A NORMAL LIFE

          A normal life isn’t the type that leads to greatness. Normal in fact is its nemesis, especially during the genesis when Destiny decides who will ride success’ heights. Then while others sleep, we work through the night, often against our wills because of what Destiny wants to reveal to others to help them discover their own potential.

          The task is compounded because we lack credentials other than uncommon courage and desire indomitable, the combination of which makes us formidable. Characteristically formidable is fundamental to success. Without this we will wish rather than work as we should, especially when circumstances stifle. But that’s when we should reload our rifles, metaphorically speaking, and become even more determined to obtain what we are seeking.

          So many people, though, let circumstances make them fold. Yet these same souls will watch the Olympics and ignore the template for success that they illustrate because every contestant endured something adverse solely for the opportunity to become great. In failing, however, the passive enthrone normal and berate the banal; indifferent to how their indifference controls both the channel and the flow of their lives.

         Others assert that it’s too late because they don’t know how to become vicariously great by supporting others in their dreams. Even so, life has innumerable schemes and designs that can help us achieve what we have in mind. Yet the character of a normal life we must first be willing to decline. If we do this and diligently persist, our gifts will grow and our talents will eventually show themselves, taking us we know not wheres!

If we don't fulfill our promise we owe others an apology.

        If we thought the impossible were so, life would cease. Yet none of us believes in the impossible.  We acknowledge it but we don’t believe in it. To believe in the impossible is to reject our passion. Yet our passion stirs us nightly and sustains us daily. The moment we believe in the impossible life passes. Only by rejecting its myth do we master.

DENSITY AND DESTINY

You must be porous to hear the chorus that calls some to greatness. Those who can't ignore its chant, being deaf to music.

         

          You have to be dense to do what makes no sense, especially when you do it at your own expense because inwardly you are convinced that you are being spent in Destiny’s service. Thus nights find you working and days find you nervous because your only resource is a fund of courage that renews itself without your help (or permission), compelling you thus to pursue the vision. Meanwhile others behave as if you don’t exist. Those that are aware often stare stymied because you keep aligning yourself with the unseen with no guarantee that you will succeed.

          In your defense you erect a fence between their doubts and your own even as you are driven to labor to manifest a greatness that only you believe in enough to invest despite the stress and ridicule. The only consolation is that you have now become indifferent when, in referring to you, others whisper, “fool.” Instead you flash a half-smile because you too have turned this stile in an effort to turn away from what consumes your days and command your nights. Not even God is the consolation that religion excites. Yet HHe is the Source of Destiny’s summons.

          He’s also the reason your friends start running when they see you coming. It isn’t because you solicit money or anything else. You just sometimes need help believing in yourself. But it seldom happens, so you keep hoping and working that Destiny is certain, and that you aren’t deceived. Yet in reviewing the lives of the great similar parallels you perceive. That’s what makes it hard just to discard the time you’ve invested and to discount the ways you’ve been tested. So, you just vow to die until you are ushered into eternity away from time. At least it can’t be said that you denied your allegiance to the thing that kneaded itself in your soul.

A GOALIE OR A ROADIE

Are you a goalie or a roadie? Are you guarding your dream or running from things that would help you to accomplish these? How do you stand the tease, the tears, the irrational fears that keep your feet moving and desire brooding for fulfillment? That's what I wonder when I sit in the window looking at others peeking around corners trying to escape opportunities that are unique and designed especially for them. Yet they refuse to embrace, let alone guard them. They prefer instead to travel along paths that are dim. Metaphorically, they are roadies who lack the boldness to pursue their dreams.

SAY WHAT

What have you done that makes you feel as if you deserve a place in the sun? What have you given; how much have you grieved? Do you know what it is to hope against hope, still choosing to believe? Does being a fan make you feel like "the man" or "the woman?" When others are sleep, greatness are you wooing? If not, you will always clap and yap about other people; then in the same breath proclaim that we are all created equal.

THE ROAD

The road we travel often baffles because we chart unwisely and short-sightedly. We do so because we imagine that our directions are synonymous with perfection, at least until we get lost. Then we realize that maps and markers are often harder to read than we imagine. In this regard, the GPS to success often fails to help us in our quest. Thus we must be willing to travel blindly trusting kindly in the goodness of fortune while be willing to hearken to whatever help we can receive in route. Otherwise we will pout and complain at the pain of being detained in our pursuit. If this weren't so, success' road would be empty because each traveler would have fulfilled her destiny. Yet the fact that she hasn't proves that we are given to assuming more than we should about just how good our maps are. If, however, we persist we will arrive eventually.

THE URGE TO REGULATE

The urge to regulate represents a diversion of democracy and usurpation of the autonomy entrusted to citizens by reason and sanctioned by law. Thus “red-tape” has become the red-herring enabling governments to galvanize their efforts to prevent the emergence of truly free markets by manufacturing amorphous mechanisms that suppress the growth of cottage industries (and contrary ideas), which would ultimately enhance our ability to build a genuinely liberal and liberating society. If, however, this society sees itself as complete, then it is compelled to create oppressive protocols that stifle citizen’s efforts to implement their unique ideas.

This claim neither denies the need nor denounces the value of regulation as a means of managing public safety (e.g. Borders' attempts to retail his barbecue). However, it does substantiate his sentiment and sustain his argument that the regulatory state is effectually and efficiently becoming a new form of totalitarianism wherein only certain avenues are open to certain people with access to powers and persons that grant permits and permission for them to pursue their projects unimpeded.

Borders, however, launches a logical fallacy in his fertile comparison of over-regulation with applying for welfare, which is an equally arduous process. I also reject his reductionism, saying that, “In the end, all I wanted was to sell barbecue sauce.” In this regard, the relationship between ends and means are malleable. One feeds the other and informs both because of their bond. We just have to be Spartan to limit special interests from suppressing our pursuits which, unfortunately Borders wasn’t.

Characteristically, democracy and capitalism are constructed on contradictory, ambiguous and occasionally conflicting concepts supported by prescriptions and tempered by provisions designed for quality control. Concern with over-regulation, however, as expressed by Borders can become a form of “paper terrorism” whereby citizens are subverted by processes that require conformity to regulations multiplied beyond reason and without regard for commonsense. Perhaps a concept co-opted from philosophy might diminish the dominion of these mandates, namely, a revised version of Occam’s Razor, which would prevent “regulations from being multiplied unnecessarily in efforts to protect public interests.”

If this principle prevailed, the ability of special interests to suppress the emergence of entrepreneurial ventures by their vulturous actions would erode significantly. More important, such an approach would impugn the intellectual parochialism that imperils the progress of democracy, domestically and internationally. In this progressive climate oppressive provisions would cease to prevail, and yield rather to the rule of reason and the right of persons to pursue their peculiar projects in a climate of least resistance. Such a change, however, would require revision in the contemporary demeanor of American democracy, which routinely lets itself be bullied by global events that ultimately hinder citizen’s ability to exercise greater degrees of self-determination because of being deterred unjustly and illegitimately. Moreover, our allegiance to the logic of a flattened world seems to require inflexible systems that suppress rather than serve social interests and citizen needs, threatening freedom in the process.



References

Paper terrorism is the use of false liens, frivolous lawsuits, bogus letters of credit, and other legal documents lacking sound factual basis as a method of harassment, especially against government officials.[1] It is popular among some anti-government groups and those associated with the redemption movement. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_terrorism)