Thursday, July 28, 2005

Spare Parts

Did you ever feel like your life was just one big mess, that no matter what you did or how hard you tried, that everything would still end up turning out wrong? That some people were just blessed with good fortune, and that you were not destined to be one of those people?

Life deals different decks of cards to different people. You try and get philosophical about it, tell yourself you don‘t get what you can’t handle, you learn from your mistakes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But why is it that for some, things just seem to fall their way—the perfect boyfriend (girlfriend), job, home. Perfect kids—a boy and a girl (of course) with perfect straight teeth (well maybe one front tooth missing for the cuteness factor) who do perfect things, and the grandparents just love everything they do and all is rosy in this perfect world that stays free from error and sin and darkness and harm.

For some people there is nothing but struggle and heartache and misfortune and self-doubt and fear and anger and contempt and disgust and worst of all, that absolute terror that nothing that you do, nothing that you have ever done or will ever do, will be of any great consequence. You are sad and shapeless and insignificant, and when you go there will be nothing left behind you, not a trace of who you were or what you did except those mistakes, left behind for the whole world to see as monuments to your misfortune.

"She sighed Ma sometimes my whole life feels like one big mistake..."
from "Spare Parts," Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

1 comment:

  1. I know what you mean. Like what Jack Nicholson says in "As Good As It Gets":

    "Some of us have great stories, pretty stories that take place at lakes with boats and friends and noodle salad. Just no one in this car.
    But alot of people-- that's their story: good times, noodle salad. What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad, but that you're that pissed that so many others had it good."

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