And despite the sour taste at the prospect of yet another commitment that I may almost, may, alomsto, surley not follow up on, I am starting again, and starting to talk about delayed gratification and the opposite of accrual, the opposite of working toward a collection of things and accomplishments, wild and exciting as it might sound.
There is a futility in posterity that confuses me.I can in now way benefit beyond this life from that which I accrue during this life. Much of posterity does not serve to improve the lives of those I may leave to come after me, but rather gives them either a sense of entitlement or a reason not to do anything for themselves or discover those parts of the world they can make their own and those passions and loves by which they can, yea verily, invent themselves. What is the use? This is, I will in less than one heartbeat admit, a wildly abbreviated stab at a point that functions on a near cosmic scale in terms of individual human life goals, but the shadow is there. What becomes of that which a life is spent gathering and obtaining and accruing cannot be truly determined beyond that life. This is not coming across well.
I do not have any control over the future, any more than I do over the past, though this is not entirely true and the past can be gerrymandered. But so often I am ruled by what may or may not reach me to fame in five years or four or two and I am tied in knots over how soon I can get to all of my achievements and goals and awards, even though I spend all of my time and thought and energy trying to be convinced that I am not fighting toward these things, that they don't matter to me, that I am somehow above them or beyond them or more mature than their needs.
It is not people who write for awards that receive awards. The people who receive awards for writing so completely fill their words with parts of their soul and their own life and the intractable breaths of a passionate wind toward something true. It is not the people who perform to win awards who win the awards but the people. But this is wrong. And I'm still looking at how to win awards.
These recognitions and advancements and accruals don't mean anything more than how much I can display or how broadly I am known or how accepted my talents are or how much I am liked or.
I am in such a hurry to do what?
I am running so fast toward what goal?
I am so anxious about what possible failures or what possible missed opportunities or what possible entanglements?
I am so anxious about whose perceptions?
I am so eager to please whom?
I am so desperate not to fail at what?
I am worried that I will miss what?
What kind of man will I be? Not how successful or how renowned or how respected, nothing from without, nothing from others, nothing that requires an outside perception. What kind of man will I be? When can I know deeply and truly and without fail that I have looked deep inside and rooted out everything false and wrong and deluded and selfish and angry and bitter within me and moved forward into a new kind of living as a good and caring and selfless man? Does this man exist and can I be him? What I will do or what I can do beyond this is irrelevant. What needs to come first and has to come first is this very procees: the movement by which I am made better, theo only process that matters, be it through whatever method and whatever length of time and whatever means of discipline and limitation and exercise and examination.
