Walls

Randomly, sometimes, I will just hit an invisible wall out of nowhere. All momentum ceases to be. Progress and productivity stop dead in their tracks, and hopes fly away faster than you can blink. Even my best defenses, medications, and practiced mantras fail to lead me away from the stark places my mind and emotions are stranded in.

“Onen i-estel, u-chebin estel anim.” A paraphrase from Tolkien. “I give hope, I keep none for myself.” Even that paradigm wears thin. You look outside during a global pandemic and realize you’re surrounded by so many who are active participants (or at best, indifferent participants) in the destruction of others around them.

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.”

William Butler Yeats

I am “best” at nothing…but my conviction is surely lacking, and I have little hope for anything or anyone.

Maybe someday I’ll get some sort of perspective on the phenomenon – once upon a time, engineers used to think the sound barrier was a literal “invisible wall in the sky,” after all.

…It’s sad at how apt that kind of comparison is to some things today, now that I think about it.