...one of those days...

Do you ever have one of those days? You know the kind....

One of those days when the overwhelming weight of the world just seems to be bearing all of its deep gravity well down on you? When all of the culpability of the species just seems to be unfucking avoidable and you have to own it, hold it to you at the same time that you're trying to tear it out of you?

One of those days when you can't resist to the urge to take on the sins of your race, your country, your gender, your species? When every story, every song, every image reminds you of the incredible fuck up this all is, all of it, in spite of the good things, because of the unmitigated horror of the bad?

When the black hole is so dense that it's hard out get out of bed, off of the floor, out the door? When the sunlight hurts and smiles feel like razorblades? When the thought of peace, the ephemeral unlikelihood of it, the whisper of its possibility and the truth of its goddamn improbability, reduces you to tears?

When you want to slap every child you see push another down, ram your car into every self-involved driver that didn't see the person they almost ran over, strangle every self-serving politician you watch lie, again and again and again, destroy every person that ever hit their spouse in anger, knowing the whole time that it's the wrong answer to every one of those situations and not caring?

Knowing that even if you could, the shame would just be worse afterward?

One of those days when you can't see the hope through the fear, or the love through the hate, or the intelligence through the ignorance? When bigotry seems to be the rule and tolerance – not even real acceptance, just tolerance – looks like it's about a million fucking light years away from being possible?

When laughter makes you want to cry, crying makes you want to scream, and honesty makes you want to smash every mirror in the world?

One of those days? Do you know the kind I'm talking about?

I'm having one.

Sometimes it's good to just sit in awe and fucking own it for a day.

S'okay though. It's just a day. Tomorrow's a new one, and things'll be better. It's just one day.

"A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself..." Henry Beecher

"... The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires." Henry Ward Beecher (1813 - 1887)

It might be cheating a, but I’m going to go back and mine the archives a bit. Today’s quote was the first one I chose back at the beginning.

Beecher was saying this in a different time, and the semantics of the language would have meant more then, although the nuances of the words ‘aspiration’ and ‘ambition’ can still carry some of the same deeper meaning today. ‘Ambition’ is the word that can make it controversial. Beecher is saying that ambition is more ‘vulgar’ than aspiration, but ambition is a word that our culture admires as a virtue, not a detriment. So is the use of ‘ambition’ just out of date, or is this quote actually applicable today?

I think it is.

If you’ve ever read authors like Covey, you’ll be familiar with the argument that our society has moved away from an emphasis on the internal character of people towards concepts that focus on the ability to persuade and on material gain as measure of a person’s worth. Beecher’s quote comes from a time when that real transition was just starting and his point, one I believe is just as appropriate today (if not as commonly accepted), is that ambition to achieve external results is a poor replacement for achieving internal growth; that material success is less valuable than the ability of humanity to aspire to true nobility of character; to be something more tomorrow than we are today.

The concept of focusing on aspiration more than ambition makes sense to me and applies to where I’m going. It might not apply as directly to other people, and that’s okay, but taking a moment to think about the value of developing character as a focus is, I believe, something we could all benefit from doing a bit more.