None of us endures for long past our last performance. It’s all we have. It’s not all we are, but it truly is all we have. The performance before the last one is history. Why this is, is a mystery.
Many of us confuse our worth for our roles.
We sense that the value should be in us as people, and not the role we play. But this is a nonsensical approach being that the role is what we’re employed for, paid or otherwise. Even from links of friendship form bonds of expectation, however tacitly applied.
The very last thing we’ve done we’re known for.
We could have played our best game or done our best job two times ago, yet if the last one was an embarrassing fiasco we have little credibility right now to stand upon. The world before us has a short memory and little patience of grace, let alone our own steaming depression. It’s just the way life is.
And yet, our role—over and above the role we think we have—is to overcome this chiding fact and set ourselves over the last ignominy, climbing again aboard the grace-filled chariot of fire to the homeland of relative success. This caters for and smooths the path.
This is real success-living: establishing feet for the tremulous journey and laughing all the way despite occasional feelings of abject discontentment and anguish.
The last game may well be the best way to actualise what we do, but it isn’t who we are. We are people who overcome; another chance is where we put the past well behind us, looking ever forward.
© 2010 S. J. Wickham.
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