Therefore, steal, or still, the echo, so that you don’t allow an event, however unpleasant or momentous, to claim any more time than it took for it to occur...
What your foes do derives its significance or consequence from the way you react.
Therefore, rush through or past them as though they were yellow and not red lights.
Don’t linger on them mentally or verbally; don’t pride yourself on forgiving or forgetting them — worse come to worse, do the forgetting first.
This way you’ll spare your brain cells a lot of useless agitation; this way, perhaps, you may even save those pigheads from themselves, since the prospect of being forgotten is shorter than that of being forgiven.
So flip the channel: you can’t put this network out of circulation, but at least you can reduce its ratings. Now, this solution is not likely to please angels, but, then again, it’s bound to hurt demons, and for the moment that’s all that really matters.
-Joseph Brodsky
I recently encountered a very clear and unflattering reflection of my inner workings. I initially tried to break the damn mirror. Next, I made every effort to discount the reflection and question the value of any friend so brazen and "unkind" as to offer up my underbelly for inspection. But a reflection, once seen, can never be unseen.
I have carried around a hulking history for more minutes, months and years than I care to count. I have developed calluses and coping strategies to accommodate its weight. It's an antecedent. It does not exist now. It's only labored forward by my perpetual Sisyphusian effort to carry it with me. That rock insists that I am, who I am, based solely on an accumulation of who I have been, complete with trauma, pain and a lot of human bullshit. So. How do you stop the cycle? There are no Gods insisting that I keep pushing this damn rock up the hill. As terrifying as it may be the only other option is to face life on it's own terms. And all that is left to do is live.
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