Silk Purses from Sow's Ears

My Pen Mates,

One of my favorite expressions; making something beautiful out of something useless/unsightly/horrible. It's supposed to underlie a lost cause; to stress the utter impossibility of a task because of its separation from factual evidence. The irony here however, is that this is more the rule when examining positive results and landmark events. Alexander Fleming, Abraham Lincoln, Einstein, Moses, Michael Phelps? History is full of colorful, enigmatic characters who at first, seem destined into mediocrity or at best, as footnotes in bigger, grander endeavors. But defying the odds through persistence, focus, and indomitable will (and no doubt a large dose of God's grace), made them into the silk purses they turned out to be.

To be fair, privileged men and women turned out great accomplishments as well. Roosevelt, Armstrong, Gates, Rizal (?) thrived in leisure, relative comfort and high-society and turned out to play pivotal roles in history as well. But it's the long shot factor that's inspiring. People who seem to have pulled themselves by their bootstraps to overcome life's complex challenges capture the imagination and bring inspiration across generations and demographics. Makes me believe fully in this moral, legal, ethical concept of equality. It's not readily apparent, and the destitute would find it hard to appreciate, and certainly social composition lacks evidence of it, but it's fundamentally true: all persons are created equal.

We can battle over opportunities, access and doorways to privilege, societal exclusions, discrimination, and bias; but the spirit within, the ethos of a human being, determines the final product. And we are all the same inside; it's the outward expression of what's within that distinguishes us. The doer and the done is defined by how he/she expresses the power within__ which we all have in common. There is a saying that history is written by the winners and I agree with this fully. So there are winners who started poor as well as winners who started out rich, and they are all written about and praised. This is NOT unfair for the also-runs, society's "losers", because of one temporal truth: you loose if you give up.

Giving up erases your chance to write history. For if winners determine what's in the books, you forfeit that opportunity if you give up the struggle to be a winner. You are the wash-out, the has-been, the guy whose time has passed. While it makes for a tear-jerker of a movie, play, or novel, the tragedy is in the lack of recovery. That's why there's drama, and there's comedy; one ends in death/calamity, the other ends joyously. By nature, we are captivated by a convoluted story line; it's more romantic and endearing to read, hear, watch a story where an unlikely and unexpected closure occurs. It's life's nature; there is something around the corner, looming to change the present. It could be the promise of joy, or clouds of uncertainty. Life is never static but dynamic. That tomorrow is another day is a truism, and whether we'll make silk purses from silkworms or from sow's ears is entirely up to the guy in the mirror.

Mon