Expectations

Is life supposed to be a series of consecutively diminishing expectations? 

Yet those who wait for the LORD Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary.

Isaiah 40:31

At first, you are flying, and believe the world is endless; then running, across the valleys and mountains and beneath the tall trees; and eventually, your legs are weak, but you walk beside the still waters in pastures green. Yet, it seems like I'm dreaming of flying when my wings have failed me, and I imagine running as I'm crawling on my stomach through the mud, and eventually I'm forced into dwindling returns with each outlook.

Is that okay?

It frustrates and disheartens me whenever I begin thinking: "maybe I should surrender and settle for..." or "perhaps I don't have what it takes after all." These are self-deprecative and destructive, even though of late they seem more and more honest. If I've set my expectations too high, why can I not simply raise the bar of motivation to match? Or will my being into greater capacity, with practice and diligence? And I trytrytry but it's a neat string-sequence of failures, like hoping for 100%, expecting 95%, and getting a 40%. The chasm is embarrassingly broad - was I such a fool? Did I have no chance from the get-go? 

And everywhere this follows me, like a bully I’ve installed inside my own head: you’ll not succeed, so give up; you’re not worth that much, so lessen your beliefs; stop pretending there’s hope, and just surrender into redundancy.

That’s the tragedy I fight every day, the Death of a Salesman tragedy. It’s the darkest tragedy I’ve ever read, to me, because it’s so prevalent, and I’m stricken. I’ll never suffer the Oedipus Rex tragedy, or the Romeo and Juliet tragedy, or Antigone or any of the famous, classic tragedies. No, mine is Biff’s, and Willy’s tragedy:

Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can’t I say that, Willy?

(He tries to make Willy face him, but Willy pulls away and moves to the left.)

WILLY (with hatred, threateningly): The door of your life is wide open!

BIFF: Pop! I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you!

I’m a dime a dozen. When I submit entries into a competition, and don’t win: I’m a dime a dozen; when I compete in a race, and finish not first, or play a game and fail to achieve the best of me – I’m just a dime a dozen. Every day, I play a dangerous romance with cultural norms, as I devil-dance around acceptance, accomplishment, and what our world classifies as success, and then balance on the dichotomy of difference, Godliness, faithfulness, love, hope, and personal achievement while maintaining a semblance of personality and individuality that leaves me unique instead of a stamp of humanity spewed out of a mold of media.

Our culture churns out empty personalities and cultural failures on an assembly line of couches as fast as any fast-food chain produces faux-food and fattens our grossly gluttonous society. Whatever it is, we want it fast, now, and without any effort.

So why is it that when I put an effort in, it still seems like I cannot raise my head about the waves?

I’m not waving, but drowning. I fail to understand how and why the mass appeal is so fascinated with progressively inferior productivity, as long as it satisfies some banal craving we’ve been told we have. Is it just me to desperately need something exceptional, and to refuse to threaten my standards with lesser things because that would mean I’ve fallen into the same desperate hell the rest of society has chosen? Am I being foolish again? Tell me if it’s so.

I’m not a loaded cannon or a charged revolutionary – I’m no rumbling volcano or pin-less grenade. But that doesn’t mean I’m without dreams. Just because I bury, drown, box, hide, and secrete away my hopes doesn’t lessen them, or disintegrate the hurt that rises like a fire in the belly with each failure. Sagely fellows always say how valuable failure is, but that’s only true in light of some eventual success.

I simply cannot fail ad aeturnum and hope to maintain a healthy resolve. But I must. I contemplate my life chances and wonder if it is all luck of the draw. It’s not talent that defines greatness anymore, but fortune with a pinch of caliber.

Don’t ask me to surrender my passion, my hope, my dreams in exchange for yours. I won’t have it. I always wanted this road, and sometimes the swiftest way for dreams to lose their allure thus.

Thus did my siblings and I learn one of the hard lessons of life: the best way to strip the allure and dreaminess from a lifelong dream is, very often, simply to have it come true.

David James Duncan – The Brother’s K

And with every passing day I’m striking out. I don’t remember how long I had intended to do so, but it seems so short and so long now. Hopefully, with scars, scrapes, scabs, and bleeding, gaping wounds, I’ll eventually crawl my way into a world where I’m worth a quarter, or at least a score of pennies. I’ve a long path to go for a million, but I’ve no other path I’d rather follow than that of dreams, love, and hope.

 And it's weeks where every morning I think: this is the best day of my life, and every night I pray for a rest before another such day. I'm a boy who's flown too high, with melting wings. But at least for the time I'm free. And for the hundred-thousandth night in a row, I fall asleep as a dime a dozen.