A Two-Way Street: Some Philosophy for Philippi

Life is hard.

This is a fact, a certainty, and an absolute. How we define “life,” though, is nothing short of a mystery. But that’s not my focus. My focus is on life, however you wish to define it, being hard. It’s a roller coaster, with lots of ups and downs. Its successes and failures ebb and flow stylistically like waves on a shore, but thematically they are predictable in an entirely different sense.

The tide coming and going is predictable to the extent that moon patterns are predictable (which they are, strongly), but life's successes and failures are much less identifiable. They would be more applicable, in terms of predictability, to skin pigmentation in newborn children.


The way they work is that a person’s genes hold the information necessary for a range of pigmentation. If, for simplicity, we take all skin pigmentation to be on a scale of 1-100, then let’s say all dark is between 80-100 and all light is between 1-20. When a person with a range of 1-20 has children with a person with a range of 20-40, the child will be somewhere in the middle of those ranges. It is random, but it will be towards the median of the two figures. So unless there is a mutation, two people with ranges of 1-20 will never have a child with very dark skin complexion or dark skin complexion at all, really.

This works for my conceptualization of life’s successes and failures. I view 80-100 (outside of the light/dark split and merely based on the numerological aspect) to be a person who works hard, prepares, researches, and educates oneself on an extreme level. 1-20, then, belongs to people who do almost no preparation, put no effort into anything, and do not make any attempt at educating themselves. A higher a person is on the scale, the greater the probability that they will have more success than failure. The ebb and flow of their life will tend to swing differently than someone lower or higher. This is not exact science, obviously, but it is a way of viewing life and the effort one puts into it.

So it is no surprise that someone like myself has successes and is “good” at a variety of “things,” for I put effort into life, or at least more effort than others. So it is no surprise that I’m a decent writer, a good reader, I’m musically talented, and so on, because I’ve put time and energy into those ventures – and it’s paid off.


But life was/is hard. It wasn’t easy, relatively speaking, for me to pick up the guitar and become accomplished. I had to spend hours and hours and hours going over scales and patterns and chords and what not. I didn’t spend a few Sundays plucking the strings; I spent an entire summer, seven days a week, six to eight hours each day playing guitar, or piano, or singing. So it is no surprise that I have the skills in that area that I do, because I put effort into that shit.

It would be easy for me to say at this point that to achieve success is merely the result of hard work. To a large extent, this is true, but there are exceptions and strange things can happen. Just as a mutation can cause drastic results in skin pigmentation, so can mutations cause drastic results in life.


An example of an analogous “mutation” would be a person who is, for some reason or another, naturally disposed to music. For that person, it might only take a single summer to become proficient on an instrument. While I believe there exist people with greater dispositions in certain fields, I do not believe that this disposition can be void, or negative. I think we all are disposed to every field, with varying amounts of disposition, but I think it works on a scale of gradation. There is no zero and only positive integers. So one person could be “highly gifted” musically while another can have almost no talent whatsoever, but they can still develop talent, albeit at varying speeds and, possibly, different ceilings. It might take more than a single summer; hell, it might take four, five, or six summers, but they can still achieve some level of success.

So failure in a particular field is merely the result of a lack of effort. Person A might need twice the amount of effort necessary for Person B to achieve similar results, but they can still achieve those results.

I suppose I should be explicit about “success” and “failure.” I’m using a broad interpretation with little relevant detail applicable to real events. When I say failure in a particular field is merely the result of a lack of effort, ‘failure’ should be interpreted not in terms of material wealth or critical acclaim, but in terms of ability. One might assume that ability, at some point, entails the previous two, but that’s not the case. Some of the greatest musicians never hear their songs on the radio.


In any case, the ebb and flow of one’s successes and failures can be, to a degree, ameliorated by how much work we put in. Even someone with huge stockpiles of natural ability in every conceivable field still needs to invest time and effort, even if the amount is relatively miniscule comparatively. Everyone must work in order to alter the natural ebb and flow of their life’s successes and failures.

It seems intuitive that we should aim for the 80-100 range. I did say that the higher one is on the scale, the greater the probability of successes outweighing failures. But perhaps one finds more meaning in life when they dwell in the lowly depths of the 1-20 range. Perhaps they find something more substantial than anything observable from the upper echelons. Or perhaps they don’t. I tend to think that every range has its own merits, its own knowledge to impart, its own meaning, and that a truly meaningful life might be lived by experiencing them all. Then again, I might be postulating using some pseudo-combination of mathematical precision and thematic chronology that really says nothing about the merits of each range and only attempts to qualify them inside my own head.


In that case, I’m wrong to some and right to others. I’m contributing to someone, somewhere, even if the road that leads me to such a person is circular.


I don’t believe all of what I’ve said here is wholly true, for theories and analogies about life can never be entirely right. Furthermore, theories and analogies about life are never wholly false. They all have something meaningful to say about some aspect of existence.

What I’ve written here is merely an attempt to say something meaningful. I realize that someone with little musical disposition will be hard pressed to equal Mozart or Beethoven in any respect, but I do believe efforts towards that end are not without meaning or substance, and are certainly not wasted. If anything, maybe more meaning is available when one reaches for the stars and fails; maybe we learn more about who we are and what this shit is really all about when we try and don’t succeed. Then again, maybe we just fail, and the only meaning lies in success. But I’m not one to judge, for I’ve found meaning in both. My failures have taught me at least as much as my successes. And perhaps the meaning inherent in success is overshadowed, in my life, by the blissfully arrogant catharsis that sweeps over me in such events. Perhaps whatever education I might have received, were I receptive, is blown away by my egoistical excesses.

And then again, perhaps not. Perhaps the only lessons are the ones found when we fail to fly.