This is not about pessimism.

I have failed at all things. ALL THINGS!

And even as I write that, I feel the demon’s claw pricking my back. Slithering into my soul. Worming its way into my brain.

What becomes of a man that has failed?

Should he be reborn? Would he not be of the same ilk? Would his pitiful state not be cycled back again and again. To see the mirror and the pang of its reflection?

Is this the eternal recurrence Nietzsche spoke of?

I’ve got this lizard brain and a monkey mind. Meditation for one and prayer for the other. Futile attempts at taming the two. My energy runs wild. Dissipated into the ether.

So, I have to keep this mantra in my brain at all times:

The mind controls the arm, the arm swings the axe.

What you will is what will be. No more. No less.

To act upon the world is to bring forth your own birth and your own destruction. But what other choice do you have? To live inside the void? the chasm? To lie inside the tomb, motionless and fearful?

No. To act is all there is. But I am frozen by my own indecision. A man without limbs. Castrated by my own caution.

When you light a candle to pray, is it the burning God desires? Is it the soft light flickering from the icons? I don’t think so. Maybe, It’s in the remembering. The deliberate confession and the portioning of self and non-self that exposes deeper flaws.

But I have become problematic. A pessimist, not in the way of Schopenhauer, and not in the way of the Buddha, but in the styling of that melting wax. For now, I see the candle as something else. An icon within itself and I am too scared to light it.

The failing man, is not the dying man. For the dying man has overcome his failures and now may be laid to rest. The failing man lives within the eternal recurrence and he is sore afraid.

I once watched a documentary about Humboldt County, California. Humboldt is the home of the largest production of marijuana in the United States. It also has more missing people per capita than any other county in the nation. It is affectionately known as Murder Mountain.

Once, a reporter asked a simple man why there were so many murders in that area of the country. His response, had nothing to do with drugs or serial killers or poverty or gang violence. His answer echoed off the deep valley walls and spoke to a truth deeper and more reverent than any other. “It’s the spirits in these woods”.

It gave me chills. And I knew, he was right.