I feel a hypocrisy to my optimism. And I wonder, whether the cynicism is more genuine. Or whether any of it is anything more than a construct, aside from all the consumption and excrement required for sustaining this living mammal vessel. This reality I perceive, could it be nothing more than my self-made decoration of time, this creation of a bored but otherwise tireless mind?

Thankfully, my modesty kicks in just in time to check mine own self. Because this mind, I confess, does grow tired from time to time. Much more than it used to. Not many 3am-ers as in the abundance of former days, and nights. Though, kid yourself not. I can still hang when the occasion deems worthy.

There have been thoughts of helplessness about before I sat down here again. Though they reside more as expressions of the minds of others than they seem to be at home in my neurons at this moment, now past, seemingly present. But I cannot say it is an overcast arc of great frequency. Either through ignorance, or willpower, or something more aligned with honesty- the sense that better can be made of what is had, seems to conquer all other formed outlooks.

Still, I know these feelings exist, even if only in more abstractionist ponderings than in actuality. Look at me, pretending to be all tough and stuff.

Went to a pizza joint with a friend the other day. Had the burger, upon recommendation. Funny thing to do, I suppose. We had discussed the notion that improvement is within the very real realm of possibility for most beings. We seemed to agree, more or less, that the case for optimism is the stronger argument. And though we thought this correct, neither of us claimed that to be the case for every other being about- at home or at large. There are plenty of folks who are certain that nothing ever gets better. Existence just slinks along the path towards worse and worse until it all be no more.

Feelings of doom do seem to be at some sort of height, in this species, as of late. Particularly in the part of the world that speaks and writes and reads the same language in which this current expulsion of thought is occurring. It is not an inexcusable perspective. And certainly, a causal zeitgeist which collects sympathy with a certain ease in today’s going-ons.

But to claim it original to our times is but another reflection of our key-hole sized sight at things. The limited vision any single sentience musters regarding the might and magnitude of this here perceived reality. There’s a line from a tune I feel proper invoking-

‘Every generation thinks it’s the last, thinks it’s the end of the world.’

Sure, we hold the keys to the machine that might destroy us. Part of that machine, it could easily be argued, already is. We are pretty damn good at poisoning the surface, which happens to be the only part of this rock that we are capable of living on. And for about four score years, we’ve had the might to do an ending blow sort of damage to our very finite and fickle living conditions. A skill perfected to the point of several times over its initial doom ability. Funny thing, time and human history. I write now about as far away from Nagasaki and the other one, as Lincoln’s famous ramble was away from the start of the whole damn nation-thing he’d found himself the leader of fighting for. Save a few years, here and there.

My apologies. A space cadet distraction, not uncommon in these here parts.

But the TV and the telephone often talk of doom. And we ourselves are far from our own sainthoods. And those who aren’t are likely of the dreadfully boring type. Mistakes are the makers of our longer lived beauties. Perfection as a beginning is akin to sterility. For me, at least. And I bet it wouldn’t take long to find comrades to the ideological cause. Be they the folks I know, or some dead beast who left behind some amalgamation of their living thoughts in some creative interpretation to those who come thereafter. You know, like poets and bards and the like.

Yet, I still believe this all marches towards the greater, well, good seems the wrong word… maybe the greater whole? Probably not. That sounds horrible, with its seeming redundancy to the least of the evils. But the point remains. I and others among us, are sure- we think that what we do in this life does effect and affect the what-comes-after. And further, that there is plenty of positivity that can be derived and even brought about by the honest quests of even the simplest of beings.

But there is a caveat. A word I use so little, I had no idea how to spell it.

Here, try this.

There is a catch.

Passivity, I certainly believe, is the road to pessimistic outcomes. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to say that if you try, things will just get better. They won’t. I can confirm that as fact based upon my own life- trying so regularly means failing. Statistically, it vastly outnumbers the more hoped for outcomes. We fail, a lot. In the miniscule and the more spectacular- so many of the things we all try never amount to anything, which is a rather appealing neutral coming from a guy who has fallen face down in metaphorical (and sometimes more literal) mud.

That is not where the glory and the might and the greater ‘good’ comes from. Not the many and seemingly personal pitfalls, but in the acceptance of them when they do. And the adaptation that gets you beyond that particular failure, and right on to do the same sort of thing with the next one. And eventually, it has to be deduced, that a final failure awaits us all. Be it a top secret mission, a simple accident, or the old cardiac meat failing to muster the strength to keep clocking in- a failure is set in our destiny.

However. The more those failings hit, the better we get for them. Strength grows, in unexpected ways in unexpected places, via means of the physical and meta alike. And the metaphorical, and sometimes more literally skin shed- that is what marks a life on progress to that great, big more we all seek after.

And you fail. But your failures mark a path for the next to find a whole new sort of ways to lack the ultimate success. And so on, and so on. And within that, something that the folks at the time might call a miracle occurs. And whether it is or it isn’t, the look back will likely see it as another step in progress. Some that echoes down the line, past the individual selves and on to some bigger class of collective existence.

Or maybe not. Maybe doom and death and all that is the fate and all efforts otherwise are futile, if not foolish. But I’ve been rather proud to call myself a fool for all my life.