Realizing the dream. How turbulent the loss when all chips are on black and red is called? Why then the compunction, the Jones, the yearning to bet it all on black again, again and again? Surging endorphin’s, validation from those who’ve heard you whimper, being that guy for a few moments making up for years of blowouts, bad haircuts and no ability to demonstrate style. Win, the resounding end to a lifelong string of inadequate offering and failure to represent. Why must we live up to a father who really wasn’t that good at the job anyway?

Skinny, by the grace of constant nausea and absent calories. Makeup too dark, pungent, legs too tiny to hold up the attitude and its poorly practiced projection. Being too cool for anyone to follow and nearing prostitution if anyone would ever offer. Noticed, acknowledged, who cares if they know me or love me? I am satisfied with some good-looking jerk having said my name slowly in the dark four times. Especially grateful that he disgusted my Dad and my Mom just stood there shaking her head in preparation for dabbing my tears. Why share perfection with a slob or some guy named Bob who never deserved my best, never mind the sacrosanct bounty of my fealty.

What is this world and its power over our motivation and aspirations that it makes us turn cartwheels, backflips and bellyflops in front of strangers just to say we lost all our chips and our virginity trying to be a contender? The entire sham is a deceptive scam to make us lose the true treasures permanently while we never would have been satisfied or fulfilled if we had won in the first place. Smells of the fallen. Though, I can ashamedly say having fallen for the flim-flam myself, that it is a pitiful way to start off adulthood, shrouded in embarrassment, knowing that it robbed all who believed themselves winners.

The reckoning and the absurdity that our parents experienced the same deception and still failed to stop it from taking us in. What then does it mean to be successful at the job of parenting the future of humanity, if we continue for thousands of years to churn out losers who failed at the first at bat? The one that mattered most and should have been practiced a thousand times before entering on deck. Is mankind truly that dysfunctional, absurd and hopeless that we have played for perpetuity the same game and never found our way through the maze was found in never entering?

We have gotten it right when we ventured and challenged collective thought or social recrimination to maintain our innocence against all standing odds and chastisement. Those made to look foolish in public or called every foul name in the offering were in fact the few who had mastered the art of ignoring the snake in the garden. Peace flourishes in our courage to stand apart from conventional label and understanding. It is good to be peculiar when being popular or blending robs you of all that is true blessing. Be who you are and don’t let the world dictate what you will invariably find were fool’s gold and bitter filled candies. There is no going back on all in. Better to keep the few pennies and the honor you’ve got than to lose it for certain in a game that has been fixed since our first recognition in Eden.