the bear went over the mountain in poetry

it’s difficult enough to be
passed over for someone or something
when it is actually in some concrete
way better than you
stronger faster
smarter richer
younger older
bigger smaller
whatever the arbitrarily selected
value set within a given situation
but eventually you learn to deal
knowing when to hang on to grievance
as a vehicle for change or betterment
versus knowing when to move on in life
because whatever is being looked for
you don’t have it or
you don’t have enough of it anyway and
you either cannot change yourself for it
or you would not be able to be happy
whatever those changes awarded to you
knowing the difference
acting on the difference then moving forward
that’s basically what being an adult is

when you are however passed over for
someone or perhaps something
perceived as better than you
but is obviously a fraud or
is a distant idealized notion
that doesn’t exist at all
there’s something harder in that
what do you do then?

this is a problem that is pluriform
in so much of our unhappiness
the choice to reject the reality before us
to await something promised without evidence
our culture is suffused in this
glorifies it as the highest kind of martyrdom
across all spectra
in quack mysticism turning out to be just plastic beads
in the Protestant Work Ethic and it’s failure to manifest
in Horatio Alger’s American dream of faked upward mobility
in ragged revolutionaries frothing for the glorious revolt
so focused that they miss the good they could work in front of them
in our expectations of our heroes
a teenager buying two grand in some product
to get a Twitter shout-out from the gods on high
in our expectations of our lovers
to worship us completely or
to lift us up into their perfect sphere
they’re all the exact same shell game
that we’ve been tricked into playing with ourselves
leaving us to feel hollowed out and worthless
it’s all the same con
it’s all the same gag
it’s all the same
feeling

none of this is to say that
I have a whit of an answer to this problem
I’m as caught up in this as anyone is
like any other human being I’m too
caught up in the day to day of living and
anyway cannot will never live long enough
to have the perspective to formulate
some workable solution
all of this is just to say

you are not alone in feeling this
I am writing this to let you know
you are not alone in this ache
I am perhaps a dilletante
malingering through philosophic pissings
with enough time to spell it all out
this awful pain you and I and
all of us are carrying inside ourselves
but I want you to know
in the pain of this
the drive to discard both
the joys and the horrors of your immediate existence for
some cloud of confidence games and things that simply are not there
you are not alone

you are
I am
we all are
that fucking bear going over the fucking mountain
to see what we can see
only to see another fucking mountain
yet keep trudging forward in the promise that
surely over this next fucking mountain
will be that glorious thing that we’ve been promised
never seen never heard never touched
but must somehow be real because
everyone always told us it is real
and
if we never find it
and
if everyone says that it’s real
then
we must just be failures
as opposed to
those things being made up
or hoaxes or otherwise confected

it will not stop me, of course
from still being that bear
scaling yet another peak
or you either
we’re too programmed to do that but
if you can remember this
I want you to know
when the impossible things you were promised
recede with the horizon once again
and again and again and again and again
it is not that you are a failure

you can’t fail at doing the impossible
because it’s impossible
it is not that you are flawed
it is that the way we were
trained to expect life to work
that’s the failure
not you
okay?

you are just trying your best
take heart in that
know that
it isn’t much
but at least
it’s real