life lesions

Faced with a blank page the utter absolution of emptiness and numbing black of a mind drawn wiped with a window shutter and pulled across the blinds of the day. Clean like the bowels of a blue sky.




Quote of the day: ‘Nothing succeeds like success.’ – Alexandre Dumas

I’ve never known a more thought-inspiring quote.
Reading it, my mind was flooded with thoughts, like:
a) ‘what?’
b) ‘huh?’
c) ‘this guy is a moron’
d) ‘does that mean nothing exceeds like excess?’ and
e) ‘how many seeds can a seedsucker suck if a seedsucker can suck seeds?’

bought this lil box of quotable quote cards which is very nice. after fruitlessly searching with wai for more gifts under a super-tight budget. So this quote was one of the more ‘inspirational’ ones I guess...

anyway one of the nicer ones is this:
‘It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best at the end knows the triumph of achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.’
-- Theodore Roosevelt

and reading it I felt like, yeah that’s so true, and everything I’d ever tried doing or accomplished came back to me in bits and pieces… ‘uh-oh self-evaluation time’ said this lil voice in my head…
but anyway was just thinking that person needs to know what its like at the bottom, to be able to comprehend fully what it means to be like at the top, that without knowing defeat the privilege of victory really becomes a superficial experience. Losing once breaks your heart. Losing a few times gives you determination. Losing so many times is like a cleansing; it reminds you of who you are and your place in the world, all delusions of your self-importance or ability is stripped clear, and a kind of resilience settles in to keep you competing. But above all, losing teaches you that wining is really just the icing. I guess the quote just reminded me that I owe a lot of who I’ve become to track and my coaches and training buddies.

There really is nothing that one cannot do, as long as one wants to try, and not give up.