The Hunters Son: Disappointment and Failure

I recall fondly those evenings, breath fogging up the living room windows as the crisp fall wind spread leaves across our property like a painting, awaiting the return of my father from the hunt with fevered anticipation. Adrenaline pumping through my tiny frame.

Watching his silhouette exit his vehicle and opening the tailgate to retrieve his gear, hoping that momentary pause he took was one of appreciation and fulfillment as he gazed upon his latest harvest. Living vicariously through him in hopes that one day I would be the one pulling into the driveway with a harvest of my own. The vast majority of the time he simply retrieved his bow and came into the house to relay to me stories of the woods and its bounty, stories that went beyond just filling our freezer with meat.

I recall the disappointment at first, building an early assumption that a rack would be protruding from the back of his truck on each return trip -- not knowing, at that time, the benefits I would draw from that initial letdown. After all, what did I know of disappointment then…. we ran out of my favorite cereal, I couldn’t stay up an extra half hour to watch a show, my sisters got more toys then I did at christmas, etc….. Learning how to process that emotion would provide so much stability throughout my life.

I learned disappointment was almost always directly associated with the presumed end result. No deer equals not happy in my fledgling mind. No deer in the truck bed meant failure and that emotion overshadowed everything. But then, as I listened to the stories he told over and over again, I began to realize the processes learned and experienced leading to that end result were much more valuable than the end result itself. I learned not to let that initial feeling of disappointment overshadow the importance of the overall experience.

And then I turned 12 and the game was on, I was living all of those stories and I was experiencing disappointment first hand, which I might add, amplified it greatly. It was me nervously shaking as a deer approached, it was me pulling back that bow string, it was me who shot over its back and it was me who created that feeling of disappointment in myself. It would seem like it should have been a whole different ball game, but it wasn’t. I was ready for it, I was prepared for that emotion.

Now I am 32 with two young sons of my own. I am the one creating the silhouette. I am the one charged with instilling that tradition and it is exactly that which I strive to do in the same manner the tradition was instilled in me.