on that same day, I became a humanitarian in a way I had never been before. I shifted from theory to practice. I shifted from wanting to help to actually helping. I shifted from victim to actor. The same day that felt like the worst in my life became the day I found my lane.

So tonight I want to tell you and tell myself.

Failing is not the opposite of progress. Failing is often the raw material of progress. What makes failure poisonous is not the fall itself. It is what you tell yourself while you are on the ground.

If you tell yourself, I am a failure, you will stay there. If you tell yourself, I failed, you will get up.

There is a difference.

I failed to keep my apartment. I failed to keep a certain lifestyle. I failed to secure the role I wanted this month. These are facts. But I am not a failure. I am still building.

Failure also reveals who you are when the titles fall. When the furniture is gone. When the salary is gone. When the office is gone. When the applause is gone. When there is only you, a thin mattress, two suitcases, and a candle. That version of you is the one you build from.

When I was in that school with other displaced people, I could have waited for the room assignment and stayed under a blanket. No one would have blamed me. I had every right to collapse. But something inside me chose action. That is one of the ways to deal with failure. Act, even when you do not feel ready. Serve, even when you are hurt. It pulls you out of yourself.

There are a few lessons I keep returning to.

First. Failure is data. It shows you what does not work anymore. Sometimes the world says no because the path you chose is not yours anymore. Sometimes the world says no because it is protecting you from a smaller life than the one you are meant to build.

Second. Failure invites humility. It reminds you that success is not permanent. That status is not guaranteed. That the ground can shift in a day. Humility is not self attack. Humility is clear sight. It says, I am strong, but I am not above falling. I am wise, but I can still make mistakes. I am experienced, but I still need help.

Third. Failure gives you new eyes. After I lost my home, I never looked at displaced people the same way again. After I slept in a school as a person who fled, I could no longer speak about displacement with cold language. After I slept in this room tonight on the floor, I will never again speak to someone who is trying to survive in a European city with little money and tell them to just stay positive. Failure widens your compassion.

Fourth. Failure is a season, not an identity. This is important. You can be in a failing season and still be a successful person. You can be losing money and still be rich in skills. You can be sleeping on the floor and still be a leader. You can be unemployed and still be valuable. The external frame is temporary. The inner build is what remains.

I also want to say this. Sometimes we fail not because we were weak, but because we were early. We took a risk before the system was ready. We spoke a truth before people could hear it. We tried something new in an old environment. That is not the failure of the idea. That is the timing. Do not throw away your vision because one door stayed shut.

And to you, my friend, who might be reading this in your own hard room. Maybe you are also counting your money. Maybe you are also applying and not hearing back. Maybe you also feel that life is moving without you. This is what I want you to do.

Sit with the failure for a moment. Name it clearly. What did not work. What did you lose. What hurts. Tell the truth. Tell it to yourself.

Then ask, what did this failure reveal about me. Did it show me that I was attached to comfort. Did it show me that I needed to diversify. Did it show me that I was staying in a season that had ended. Did it show me that I can begin again.

Then act. Even a small act. Write. Volunteer. Call someone. Clean your space. Apply again. Build something with what you have. Action reminds the mind that the story is not over.

Finally, remember this. The day I became displaced was the day I thought I had lost everything. Yet that same day was the beginning of the life I am writing to you from now. The work, the missions, the countries, the strategies, the leadership roles, the books, the letters. All of it was born from that loss.

So maybe tonight, in this cold room, with a candle that feels lonely, something new is also being born. Maybe this season of failing is a season of clearing. Maybe the things I gave away made space for something better. Maybe this mattress is not a humiliation. Maybe it is training, a reminder and a new beginning.

The candle is smaller now. The room is still empty. The floor is still hard. But I feel a little softer than when I started writing. Because I remembered that I have fallen before. And I did not stay down. I remember my belief that in every end of contract, there is a new contract with the future.

So, my friend, if you have failed, welcome. You are now in the real classroom. Learn from it. Do not let it harden you. Do not let it name you. Let it refine you.

We are not the ones who never fell. We are the ones who kept standing.

With honesty and hope,

Ali Al Mokdad