Choices (Made)
Right now I'm sitting here on my couch still in my work clothes. There's a beer to my left and a cigar drifting lazily to my right.
A few months ago we had some choices. Now, the landscape has changed completely and we're about to bank on two completely new ones we didn't even know we had to get us to our ultimate goals, some of which are new in and of themselves. It's funny how life does that.
The problem with getting older is that you become aware of just how much of a grab-bag life really is. You care less about what others think and have more faith in your own capabilities. You have more faith that things will work out, but the possibility of them not doing so is scarier because the stakes are higher.
I like talking shit about yuppies who go to psychiatrists because they've got a 'fear of success'. But lately, I've begun to understand what that's about. It's about insecurity and a lack of faith in the self. It feels safe(r) to buy into a mindset that you've carried for so long, even if it's pointless and needs to be outgrown. It questions you at every turn in part because we're told we're supposed to eschew hubris, accept mediocrity. Everyone is a unique and beautiful snowflake until the end of the day when no one is really any better than anyone else.
I fed that wolf for years and it's grown strong. Now, it's begun to realize that it's being cornered and starved. There's no more room for it in the pack that is my psyche. Kills must go to feed new parts of me that will go farther on different paths, ones that have no room for that kind of doubt anymore. Quietly and without even a funeral pyre that part of me will be washed away. It will go simply and it will go quietly. It's memory will blow away as ashes on the first wind that will carry it. It's odd watching a part of yourself that you've run with for so long die a death as easy and uneventful as you can manage, without the desire or intention to retain even the smallest memory of its former existence. Without regret. Without remorse. Without any emotional attachment to it at all.
When you have come to the edge of all light that you know and are about to drop off int the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen: there will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught to fly. - Patrick Overton
Much love ozgolith, and coyoteold1: I'm coming for you next.