is today my tomorrow?

The complexity that surrounds me is overwhelming. In search of understanding I find confusion. What ever happened to simplicity? And for what reason do I even pose these questions? Have I become identical to a much older man longing for the good old days? I am too young to have lived out the best part of my life and yet this may very well be the case. Will I let it be? Can I change this; or have I too become like so many before me? Am I now a member of the growing crowd of has beens?

Unfortunately, be it laziness, indiffernce or just plain apathy, I am not an overachiever. I have never been first in line; I refuse to sit in the front row of a class; and I certainly would never choose to exert more effort than was absolutely necessary. Yet here I am hard at work on this sacred manuscript, it’s a bit puzzling to say the least. I have never seen the point of trying hard, after all the disappointment I have tasted it appears that extra effort leads to extra disappointment. Perhaps this paints a negative picture of me. Oh well; who likes a realist anyway?

I will concede that exerting extra effort can be rewarding but the benefits are much shorter lived than we imagine. Who cares whether you get ahead anyway, once you reach your goal another conquest awaits you. There has to be a way out of this cycle, I cannot allow myself to believe life is nothing but a journey to a journey. Are we nothing but hamsters, endlessly spinning our exercise wheels? We are the most advanced species on the planet and yet here we are mimicking animals with brains the size of a peanut.

Go ahead, dive into your seventy hour week, bring your work home, and take on that extra project. Perhaps you, unlike the rest of us, will find some sort of vindication in success. Yet that triumph, like every other feat before it is as short lived as your popularity in high school. Each pinnacle on our journey is greeted with an equally opposite counterpart. At times the aforementioned low point is found in the inherent let down that defines a pinnacle. Yet worse than these repeated valleys is when that elusive pinnacle becomes our plateau.

How many times have we reached the top only to find there is no higher to climb? Once you have conquered Mount Everest, what more can be done? It is not in the valleys that we find the most unrest, for in the trenches there is always the hope of rising to the top again. Life’s biggest disappointment is found on top of the world. The higher one climbs, the more painful this reality becomes. So what is one to do, when our highs become our new lows and in our lows we find the motivation to fight again? Is there any way out? Can we break the cycle of perpetual disappointment? Or is that very sadness we have come to hate so much the only thing that defines fulfillment?

It is depressing to think that opposite emotions are necessary to define each other. In order to taste the sweetest emotion that can be felt one must also taste bitterness. Unfortunately, we can not do away with pain, frustration, and emptiness. Without them there would be no happiness, no peace, and no satisfaction. Are we then doomed,? Is repetition of previous emotions our fate? If this is the case then how can things possibly get better? What is left to look forward to?

Sigh...I think that reads a little heavy. I guess I will just leave you all with that for now. I am just trying to do my part to give you your daily downer. Ha...goodnight all, I got an eleven hour work day on deck.

Oh...what do you think of my capitalization today? Thought I would give it a whirl; let me know if you have a preference. (or don't; who am I kidding no one cares)