Like many cold-blooded Americans, I'm spending this week at the beach. My particular beach of choice would be Ocean City, NJ; I've been coming here for at least one week every summer since I was a wee lad. I've made an expert study of its surface, and none whatsoever of its substance. In a sense, I vacation in a fantasy Ocean City, and we never need to learn each other's foibles. I am the consummate happy vacationer, and she, the city, is the perfect destination.
Of course, I'm surrounded by family. The crazy ballet of transportation, food, and sleeping arrangements send my sanity into frequent tailspins, but it's still a whole lot of fun. My siblings' and cousins' kids are running around all over the place with the frenetic energy reserved to those below the age of reason, flinging open every closed door without so much as a how-do-you-do. Although my wife and I are lucky enough to have our own room, we need to be constantly vigilant with the door lock, lest an impressionable four-year-old in an Iron Man costume catch us in media res.
Which has led me to consider, given the sheer quantity of families arrayed in similar circumstances this week every year, just how many poor children are hideously scarred for life by being forced into such unfamiliar proximity with their relatives as part of a simple holiday celebration. Personally, I can't recall ever stumbling across such an unknowable tableaux in my youth (though I had plenty else to scar me), although it's always possible I could simply have blocked it out of my memory! But still, I am forced to go through life with the sad certainty that I have never seen what should not have been seen.
Today, my wife took my second cousins to cavort in the waves, and I took some time to watch them repeat the eternal cycle of being knocked down by the bigger waves, then getting up just in time to be knocked over again. I recalled how much I enjoyed the same when I was younger (and admittedly, would still enjoy it today, if I could find anybody willing to enjoy it alongside me [my wife being unwilling to approach any waves tall enough to actually knock either of us over]); there was just something so gratifying in allowing myself to be felled, only to rise again, stronger and more able to withstand the next onslaught. Nothing in the water ever delighted me so much as pitching myself against the great forces of nature embodied by the towering crests, and little has ever made me feel as alive as dragging myself back up from the sea floor to await the next crushing swell.
Is that what living means? To lose your footing, to be knocked under, to flirt with the sweetly grasping claws of suffocation, only to reject it all, plant your feet firmly once more, and to stand tall, laughing as the water runs from you?
That seems to jive with my experience. When I don't feel particularly challenged -- when I'm lacking any sense of a struggle -- life loses all its vim. I find myself whiling away the days miserably, trying to figure out what's missing. Then, as soon as a problem, adventure, or challenge presents itself, all of my energy is restored in an instant. Without the potential for failure, I lose all sense of success. When I'm comfortable, you could give me a million years, and I wouldn't produce anything sharing with a kindergarten class. When I'm struggling, there aren't enough hours for me to find an outlet for all of the creative energy I have. And that's in excess of the excitement and energy I devote simply to solving the primary problem, whatever it might be.
Even now that I'm grown, as I stand on the shore and watch the myriad swirls of clouds of sand beneath the water, I still long for those waves to come and knock me down. And sure, the idea that struggle gives life meaning isn't a new one. But I think life is just a series of failures -- of waves that knock us down -- and it's impossible for us to become strong enough that we can't be pulled under. But sometimes, we rise, and for whatever reason, we're given a brief reprieve before the next wave comes along -- and we call that a success.
Don't spend your life hoping not to fail, or yearning for successes. Spend your life cherishing your failures and doing your best to keep on your feet, and you might learn that success oftentimes finds you.
used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that
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