Trudging through the Muck

Here you are again, following the Old Patterns.

You are foolish to think that you have broken free. You thought that you have cut the strings and are no longer humming another's tune, are singing another's song, are reciting dialog from some hackneyed playwright's script. Yet here you are, mouthing the oft-spoken words, singing off-key and droning a tune you could not keep out of your head.

Ignorance is indeed bliss, but the grace of ignorance is not one granted you. You are cursed rather, with the gift of intelligence. Not enough to spit on others but just more than the average so as not to be so easily lulled by doing what needs doing, focusing on at most three things, with a hobby on the side. To make it interesting, the gift was laced with poison.

The poison is called mediocrity.

What a lovely poison, it is. Meaningless yet satisfying like a one night stand. The orgasm is undeniably and truly mind-blowing. However, the afterglow is as warming as the dying embers in the depths of winter. It is bad enough to make you realize that it is not what you are looking for but good enough that you just keep coming for more, wanting to drink the oily water like a human dying of thirst.

It is a sad thing to have been made to believe that your minimum is well more than what most of the others can call their best. It makes you stop trying. After all, if you had wanted to, you can always do better, a damn whole lot better. Though, it becomes unnecessary. Your worst remains better than the rest.

Sure you meet others along the way who are equals or those who are superior to you. You know that when you meet them. It is an uncanny ability given to people who have been cursed by the same intelligence. You are able to measure the worth of others. You see them and you tell yourself, how you could do the same if you wanted to but the poison lingers in your body and you just want to have one last taste before kicking the habit. Then you're back to the rock bottom, catatonic like the crack addict that you have become.

After sometime of crawling in the shit, you get an epiphany, a realization. You become reborn like the phoenix, finding new resolve to start over, get things in order. Hell, you even find yourself a god and all things are nothing when you have your god with you.

You begin to get up and walk up straight. Always aiming higher, always doing better, then just like most mountain  climbs, the trail begins to plateau. You just walk on and on and on, and you get no higher. Tired, you take a seat on a rock to regain some strength before proceeding.

You dust off your clothes and feel something in your breast pocket. Something you thought you left behind but which somehow, some subconscious stray thought had kept that item tucked in your pocket, that small vial of sweet, poisonous mediocrity.