The nasty scarecrow dropped in sometime during a time when I was supposed to enjoy dreams of sunshine and rainbows.
Dude put his finger in my face and launched into a tirade about shortcomings and failings and then got upset because I ignored his slings and arrows and went about my business.
Eventually his frustration grew and he moved from simple parlor tricks into something more sophisticated and yet quite simple.
Bastard punched me in the mouth and kicked me in the balls.
While I would never describe myself as a tough guy I am not someone who just rolls over when stuff gets hard.
Fact is, he did me a favor because the worst part of every fight I have ever been in wasn’t getting punched, kicked or bitten but the anticipation about what might happen.
Once I know what something feels like I am very good at adapting and adjusting, it is anticipation that makes me crazy.
You can let pain cripple you or you can use it to focus your energy and that is what I did.
Grabbed the straw man and started blindly battering away at whatever body part I could reach knowing that sooner or later dawn would break and things always look different during the daylight hours.
Did my best to give as good as I got and by the time daylight broke we lay there on the floor, exhausted, but I refused to let go of him.
I knew the moment I gave that slippery bastard a chance he’d go hide and then come back for another round of fun and games.
You might wonder if I thought about killing him and the answer is yeah, I would have choked the life out of him without a second thought.
But the dude doesn’t require blood or oxygen to live and that beating I gave him was only enough to make him go away for a while.
I knew that then and I know it now.
Sometimes the best you can hope for isn’t the kind of total and complete victory politicians talk about in empty campaign promises.
Instead you look for a mix of practical and functional, solutions that make life better and more manageable.
About That Curse Of Knowledge
A long time ago I made some choices about somethings I wanted to have happen for my family and I.
Did so knowing that in the short term it might be terribly difficult and filled with some significant challenges but moved ahead because I thought the long term benefits would make it all worthwhile.
The thing is knowledge isn’t clairvoyance.
It doesn’t guarantee that things will go as you hope, want or wish for them too. It is just part of a practical toolkit you draw upon that you use to steer your ship.
Is it coincidence that Home Again by Carole King is playing now?
Hell if I know, I am just a regular guy who does his best to get things done and sometimes that means doing what is required.
The thing that sucks about doing what is required is that it doesn’t enable you to do what you really want to, just what you have to.
And maybe, just maybe it provides you with the tools you need to move from that place of what is required to what you want.
About That Curse Of Knowledge Continued
That curse of knowledge is also tough because it draws upon education and experience and sometimes that limits your ability and or willingness to stretch yourself.
Sometimes it makes you hesitant to go after some things because knowledge makes you question whether you’ll succeed.
Knowledge makes you shy away from taking some risks that might not be as risky as you think.
So you don’t say what you really want to say or choose as you really want to choose.
Trust me when I say the angry straw man and I battled about it. Dude looked me in the eye, asked me how it felt to be an old man who can’t do what I used to do and laughed.
I laughed right back because I don’t have to be that same guy.
Sneered at the angry straw man while I told him the guy he was trying to taunt is dead, gone and buried.
“Don’t have to be him. Don’t want to be him. Don’t know him anymore, got today and whatever comes after.”
You know the truth about the curse of knowledge is that there is a flip side to it all. When you have lived a little bit and done a few things you realize that all we do is move from moment to moment.
Some are harder than others but none are forever.
Transition to transition, bring on the next part.
Editor’s note: Don’t know if you think this is the best or worst thing you have ever read. It is probably a bit convoluted but sometimes we need to just write and press publish. This is supposed to be just a few ramblings, so why not.
