I said never again. I promised to never cheat again. I promised not to lie. But why am I then sitting alone here again contemplating my mistakes?
Everyone has these moments when we promise ourselves that we will never do this again. But then why do we keep repeating our mistakes, failures in judgment, emotional outbursts, and putting ourselves in life-endangering situations? Why do we not keep following the very principles that we swore to follow until death do us apart?
Never Again, more like Damn doomed to fail or the looser of a Man. But why? Honestly, I really put some time into this issue, because undoubtedly, I am in no way immune to this repetitive pattern, rather it seems like I am bound to repeat never again. In a way, it perfectly contradicts my personality and nature to hate and absolutely fear failure. Essentially one of my basic principles, even more, important on the hierarchy of principles than never again, is the principal failure is not an option. But with life, I have slowly attempted to distinguish total failure from an, in a sense, an acceptable amount of failure. After all, failure is unavoidable under certain impossible circumstances. What matters is how you react to failure. Not the hatred you might find in the thought or fear of failure, but the raising and strength one possesses in growing with the help of failure. Here is an article on 30 inspirational failure quotations:
Ridiculous, you may at first sight state. I know. Why would failure help to succeed? In reality what we imagine to be a failure is more like an obstacle, something we have the ability to outgrow or learn to get through, just like our ability to learn to read or our ability to study and eventually graduate. What the real failure is, is actually nothing more than a false perception in our mind that we cannot outgrow or fight us through this so-called "failure". Of course, now this may seem preachy - in no way am I attempting to call this some guru inside information, actually, this is quite common knowledge we all possess, the difficulty for us is to learn to accept this truth. What really is intriguing, well, we are about to get there.
Of course, it would be ignorant to deny that there are some things we cannot get through. Death is of course most notably one of the insurmountable obstacles in life. Yet interestingly enough we can define Death as both a failure and a success. Failure, as in a fault in the structure of the human life by God; success, as in individual human life where death can be regarded as an acceptable part of one's life, and with that the focus will be on cherishing the accomplishments one has done in her lifetime.
I'd like to now create a tradition of analyzing song lyrics, after all, it could be the evolution from the traditional combination of poetics and philosophical thoughts and questioning.
The first song I thought would perfectly fit the theme of the blog is Legendary by Welshly Arms. The lyrics are from another universe, so let's forget for a moment the concept of never again, and instead focus on the true matter: what should we truly do? And what are our weapons to carry out the aforementioned, that in all cases must be deemed something good? Well, if it is truly something we should do...
Take a look around me Taking pages from a magazine Been looking for the answers Ever since we were seventeen You know the truth can be a weapon To fight this world of ill intentions A new answer to the same question How many times will you learn the same lesson? (Legendary, Welshly Arms)
The first four lines represent the typical lost teen, just like me, before discovering the weapon, that is, philosophy, or rather the truth; infinite knowledge the world around us possesses (and the people living unconscious of the information they perhaps bear) and the knowledge is there just waiting to be deciphered by the individual subject, that is, the human that searches for the truth, in a deeper sense, in a philosophical way. You may call it natural philosophy, but for me, it is the real way of inquiring about life, rather than the scientific-philosophical way that has become over popular in the intellectual circles that puts extreme emphasis on Science (like dare I mention, positivism). The last two lines of the second paragraph are real eternal epistemology and life philosophy questions. Are we not just thinking of the same things as our forefathers? Are we not just attempting to answer questions that have been already answered or deemed impossible to solve? Lastly, why then do we keep doing this, a lifetime of repetitive mistakes?
Growing up and throughout my life, I was never really particularly lucky, I struggled first from first grade (7-years-old) onward with migraines and later on in my teen years with constant chronic headaches (until a year ago during the spring-summer time, but that is a story for another time), and conclusively I had always extreme pain and it started eventually to pile up, you know when your physical condition is collapsing, it also almost always affects vastly on the mental health, and worst of all on your social life and social health, your need for unity as a built-in feature in our human nature, it all crumbles and comes crashing down. What I am attempting to message with this is that we all have our struggles, Jakob might have confidence issues, Fiona might be overly concerned with the opinions of others and in so appear falsely over-confident, David might have lost his family, Jenna might have never got enough attention in her childhood which is shown later on in her life with commitment and trust issues in all of her relationships, and finally, worst of all, Tammy might contemplate suicide, something that I would regard as being totally over the edge and suffering in all of the categories previously mentioned, and it is a so-called final-solution according to the human mind. (All of the above-mentioned names are obviously randomly picked and in no way concludes in a universal rule, that all or any at all "Tammy's" must-have suicidal thoughts and so on). But they say that there is always light at the end of the tunnel, and I wholly agree with this statement, because even in the worst cases there must be light, unfortunately, it appears often hidden, and the individual in question can only him-/herself discover the light, or let the light show itself. In the horrid times when the human himself lives in complete pain and has lost his fighting spirit, he does not directly desire to experience more pain, but neither does he take pleasure with open arms, he has lost hope, and in doing so he blinds himself from the possible light at the end of the tunnel. We may often think that death is the end of the book. But is it not just the end of a chapter? We can choose what to accept or remember from our worthy story, our book, during our final hours, when we are close to death or reaching on the side of insanity. I do not suppose that there must be an afterlife. Simply, all is not lost during the final hours, and there may well be an afterlife. It would do no harm to presume that the chapter we enter after Death would be a paradise. Think about this all just like a book. Our contemplating and our thinking is not over when we are finished with the book, it is just about to start. We may with proper afterthought conclude whether the book was good, unsatisfactory for our taste, or if we require one more read to be able to accurately form our opinion on the matter. We may after these stages of contemplating recommend the book for a friend, write a review (all those fancy stuff with 1-5 stars, Goodreads is a good place to start), or we might be crazy enough to publish a critique, essay, or blog that is based on the book.
During the time when fate was not in my own hands, but in the state of the constantly shifting pain-painless life, I swore an oath to myself: once I would recover my life to a better state in which I could have control of my fate (to such a degree that is possible, we are after all small creatures in a magnitude of a universe), I would always do my best to keep it this way, and never would I stop aiming at my goals and meaning, which I largely would come to find in philosophy. For me the light at the end of the tunnel, the good surrounded by the bad for the time being, or maybe it was the bad surrounded by the good that would eventually overcome the bad (sounds more poetic, right), for me it was my parents and close family. By this I do not mean in the way they supported me through all the horrendous times, which they obviously did, and which I owe a lifetime of gratitude, rather what I mean is that I was raised extremely well, not too strict nor too loose, not too structured nor too unorganized, not too typically nor atypically, not in a stereotypical way or a societal enforced way, and additionally, I was always in my childhood surrounded by a positive atmosphere. For those who have had the luck to be raised by two amazing parents, I employ you to show your eternal gratitude but do not do this in a forced and clearly detectable manner. I would most likely as a parent be extremely happy and feel a sense of accomplishment if my child would go on to succeed in life and learn to survive independently through the ups and downs that life dawns upon all of us, rather than that my child would stay clung on to me and show her gratitude in multitude while never attempting to create a life of her own. For those who lost their parents young, or never won in the parent's lottery, or never had parents at all, or in any other case, I applaud you and your fighter spirit, you are a survivor, but most importantly you are close to the happy moments in life. Never let yourself believe that you deserve any less happiness than anyone else.
I have a short story to complete this lengthy blog.
The man in the park asked me: what if all I got is pain? Against all odds, against mighty Babylon, wonders of Odin, against the storms of Zeus, I overcame the impossible, I could calmly and collected ask the man in the park: well, what has pain got you to? He answered after I caught him totally of the guard and with his pants hanging down at his ankles: I have taught thee in myself, I have learned I in myself, and O have I ever grown more fighter spirit than with pain.
I must continue to tell you; you are halfway there. The first step is to learn that you are (the) success. And the second step is to turn it into practical use. You have clearly shown already that you have acknowledged the first step in your path to a better life, I explained to the man in the park. I concluded: In a way, you are closer to the truth than the man who has got it all; good parents, luck, pleasure, painless life, love - he has never had to turn it into something practical, meanwhile you have the need to turn it into something practical, to get you away from the state of constant pain, and your mind to think of something else for at least a while. The lesson is that do not never feel or pretend to feel adamant that you have reached failure when all factors indicate that, that is the case because you have every chance to make what you have got, to something you have not got so far, to something practical. You see, in a sense it is true: everything is possible. But in reality, nothing is possible, if you let yourself believe that, that is the case.
(The story is true, not including some details that have been hidden, and obviously, the "man in the park" person's story has been somewhat altered).
Nothing is impossible - that is what we can take away from the story, or nothing is impossible as long as you don't let yourself believe it is, even if the reality was that the case was impossible. It is often way better to pretend or mislead yourself into believing something is possible when in reality it never was. With these words let us conclude: never again is really just a phrase we keep telling ourselves to make us believe that there is such a thing as impossibility. So do not get yourself caught in a lie next time by promising someone that you will "never again" do something because you likely will. It is almost unavoidable. It is by all accounts human nature to repeat things.
"Man is fearless and lucky if he never fails, but the Man who accepts, takes it; the pain, the burden, the torture and the heat of failure is the good Fear itself." -O.K
"A human is nothing if he is not bound to fail. What would he do born into success? After all, success is bound to fail, or success is the greatest failure." -O.K
PS. I do realize that I am completely contradicting my previous text on The Selfish Nature of the Human Being by proceeding to advice to lie to yourself about the impossible- but is this not just the human nature to repeat things, be at the brink of collapse - is it not just the Man's nature to swear not to contradict himself and instantly follow it by contradicting his own Holy words and vows. That was what this text was about. Thoughts are wonderfully a constant growing progress and continuation - just like time, it never stops, before the permanent cause, that is Death.
- Oliver Kuivasto, O.K -
Kommentare