Sleeping man from behind--MC
The joy of giving up in life has been seriously underestimated if it has been estimated at all. I don’t think it has been.
I have spent a better part of my life giving up on things, ideas and people to great exhilaration. It is particularly satisfying when you give up right at the point you know you could easily accomplish or attain whatever you are giving up on. Normally, giving up is viewed in a negative light as in being defeatist. I see it differently. There is an undercurrent of philosophical detachment to it.
Of course, the dictionary meaning of giving up is to cease effort or resign to failure. Giving up is a sign that one is not so invested in life and everything that comes with it. Out of ten ideas or things or people I think I have given up on eight. The person being given up on though does not quite know because that person did not quite know I was invested in them to begin with. Ideas or things are not animate or sentient. So they do not know when they are being given up on.
I also tend to give up on entire societies and civilizations. We just live under the delusion that we are making a difference by staying invested in something. In the overall scheme of things, we are making no difference. Please do not cite anthropocentric difference that one may make. I am talking more cosmic and cosmological. For instance, if I am not able to dim the sun at will or slow down the expansion of the universe, what’s the point? One ought to give up.
Attached to this fascination for giving up is my fascination for failure. I wrote this some 11 years ago in different context: “Failure is very visceral unlike success which frequently creates an ungraspable aura. Failure feels as if an 18-wheeler has just gone over your bare toes or a car door has just been slammed shut on your fingertips. Success, on the other hand, feels like sliding down a rainbow and landing straight into the arms of a coquette floating on a large fluffy white cloud, anxious to serve orange flavored whipped cream.”
I have also written about failure being in high definition while success not being that well defined. There is a certain ambiguity to success that one makes the one achieving it feel that it might go away any moment. Failure is a more loyal companion. In a manner of speaking failure does not give up on you. There is no ambiguity in failure. It stares you in the face unblinking. Failure has a way of clarifying your efforts in great detail while success tends to obscure them.
There is no particular point to this very short rumination. I just relish writing them once in a while.
