Success and Failure are humans’ most noxious notions. They deflate exuberance, diminish dawns. Good isn’t good unless it’s better than. Enough can’t be enough.

They disease the soul. Comparisons disparage – think of all I wasn’t, didn’t! The Best is a giant tree whose shade prevents new growth beneath. This morning I wake writhing about … no matter what. I’m alive, the dawn light filters through leafing trees, Jane’s alive, Henry’s hilarious, words await, why not a hymn of praise? Instead, I’m grumping about… I yank my pen from the topic like Henry from a fetid rabbit.

But isn’t Aspiration a precondition of human Beauty? If Humans didn’t long to transcend what is, who’d make Art?

Granted, Art is anodyne for the disease of Being; without the disease, we’d never miss it. A painting or tune strikes Henry as useless, inedible! He notices my distress, soothes it in his doggy way – he’s pain-averse – but dismisses it as yet another human oddity. He’s happy where he is because where else is there? He’s succeeded in being himself, what greater triumph?

I love the General Confession of my boyhood; I still happen on myself repeating it:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAlmighty and most merciful Father,We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.We have offended against thy holy laws.We have left undone those things which we ought to have done;And we have done those things which we ought not to have done;And there is no health in us.But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.Spare thou those, O God, which confess their faults.Restore thou those that are penitent;According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord.And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake;That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life,To the glory of thy holy Name.

Consoling – also confusing. Five when I memorized its music, how had I erred and strayed? What done that I ought not to have? The predation of a cookie? Pooping in the field? Reading past curfew? Were these really so bad, requiring pardon from a busy Almighty?

Infecting children with the fantasy of Success dooms them to fail. For who succeeds? We die – what more dire defeat! We are forgotten.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedImperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay,Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

Success and Failure are not facts, but opinions, therefore a trick of mind. To mend our mood, then, we should mend our minds – easy as pie. Watch! I HEREBY DECLARE MY LIFE A GIDDYING AND INCOMPARABLE SUCCESS. AND ANY SETBACKS OR FLUBS ONLY LESSONS REQUIRED TO SPEED ME TO MY GLORIOUS CLOSE. Abracadabra, by fiat, Failure’s gone. As Alexander Pope put it (who, paradoxically, couldn’t have been crabbier), “Whatever is is right!”

Parlor magic, you chaff? Tugging a rabbit from a top hat?

You bet – and what a rabbit! What possession more precious than peace at the last? As our dismay was immaterial, so must be our reprieve. Things can’t defeat No-things: it’s like that old children’s game, “Rock, scissor, paper, shoot.”

If only it were that easy. I’m pretty smart; I subscribe to the reasoning above. So why (once I stop typing) am I cobwebbed in gloom? Isn’t problem-solving evidence of intelligence? Yet I FAIL.

Excruciating, the realization: I am not, as my kids used to say, “the boss of me,” only a passenger in this crazy cart called Carll, straining to hold on. Lord, hear my prayer.