The Beautiful Letdown

Dreams. Aspirations. Expectations. Hope.

The very things that lives are built upon, are yet the very same things that collapse spirits.

The national athlete strives to break record after record in an attempt to make his name in the world, nevermind the fact that records hold their ground for shorter than your average hit single--after all, the challenge of breaking a new record only serves to make us try harder, doesn't it? The endearing enchantment of having your name in lights, established in history as a some semblance of significance drives so many to carve their name into little plastic school desks. Enter the ubiquitous rockstar-wannabe teenager and dreams of capturing young hearts and minds (and in rare occasions, even ears) worldwide.

In a bid for a lasting significance that we can call our own, we create for ourselves arbitrary milestones to mark our progress towards a lasting ideal. In one way or another, we all embark on our individual quests for perfection, and a so-called dream life that encompasses all that we deem important in our lives. Despite what some would deem arbitrary measures of progress in life, we hold these little achievements close to our hearts, and attempt to convince ourselves that they show that our lives are now that much more fulfilled.

This notion of what life should be like; a world filled with a perfect love, and with it the utter lack of disagreements, hate, misconceptions, and even the lack of disappointment, proves to be our downfall as we realize that the disappointment ultimately results as such a life simply does not exist. As this disllusionment about life and the possibility of perfection fades, we come to realize that there is a Perfect which transcends what we are capable of ever attaining.

Edit: I wrote this a pretty long time ago, sometime mid 2008, but I never quite got down to finishing it. I don't think i'll try to now though; it probably wouldn't be true to what I was wanting to write then. But at any rate, here it is in it's unedited inglory