Last night I took nine boys up the canyon to roast marshmallows. They were eleven to thirteen years old, and when we got to the campground I started in on a lesson about how to build a fire.
They were all over the place. I could tell there was no interest in what I wanted to share. They all thought they already knew how. They were experts. They didn't need my help.
So I handed each of them a strike-anywhere match and told them to go for it.
It had rained the last two days. The wood wasn't Alaska wet or Oregon wet, the kind that makes a fire nearly impossible. But it was Utah wet. Wet enough to be a nuisance, dry enough to light if you knew what you were doing.
Some of the boys gathered leaves and struck their match right away, confident leaves would be enough. Others took their time, hunting down a few finger-sized twigs first. Some matches broke. Others blew out in the wind. Two boys decided to work together. They built it up the right way: match-sized twigs, then finger-sized, then small branches. The first boy struck his match. It broke. The second struck his. It didn't light. He struck again. Nothing. He struck a third time and the green tip crumbled off the stick.
Nine boys. Nine matches. No fire.
It was starting to look like cold s'mores.
I went quietly into the trees and gathered what I needed. Match-sized twigs, then finger-sized, then wrist-sized. A fire needs three things in the right ratio: heat, oxygen, and fuel. I struck my match. The kindling caught. The flame climbed for a few seconds and died.
I handed each boy another match. The results were the same. Most of them tried the same thing they'd tried the first time.
Here's what I keep thinking about.
Not one of those kids beat himself up.
Nobody walked off to sulk. Nobody apologized. Nobody decided he was bad at fires. When a match broke, they shrugged and asked for another. When a flame blew out, they leaned over and tried again. They didn't take any of it personally. The match failed. The match was the match. They were them.
That's the part most adults have forgotten.
By the time we're grown, a failed match means something about us. We strike, the wind takes it, and somewhere in the back of our heads a quiet voice starts in. Maybe I'm not cut out for this. Maybe I missed my shot. Maybe everyone else figured this out a long time ago. The match becomes a verdict. A bad afternoon becomes a story we tell ourselves about who we are.
The boys hadn't learned to do that yet. To them, a match was just a match. A broken one was just a broken one. You needed another one. That was it.
On my second match, the fire finally took. The moment there were flames, the boys who'd been bouncing around twenty minutes earlier were leaning in. Why does the small wood matter? How close do the twigs go? What do you do when the wind picks up? They were ready to learn now. So I taught them.
We talk a lot about second chances. That's a comforting sentiment, and it's true. But standing around that firepit watching nine boys burn through a fistful of matches without flinching, I started to wonder if the real lesson is something quieter.
The boys didn't need to be told it was okay to fail. They already knew. What they needed was a little more wood, a little more time, and someone willing to show them the right ratio.
Somewhere along the way, most of us stopped being those boys. We started carrying our broken matches around like proof of something.
We could probably stand to set them down.