Fail yours...

Three years ago we won the ICDC Debate contest of the Division in Toastmasters. Today, we were Runners up, which technically means that we lost.

So the sham philosopher in me preaches that the best learning arises from a loss. Damn I’m frikking ‘woke’ in that case considering that loss is my current posse.

But not. I’m a sore loser.

With things that matter. With the who that matter and the ‘it’ who matters.

So failure is my best teacher right… let me attempt to list down my learnings.

Life owes me nothing.

Irrespective of how much I invest, be it faith or emotion or sheer drudgery of chores… life dishes out mindlessly it seems, of what it deems fit.

Often quite the antithesis of my deepest desires.

Giving does not necessarily means that you will receive.

Patience does not translate into victory.

Love is not a lofty emotion that guarantees reciprocity.

This path you walk is solitary.

Effort no matter how deep and definite is not a formula for success.

And insidiously the desire to sink into the calm obscurity of defeat beckons invitingly.

Tentatively I test its tepid waters.

Oblivion’s embrace is welcoming, comforting.

Hamlet’s immortal question runs on loop in my head.

I want to shrug, like Ayn Rand’s Atlas.

The quagmire threatens to envelop.

Dimly in the distance as I flail I see beloved countenances of the pair that sired me, the pair that I begot and the pair that sustain me. My Alpha and Omega, unrequited.

From those murky, convoluted and turbulent waters emerges faith somehow…

That I’m a Phoenix… not Icarus.

I will emerge from the ashes and not burn.

That Scarlett was right… tomorrow is another day.

That the bane of my life are indeed it’s boon.

Faith as tested by Christ's famous disciple... is mine.

Fail, Falter, Fall... Fervently

Fall or autumn, as used by speakers of the English language to describe the season has thus far been for me an idea I had heard of and seen visuals of via media and not in person.

It has been a subject I romanticized about in my posts, poems and proselytizing eons ago without having the perspicacity of the real McCoy. 

Again a life lesson, that I have the tendency to shoot off my mouth on topics I have neither expertise or authority on. Sigh. Motor mouth. I could probably use this as an excuse for my bulk, it’s all those words that I’m forced to eat... and rapidly! Karma’s turnaround time is indecently rapid. 

The trees are pregnant with leaves in brilliant hues of red, yellow, pink, brown, maroon, mustard, purple, cerise, amber. Each trembling tentatively, I know not whether in anticipation or trepidation and my wild imagination demands that it’s the former.

As I tread on the kaleidoscopic carpet of dead leaves, my thoughts wander to the reason behind the season. 

By all accounts Fall is the beginning of the end, the harbinger of rot and decay, the living metaphor for death. 

Autumn is also the ‘Fall’ from grace, productivity, health, abundance and life itself. 

The wasting away sustenance and vibrancy of the spirit, the crumbling of set orders and the annihilation of existence. 

The end of the old order. 

With it, visions of the immediate future loom in 4D. 

Tomorrow’s sky is overcast with dark looming clouds and the sun fights a losing battle as it fights to permeate light through. 

Tomorrow looks lonely, desolate and desperate. 

Tomorrow sadness will be the cloak of comfort and no matter how merino the wool, I will be chilled to the bone. 

Tomorrow is the winter of my existence. 

I allow myself to wade through murky waters of self pity and melancholy and as I’m mired in the quandary of my own design. A state I could revel in like a pig rolling in muck. 

And when I’m depleted and quite frankly enervated by all the lugubriousness and thoroughly disgusted by the trajectory of my thoughts, chicken me berates self and I feel the Phoenix in my soul draw strength from the awareness that I may well be alone but I’m enough unto myself. 

I turn my gaze to the inevitable spring that must loom in the horizon, the hope that ‘springs’ eternal beckons gently and I allow myself the luxury of dreaming of a season that will bring a new version of me who, my fervent desire is, will be a better, refined and exceptional version of the current joke. 

“Spring drew on...and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that hope traversed them at night and left each morning brighter traces of her steps."

–Charlotte Brontë

I fail, falter, fall... fervently and I think that’s quite alright.