Better or Worse

I think it's better to not have any moments of awesomeness at all than to have a small fleeting one in your youth.

Some people seem to be able to live in a state of continual 1-upping of their past actions. Every day they get up and do their thing just slightly better than they did the day before. These are the kind of people that get famous in politics or musics or sports or whatevers.

Some people, on the other hand, don't do much of anything very well, and they get over it by the time they're 25 or so and they live out their lives in a complacent mediocrity.

The problem arises when someone attains something good early in their life, and can't outdo themselves after it. I'm thinking of two books right now. One was a short story, actually, about a man who wrote a book on the day he got married, and it ruined his life because he couldn't write anything better than that. The other is Madame Bovary, who was popular and beautiful and gifted in her youth, but eventually became aware of her own drifting to obscurity and it made her do all sorts of distasteful things. What about artists or athletes who have to continue living off of the contributions they made in their 20's until they die in their 80's? Paul McCartney is kinda stuck like that, along with most of the greatest classic rockers.

It's almost better for a person to die when they are famous, like Elvis or Lennon, than for them to endure the withering effects of age, obscurity, and Family Guy.

So I guess my advice to all of you is either to never achieve anything of lasting importance or to kill yourself if you ever achieve accidentally.

No matter how you slice it, it's gonna end in tears :)