Beckett wrote the following immortal lines:
Ever Tried.
Ever Failed.
No Matter.
Try Again.
Fail Again.
Fail Better.
The lines have stayed with me ever since I came upon them. They were etched in my consciousness. They are my friends, my companions, my solace as I lurch through life, from one failure to the next, to my last dying breath, to "the last recorded syllable of time".
The more I fail, the more I learn about myself and others. Life is the sum of all experiences. A man's true worth is measured by how many times he gets up after falling down, not how he stands tall after moments of triumph. Failure means he has overreached, taken risks, taken on the unknown, and grown as a living, breathing person. Nietzsche beautifully said something to the effect that what has not killed you, will make you stronger.
I have been telling myself that I will fight against all odds, that I won't ever give up, that I'm a modern-day Sisyphus. As Albert Camus trenchantly remarked, the face that strained in pushing the rock up the mountain, the face that was so close to the rock, that face became like the rock itself: hard and indestructible. And when I watch the rock rolling down the mountain after I have pushed it up the summit, I am not filled with despair. As I walk down the mountain with the intention to resume an absurd task of pushing the rock up the mountain top again, I'm becoming stronger than the rock. You are defeated when you let Absurdity rocks and consumes you. Life is a game, with Absurdity at the core and crux and center. There's nothing more absurd than you are born and then you die. Nothing lasts forever, even the stars. Impermanence is the characteristic of the Universe which is the embodiment and manifestation of the restless Energy. Where did the Energy come from? Nobody knows. To say "God" had something to do with it, is a sign of ignorance. To say Jesus of Nazareth was the manifestation of God is a sign of gross stupidity and intellectual enslavement. Christians are intellectually and emotionally crippled, childish and cowardly. They dare not confront the ultimate questions. They are afraid to go beyond what they were told what and how to think and believe.
Pushing up the rock up the mountain is an act of absurdity, just like Death is an absurdity and Life is an accident. To live with the awareness that Death is an absurdity, an equalizer of all men, has made me more aware, more alive, more self-conscious that I am a rarity, and not a mere mortal human.
Sooner or later each one of us humans must come to terms with the meaning of Death in his own way.
Thus Spoke Wissai
February 12, 2016
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