I’ve been thinking lately – too much perhaps, or too little seeing as to how I haven’t quite figured things out – about the current state of my life. And, while I won’t share the details here simply because I haven’t bothered sharing the minutiae with anyone but my closest confidants, I will share what I’m thinking, simply because…

I think I’ve found my compiler muse. It’s sort of sad, but very funny. One of those things where you reach a state of such enlightened relaxation that the little pieces of your world suddenly fit together into a cohesive whole and you’re left with nothing but wonder… It happened some point this morning, lying in bed, thinking about everything and nothing when suddenly I realized I was working under the false assumption I was feeding my procedures the right variables. And in a flash of insight I knew what it is I had to do, the code fell together in my head and I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. That’s the second time that such a productive backlash has hit me since…

I wasn’t built for this.

I wasn’t built to be a hanger on, hoping and struggling and hanging on for dear life. I don’t do that. I’ve never done that. I was built to let go. But you spend your time, your days, hours, minutes, seconds, thinking about this one thing and you can’t help but hope to reach for it. And yet all you can grasp is a small rope. But you’re not quite sure what that rope is attached to, except you know there’s something else – you have to get to the top, you have to otherwise you lose and he’ll win and you’ll just be another chump on the side walk.

I wasn’t trained for this. I was trained to help others, not myself. I can apply all of Sun Tzu’s teachings to the grand battlefield stratagem of life – as long as it’s someone else’s life, not mine. And there’s a battle raging within as to whether you should give up to your baser instincts, take what you can get; or if you hold on, hold on for dear life because you know, somehow somewhere deep down inside that it’s what you were built to do.

Control, the voice whispers in your mind, you must learn control.

So you don’t let go of the rope and you don’t climb because you don’t know what purchase you have. You’re afraid. You float in the middle of nowhere, a drop of a thousand feet below you and you can’t help but wonder if the person whom you race against deserves it more than you. You can’t help but wonder because it’s how it’s always been. They always get there first. Partly it’s because you always let them get there first. You always let go. It is, after all, what you were built to do. You never step in and declare the guy an asshole or a bastard or a manipulative prick. You note these things, you notice them because it is what you do, it is how you think, but you don’t do anything. You are handed the silver bullet and you never use it.

You aren’t built for this. Someday, you figure, it’ll be easy. Easy, easy, easier. It never gets any easier.

But you find yourself holding on to a line and you wonder what it’ll be like to let go. It doesn’t look like you’re going to win – not as long as you hold on and he holds on and all you’ve got is a death-grip on a line, floating over the canyon of fucking doom, praying to God or anyone above that might owe you a favor or at the very least likes you to remind Him that it is your time to be happy. You’ve waited long enough.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. It’s just that simple, and all you’ve been given is a rope to hang from, a rope with which to hang yourself. But you hold on because you can, because you don’t want to loose. Because you weren’t raised to lose either. You don’t believe in losing but you do believe in Sacrifice.

Endure, the voice whispers again. And in enduring, you realize, grow strong.

So you say fuck it and you try. You try with everything to override your core programming and just let go of your fears and start climbing. But you can’t. You hold back. Not because you don’t want to. Because you can’t. You can’t let yourself go. The internal battle continues to rage. so you lie there holding on to that small rope and you close your eyes and hope to God that when it’s over and you’ve hit the ground you’re still alive. Because you still doubt yourself. Because as you look into the abyss below you recognize it. You and the canyon of doom have met. You’ve been introduced.

The abyss has been your home before. And as you stare into its inky black depth you can’t help but feel it creeping inside of you and it whispers. It is intelligent. It knows. It says to you that which you fear so deeply inside of yourself you have nothing left to do but whimper. That you will fail. Like you always do. And you believe the abyss because the abyss is wise and everexpanding and the abyss will never let you die. It will catch you, scratch you, break you down into your constituent elements but it will never. let. you. die. It cannot. For as much as the abyss will destroy you, the hellish chasm cannot exist if you do not confirm its existence.

And this is where the problem starts. Up until now you’ve been fighting the good fight. You’ve fought the abyss and you’ve conquered your fears; you’ve fought your baser instincts and have risen above mere flesh; you’ve even convinced yourself you deserve to get to the top.

But the doubt still gnaws inside yourself. You deserve the top but you know that it is not your choice to make. As long as you dangle and he dangles neither of you is going anywhere. You recognize you stand on death ground. The principles of Sun Tzu come to you in a flash of insight. You’ve defeated the lesser battles that rage all around you and you wonder. As long as you dangle you are not going to win. Nobody is going to win. There are no winners in this fight, only losers, if you hang on.

And you suddenly know what it is you have to do. You understand it, you comprehend it, it logically flows forth. Assume there exists a pulley at location A, and two weights of variable measure (B and C) hanging at opposite ends of A. As either weight increases mass, the other will grow to compensate. It follows, then, that neither of the two weights will ever reach the top of hte pulley. The system reaches equilibrium, or one of the weights fails to compensate properly, or the entire mechanism breaks down. And you wonder what it is that makes you hold on, you wonder what if the other guy is a good guy, what if he’s not like the assholes you’re used to. By all accounts he doesn’t seem that way.

What if he’s as good as you?

And these are the doubts that kill you. It’s not the doubts of whether or not the system will break down, whether or not you can make your way up. You’ve been so preoccupied with whether or not you can win you’ve never thought of whether or not you should win.

You’ve convinced yourself you deserve this. But that isn’t how you were built.

Sacrifice.

The word, so simple, comes to you from the ether. Let go, the whisper comes to you, tempting you to loosen your grip on the little rope and you almost do. You’re beginning to loose faith – hope.

What do you have if not hope?

The abyss laughs and roils below you. It opens its warm embrace towards you and you shudder. Because you understand the darkness. You can feel it growing within you for the abyss isn’t physical. The chasm spans inside, massive, roiling, boiling. You stop yourself from thinking of it in such terms but you hear the laughter, cold dread laughter, once again inside your skull, reverberating. You feel yourself doubt whether or not you truly deserve to be happy. You begin to think and to remember what it is you once swore to do. Seeking your own happiness was never a part of the deal. Wake up, you remind yourself. The hero must awaken.

Sacrifice. She’d want it that way. She’ll be happier that way. You’re trying to convince yourself, yet somehow the words sound a tad hollow. But you’re not sure if that echo is the echo of yourself or the echo of truth, the bit that tells you that it isn’t always so, you aren’t always right. But the cold dread in the pit of your stomach reminds you that you’re right. She’ll be happier that way. Weight B drops out of the system and C will reach A. And you’ll lie there, satisfied that you made someone happy.

Someone. Happy.

If you let go, you realize, there’ll be winners. It’ll be your own damn stupid stubborn fault. But there’ll be winners. And you? Just another chump on the side walk. You’ll fall into the chasm, you realize, but you’ve been there before. You’ll see the echoes of your past laughing at you from the darkness. You’ll stare them in the eye and they’ll once again whither and die. They wilt not because you kill them but because they don’t need to live in the abyss. They live deep within you, and you hear them cackling even as your fingers fly over the keys. Even as you make that cosmic decision to let go.

But you find that you don’t want to let go. Damn stupid stubborn. So you hold on. You hold on for dear life.

This is how it feels to be me:
You were raised to be a Christian gentleman, not take advantage of people and to help those who need your help.
You were trained to recognize the flow and ebb of human machination.
You’ve been given the option of having, in short, everything you ever wanted.
But you falter. Because you believe in God and fairness and honesty and truth and a billion other ideals which mean a lot in the mind but jack shit in the battlefield. Because you recognize what it is you have to do to end this. Because you’ve known for a damn long time that it is the only way to make things easy.
And you’ve always liked things nice and easy.

You used to say live and let live.

You’ll make your choice, warrior. Say live and let die.