Your Failure Is False
Society sets up for failure and messages us that we're never there, never good enough. However - you are!
Have you ever had the feeling that you’ll never get THERE?
You keep working, juggling so many things, planning for X, working to develop skills for Y, and trying to get THERE. Yet, there is always more to do. You need to keep up to that THERE that is forever moving and just out of grasp. And so you pick up the shovel, shine your shoes …
Our society keeps us in a state of perpetual almost THERE. If you just buy this, dress like that, get this degree, follow the professions of that book - you’ll get THERE. Be a success, adulated by all, a hero.
It’s all a crock of shit. Get that voice out of your head. The one telling you, you aren’t doing enough. You are sufficient, necessary and special in and of yourself. There is no getting there. There is nothing you really hafta do.
“The message of the consumer society, pumped out over flat screens... is shrill and unrelenting: You are a failure. Pop culture celebrates those who wallow in power, wealth and self-obsession, and perpetuates the lie that if you work hard and are clever, you can become a "success."... The disparity between the glittering world that people watch and the bleak world they inhabit creates a collective schizophrenia.”
— Chris Hedges
We See Too Far Ahead
You get a small red toy car
and can’t wait
to drive a big real red one.
First it’s kindergarten.
Then public school.
Your first kiss.
Then high school, university.
A real job, the girl
kids, a house
you write a novel
or maybe get elected to town council
or build a better mousetrap.
You keep stuffing $ in the bank
for days ahead.
There is always something
coming up.
Then one sunny morning you
wake up and think -
I’ve arrived.
Hmmm
Is that it?
Your heart beats fast
you get the sweats.
How can one live without
the pressure of getting there?
Has it all been some
terrible trick? A ruse?
When might you wake up
from this nightmare?
And that’s when the pain begins.
You begin to pay for all your
years of tom and tina foolery and
not having your eyes on the true prize.
Your life has taught you
who you are.
There is no way out.
Oh, sure. You try to get out.
Yoga retreats. Poker tables.
Oprah. Self-help books.
The gym. The tennis court.
The tummy tuck.
Going more often to church.
Still, you wake up each day
with that voice in your head.
I’ve arrived.
Is this all there is?
You have no way out from
the man, the woman you’ve become.
And so it goes until one day
you begin to
sense the other side
— all that this life isn’t
and you begin to relax
be at ease
in the space your
chains have formed.