"It is not the ctitic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles 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 up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

~Theodore Roosevelt

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Pessimism

~When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not going to be my best week ever but I'm super excited for this weekend! So, as I don't have anything much to say I wanted to share something I wrote last semester for my Creative Writing class. For our final we had to take an abstract topic and make it concrete and it had to be short enough to read in five minutes to the class. Needless to say, I procrastinated. I got around to writing it the day before we were to meet to share them. It was my last final and I was stressed out, irritated, and had not had a good week (finals are rough, I dislike them immensely). So, I wrote on pessimism! I actually had a lot of fun with it :)


Pessimism

Certainly pessimism is a deeper understanding of what life is really like. It is the fine layer of chilled cement beneath the sunshine of the early morning; the thin coating of black ice cemented in the cracks between the bricks. Pessimism is the grade printout after midterms when you can only hope the numbers will rise. When life is pulling itself along like a slug across the sidewalk and all you can think is that the slug is sure to get run over. It is when you carve your name into the wet cement and it dries before you are done. You are forever known as only a fraction. Pessimism is the dandelion that sprouts out of the stringy grass trying to grow beautifully only to be sprayed down, to be killed. It is the life in the shadows reflecting what is there in the darkness; the snow piling upon the green grass, hiding the burning beauty of the fall leaves. It is the words spewed from the mouth of the wishful; the song in the car of the hopeful when the world is simply crashing down. Pessimism is the light at the end of the tunnel during a power outage; when the battery dies on your IPod during that inspirational song. It's when the person before you doesn't show up and your audition, you oral exam, your presentation, is that much sooner. Pessimism is that everyday nagging that maybe you'll forget to push snooze, that you'll turn the alarm off instead; that there won't be a second time, a second chance, a second try.
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