I recall a quote from F Scott Fitzgerald: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” There is coda to this quote that is often ignored, but unfortunately I’m too lazy to look it up. I’m fairly certain that it has something to do with brain damage, though.

The trick here, I suppose, is to want something very badly, and yet not be disappointed when it doesn’t come to fruition. Intellectually, it seems easy enough, but in practice, I’m having one hell of a time.

I’m also trying not to let my depressive attitude infect this whole process. Normally, I would be deeply mired in self-pity at this point in time. I would just let it fall apart at the seams without giving it an honest attempt, let it dissipate to the wind. This, my friends, is a definitive recipe for failure, and I’m not willing to go through the paces yet another time, at least not without a fight.

Still, a part of me longs to just give in to entropy, to succumb to failure and disappointment one more time, to add to the list of a growing number of defeats. I am reminded of Homer Simpson: “Trying is the first step to failure.”

But, like all living things, I really don’t want to fade out into oblivion, which is the endpoint of letting entropy make my decisions. Worse than death, it is the transformation of my soul into empty nothingness. An annihilation of my self. I know that many Eastern philosophies foster this idea and in fact see it as the path to Enlightenment, but unfortunately, I was reared on the philosophies of the West, and I am too individualistic to live easily with this idea at this time. Maybe when I gain more wisdom, but not now. It would be a false path, a murky shadow of the True Way, following the form, but not the spirit.

So I will try. I am ever fearful. I dread the idea that this is going to turn out exactly how it always turns out, and yet there is a part of me that is screaming, “No it’s not!” Not because I think that I can actually work it out this time, but because whichever way I go, even if does end in complete disaster, at least it will be different. Better than nothing, I suppose.

Damn me for a fool.