That's a word I rarely use. It's not really my groove to describe a full, three-dimensional human being via one flat term of contemptuous dismissal. In fact, I've got a very low bar for success. For me, you can be homeless and not be a failure. You can have a string of unsuccessful ventures and not be a failure. You can be hated by everyone and not be a failure. You can die young or live depressed and not have been a failure.
I'm the guy who sees self-destructive people as simply having chosen to increase the difficulty of their gameplay for an extra-intense experience. I'm the guy who sees addicts as simply stuck - nothing depraved or wretched. I'm the guy who thinks autistics are on to something. I'm the guy who sees the rewards as chintzy and the punishments as oversold. I'm the guy who realizes that God lets kids get cancer because we like it that way.
I don't see the world in terms of binary success/failure, so I'm making an exception to a cardinal rule here. Yes, you're a failure if you go through trials and get so tensed-up and stressed-out and freaked-out, melodramatic, and self-pitying that you take away no wisdom and glean no higher perspective from the trauma and sacrifice. If all you have to show is “PAIN-NO-LIKE!” For me, that's the only way you can fail in this life. Do not spurn the cookie!
If you're prone to musing, you'll want to know what happens if the volume's turned up via even greater suffering, travails, and friction. Might that pop out an even heftier and more delicious cookie?
How much wisdom is attainable if you don't tighten up or freak out? If you don’t smack away or insolently disregard the cookie? What if the travails multiply in chain reaction, to the point where you recognize the absurdity of it, and feel less gripped by it, and stop contracting against it? What if you go the other way, and relax? Dilate? Embrace? What if you frame yourself as dancing, like a reed assaulted by violent wind?
What if you choose to wryly observe it all, amiably awaiting the cookie from within what looks like hellish inferno? What's the ultimate outcome if you go all the way through the tunnel? What do you get?
This Slog.
If you read any of that as bitter self-pity, then you missed it. Read again! I'm one of the most curious humans ever. Very early on, I recognized that I wanted to Know - needed to Know - and would sacrifice any in-game victories to Know. All chips on the table.
My wish was granted (my wishes are always granted; the trick is not to wish for the standard crap). So I have no complaints. If you're a tightener-upper rather than a letter-goer, prone more to anguished whelps than to wry observation, you [understatement] would not have enjoyed my ride [/understatement]. I can't say I much did, either. But it's been worth it. I wanted what I wanted, and I got what I wanted.
If, by the other token, you think I'm boasting, you also missed it, and you, too, need to re-read. I have nothing to complain or boast about. I bought something extravagant, paying full price, and was left neither in surfeit nor deficit.
But I do have something to offer: this fourteen year effort to open-source the priciest and most unattainable insights, for the cost of only your attention and consideration. I can't imagine many/any people willing to purchase it the hard way, so I've done my damndest to offer it pre-masticated and conveyed with professional writerly pizzazz (this stuff's way less entertaining in the original Sanskrit, believe me).
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