so it happened
that I chanced upon a post by a friend of a friend. I do not always agree with what he writes, but his work is always insightful, and occasionally, illuminating. The following provided me with much-needed warmth and encouragement in the cold wake of my recent failure.
"Two of the greatest tragedies occur when a person's expectations are incongruent with his abilities, or when the circumstances that life deals to him are incommensurate with the potential that nature has endowed him with. But the protagonist in either case need not be a tragic hero, like a Macbeth drawing arms against morality and destiny, nor like a Miltonian Satan falling further into a darkness not of the Deep but of his own creation. A person of real ability would take life into his hands, and not crush it, but shape it into a design of his own choosing."
It has helped put me in perspective, and I've taken the latest turn of events remarkably well. Or so I hope.
I suppose if there is anything at all that I am sorry for, it is that I have now cost Rayner a bottle of Baileys, and, well, broken a promise to someone whom I could conceivably call an old friend.
"Two of the greatest tragedies occur when a person's expectations are incongruent with his abilities, or when the circumstances that life deals to him are incommensurate with the potential that nature has endowed him with. But the protagonist in either case need not be a tragic hero, like a Macbeth drawing arms against morality and destiny, nor like a Miltonian Satan falling further into a darkness not of the Deep but of his own creation. A person of real ability would take life into his hands, and not crush it, but shape it into a design of his own choosing."
It has helped put me in perspective, and I've taken the latest turn of events remarkably well. Or so I hope.
I suppose if there is anything at all that I am sorry for, it is that I have now cost Rayner a bottle of Baileys, and, well, broken a promise to someone whom I could conceivably call an old friend.
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