Rage blow you cataracts and hurricanoes!
"King Lear."
Always wanted to say it.
- Garth Ennis, "First Contact"

"Choice"
I faced down Mephisto for the umpteenth time last night, and it forced me to realize something:

Two years ago, I watched James Leer walk away from the girl of his dreams and took it as a sign that I should do the same. From that day forth, I've told myself that I've got no control over my life, that I'm simply at the whim of the rest of the world, and none of it's really my fault.

I see how irresponsible I've been now. Like the book says, "I'm a self-made man. All of my mistakes are my own." I can't blame my decisions on anyone but myself, and I can't make my next move based on whatever the hell happens in Spider-Man 2, because I've got a whole month between here and there, and a lot of choices to make in between.

There's this scene in The Big Kahuna in which the Penguin tells that asshole Mike Dexter that the key to having character is looking back at your life and seeing things that you regret. I've believed that for a long, long time, but now I see the truth:

Character is more about the choices we make today than it is about the ones we made yesterday.

"Sacrifice"
It's crucial to me that I've learned something over the last four years. I need to believe that something's changed about me other than my name. There has to be at least one mistake I wouldn't make again.

It can't be Meet The New Clark: same as The Old Clark. It can't. Because this dreamer can't die when his dreams do, and like the song goes, "It's not going to stop 'til you wise up." I don't think I'm a stupid person, but I do stupid things. But isn't it possible -- nay, likely -- that willfully doing stupid things makes me a stupid person?

I thought I understood everything I needed to about sacrifice. I always figured that while I don't know nothing about life in the real world, I at least understood the notion of giving of yourself for a greater good. I see how stupid an assumption that was now, but maybe, just maybe, the one lesson I can take away from all this is the sad and simple truth about giving up...

Whatever that may be.

"Destiny"
I haven't seen Forrest Gump for quite sometime, but that scene at Jenny's grave stays with me. Why wouldn't it? After all, it's that essential question, isn't it? Do we each have a specific purpose in life to which we must work or are we indeed just victim to the vagaries of fate? Do we each have a destiny or are we all floating around accidental-like on a breeze? And then there's the surprisingly radical thought that maybe both things are true at the same time.

I learned from Bob Collins that F. Scott Fitzgerald apparantly once said, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise." And if that's true -- and I can't say I'm convinced that it is, though I really wish I could -- perhaps "Maybe it's both," isn't quite the cop-out it feels like it is right now. And maybe I can do something stupid without being stupid myself.

And maybe there's hope for us yet.