If you take a shot and everything
about it from the aim, the trajectory, the wind conditions, I mean everything about it is perfect and
planned for, and you hit the target with absolution precision, flawless
execution but still don’t get the outcome you wanted would you have rather
missed? I’m debating that question because a recent series of events is very
much like this. I took my shot, I hit the mark, and I still got nothing for the
effort. I’m debating if it would have been better if I missed altogether. On
the one hand I’d prefer it because then at least I could just say reload and
try again, but in this instance I hit the bull’s eye without blinking. I nailed
it dead bang. Shooting again would do me no good and only serve to undermine
what little I managed to accomplish with the first shot.
So that having been said, the question
has to be asked, would it have been better if I was off or if I missed on my
first try? I feel like it would have been. Somehow it just feels like I failed
miserably to have everything lined up so perfectly and yet still not have
things come to fruition. It makes me question if I’ve slipped in my skills, if
my eye for analysis and evaluation is somehow less than it was before, if I’ve
lost a fundamental and unique skill. That kind of self-doubt is dangerous to
say the least. I know that somewhere in me the impetus for all my skill, all my
ability was the fact that I cared. I had passion and that lent itself to
something powerful and wonderful. I had the full use of my abilities because I was
passionate about them and the use to which I applied them. The impetus for my
passion is no more and thus my passion no longer burns as the conflagration it
once did. I’m sure it could but it’s finding the spark to reignite the fire
that is proving more troubling.
Going through the motions is easy,
it’s controllable and simple to maintain. Reeling and struggling as I’m
battered from one end of the fire storm to the other is difficult. In many ways
I miss feeling so helpless and ineffectual. To know that the maelstrom was
outside of my control and that the best I could hope to do was come up for air
every once in a while as a kind of reprieve to attain clarity, is something
seems like a welcome condition these days. Few people know what it is to be
passionate, to genuinely be inspired and feel the energy of something beautiful
flow within you; to wake up every day and find new zeal toward a goal or
endeavor. I felt it and I reveled in every day I had it. I was wrapped in it
like a gossamer blanket of joy. The inferno dimmed. The spring ran dry. The
intensity of that light only lasted so long and eventually there was no more
fuel to feed the fire, no more rain to replenish the well. I did my best to
cling to my blanket but wound up holding onto shadows and ghosts.
This is the world that I have
inhabited for far too long. A run down and derelict structure that once served
as the seat of unrivaled grandeur. I’ve dwelt within a palace that has served
more as a tomb than a shrine or an edifice of lavishness; a hollow kingdom with
a king that cares nothing for the suffering of his lands and peoples. I sought
the disconnection, reasoned away attachment as something to be reviled and abhorred.
Human affection is a weakness, emotional investment is foolish, trust is the
ultimate invitation for betrayal; the rhetoric goes on and on, but in the end
it’s all the same idea, “misplaced faith and trust can only end badly”. But even
as brilliant as some might claim me to be, I missed the first word in that:
misplaced. I pressed on, willing away anything that would possibly connect me
to humanity and thus leave me weak, heedless of the possibility that the choice
might turn out to be one of ultimate self damnation.
But now we arrive at our present
hypothetical discourse. If you make the perfect shot but still lose in spite of
it, would it be better to have missed completely? Put another way: For what
will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what
will a man give in exchange for his soul?
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