Can you tell the story of a significant failure in your life and what it taught you?

After college I just couldn’t find a job. I was living at home at the time. My failure to find a job got me very depressed. I just couldn’t understand why employers weren’t flocking to hire a person with my education and ideas. I was hiding in my room a lot, because I felt like a failure, and my parents got sick of it. They kicked me out. No warning. No suitcase. Boom. Out the door. Middle of the night, too.

I found a friend who let me spend the night. The next morning, I decided to move to New York City. I did a little carpentry work to earn money to keep me going and I took the bus down to NYC with a couple hundred dollars in my pocket. I went to the YMCA in Manhattan to get a room, that I could use as a base. That evening, a guy propositioned me in the TV room. I declined, but was scared that he would push the matter.

I went up to my room, which was so tiny you couldn’t fit a double bed in it. There was someones check book in the drawer of the tiny desk. I tried to go to sleep. It was a hot night and my room was on the inside of the building, a window overlooking the well. Someone was playing loud music that echoed off the walls and seemed to be dancing with stiletto heels inside my head. I got maybe two hours of sleep that night.

I couldn’t stand another night of that. I had some numbers for folks from my college who were living in the city. I didn’t know them. Out of desperation, I called around to people I didn’t even know and asked them to put me up. Someone did. I slept on some bean bag pillow on the floor, snuffling up cat hair, and sneezing. Beggars can’t be choosers. It was better than the Y.

The next day, I located another college classmate, who came from my hometown, and together with his friend, we decided to be roommates. We found a place in, what was then, a pretty seedy part of Brooklyn.

I learned that I could do an awful lot of things I never would have done if I hadn’t had to. Persuading people I didn’t even know to give me a place to stay. Dealing with the unexpected in the City. Finding a place I could afford—my first place on my own, ever. For years, I worked in a job that paid very little, but fit my political ideals, then I went back to grad school, got a job a little more easily this time, and slowly (more slowly than anyone else I knew) worked my way into more remunerative positions. It seems to me now that if you work a long time, eventually you get some of the things you want.

If I had it to do over, though, I don’t think I’d do it the same way. I learned that it’s important to give a helping hand to others, when they need one, because you never know when you might need one again.