A Far Green Country

A long time ago, the good Captain once told me:


I hate to think that you feel you wallow in failure. To paraphrase a cliche, there can not be light without darkness. So it stands to reason there can not be success without failure (at least the sensation of failure). And for you to know the feeling of failure so well, you must have experienced success, eh? Most never do. And for those that do, they often will again. It’s not, like, random, ya know. 



Ever notice that the emotions experienced during failure are disproportionate to those during success? Why is that? Hardly seems fair. And having talent (hate that term, complacent bedfellow of “creative”) sucks that way, too. It makes you feel inadequate. It’s a survival instinct. So you don’t rest on your laurels. The human mind is a cruel and twisted thing.

And don’t invest so much in a place or time or people to be your oasis. The comfort or discomfort you feel is wholly yours... whether you’re at home, Bowling Green or Kansas City. It’s all you. Don’t invest that responsibility in other places, people or things. I’ve wasted a lot of time being disheartened while waiting to be happy... when “I do this, live there, have that... achieve a state of enlightened consciousness far beyond human comprehension.” Whatever it was. As much as it pains me to draw from Cliche’s shallow well once again... “When Life gives you lemons” you have two choices - make lemonade or bean Life in the back of the head with the lemon and run away like a little girl, hopefully before Life sees you and calls the poe-lease. Whining about the fact that you got lemons instead of strawberry fields isn’t an option.


A long time ago.