The ordeal: when you lose everything

The money invested doesn't come back. The business that looked solid falls apart. And, when the dust settles, Bairo looks around and counts.

They are not numbers on a spreadsheet. They are people. Fifty human lives, by his count, that depended on him.

There is a natural reaction to a moment like that, and everyone knows it. To complain. About the partner, the system, the country, bad luck. No one would blame a man for it.

Bairo didn't complain.

What this stage is

In Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey (1949), organized into twelve stages by Christopher Vogler, the eighth stage is the ordeal.

It is the center of the story. The hero faces their greatest fear, their greatest loss, the moment when it seems everything is over. Campbell has an image for the one who is swallowed and disappears from the world before being reborn: the "belly of the whale." Vogler describes the ordeal as a kind of symbolic death. Something in the hero has to end so that something else can begin.

The ordeal is not pretty. It has no soundtrack. But it is where it is decided who the person will be afterward.

In Bairo's life

The fall came after the investment that was not what it seemed. This time, it wasn't only his life at stake. He says there were fifty people depending on his decisions.

The weight of this stage is not only the loss of money. It is the responsibility. Anyone who has had people depending on them knows: the sleepless night is not about your own plate, it is about other people's plates.

And it was at that moment that he made the most unlikely decision a broke man can make. Instead of going back to familiar ground, he headed for the unknown. He decided to do something he didn't know how to do.

Build a currency. Build a bank. Build a navigation network.

To someone who had never done any of it, the list sounds like madness. To Bairo, it was the same logic as always: if no one is doing it, someone has to.

It went wrong.

And it didn't go wrong for lack of ideas. It went wrong because of people. The very ones he had helped left him hanging.

Being abandoned by strangers teaches caution. Being abandoned by the people you helped teaches something else: that your decision cannot depend on anyone's gratitude.

This is the belly of the whale in his story. Two falls in a row, one through deception, the other through abandonment. Anyone would have had more than enough reasons to stop there.

It did not make him give up. He kept going. And that is why this story has a ninth stage.

In your life

If you are in this stage right now, you may be reading this in the middle of the night. You may have lost your company, your job, your home, your trust in someone. You may feel ashamed to look at the people who depended on you.

Before any reflection, one practical thing: if the pain has turned into despair, call CVV at 188. It is free, it works 24 hours a day and no one will judge you. You can also go to your city's primary health unit (UBS) or psychosocial care center (CAPS). Asking for help is part of the road, not a detour from it.

Now, the questions, for when your breath comes back:

• What exactly did you lose? Separate what can be fixed (debt, business, income) from what is pain (pride, trust, image).
• Who still depends on you, and what is the smallest thing you can guarantee those people this week?
• What do you know today that you didn't know before the fall?
• What new thing, something you've never done, could be your next step?

Three steps to get through the ordeal

1. Stop the bleeding. Don't take out a new loan to cover the old one. List all your debts on paper, with whom, how much and at what interest. Check Registrato, the Central Bank's free service, to see what is recorded under your CPF. Protect housing, food, health and transportation first.
2. Be honest with those who depend on you. If there were employees, see an accountant and a lawyer to pay what is owed the right way. A frank conversation, early and in writing, is worth more than silence. If you can't afford a lawyer, go to the Public Defender's Office.
3. Choose something you don't know how to do and start learning. Not to get rich tomorrow, but to trade the energy of complaining for the energy of building. A free course, a book, a new skill. That was Bairo's choice: at bottom, he decided to learn.

Going broke is a fact. It is not a verdict on who you are.

The line for this stage

"When nothing is left, the decision is still left."

A line written for this series, drawn from Bairo's story.

Next stage

Stage 9: The reward, when it finally works

Read also

• Fifty lives
• Bairo's Hero's Journey, stage by stage
• What to do when you've gone broke?