every time I was knocked down.
I.
Got.
Up.
Even when it felt like my feet were cinder blocks. I –
Still.
Got.
Up.
When they said I never would. That I never could. When I believed them, even when I didn’t think I should. I still –
Got.
Up.
When it felt like hope was a rouse. Only existing in the imagination of fools. I still got –
Up.
And when I felt like if I shrunk. It would be okay, if I just stopped.
I still got up.
And I don’t know why.
And I don’t know how.
But I did and and I do.
Maya Angelou said, still I rise.
I wonder why?
Why do we still rise?
Only to fall, again and again and again.
Why do we carry our burdens, make them in to dance, song, music, study.
Why does it take magic? Why does it take genius?
They don’t tell you how many tears go into each step forward. How they create a slippery path ahead of you, so the journey may be fun some times, but other times mean you have a very hard fall. All. Of your own doing, because they were your tears? Not theirs.
They don’t tell you that there may never be an outstretched hand. That it may only be you who has to learn to pick yourself up, even while you’re slipping around to try and get just a strong enough grip to stand.
They don’t tell you that to get up, does not mean that you will do so to an ovation.
That you’ll have to fall and pick yourself up in an empty room. Over and over. And that the only way you can feel victorious, is if you get comfortable with the fact that the victory is not in the getting up. The victory is in the fact you ever could. The victory is that you keep doing it. But that it will never get easier. You’ll just get used to it. Or actually
In truth
There’s no victory at all.
Because actually, life isn’t a game.
A game has rules. You can win or lose a game.
And if it’s any game at all, its a prisoners dilemma.
And it’s all about finding your own bash equilibrium in it all.
But those are just theories.
Real life. Life is anarchy.
Life is chaos.
So there is no “victory”.
There is no “everything happens for a reason”
There is no TRUE anything.
There is only what is.
And so to get up. To still rise. To know there will be tears.
That is a radical act, in a world of chaos.
To be sure. To be convicted. To insist there is a truth.
You are trying to divide 0, in a world desperate to exist in 01.
And that infinite insistence on getting up.
That that is a lonely path, not just a difficult one.
That there are no rewards for it.
Just lessons.
Just discoveries.
Some miracles too.
But that magic can also be lost in this world. That jeen-yuhs carries a huge cost.
And that cost, is you.
And all that you are.
To commit to getting up, no matter what, is to commit to being alive in a world that wants to kill you.
And to live, rather irrationally.
To survive.
