Which round is it anyway

It’s always a little disheartening to watch your favored boxer slip and move only to step into a hard punch that otherwise could have been avoided if he had done…nothing.  He would have been better off had he not moved at all.  And so it goes with life.  What is the right question to ask here, if there is one at all?  Is it important to take risks and repeatedly fail, with the very real risk of conditioning yourself to accept it?  Or was this a mistake, misjudgment or worse- sign of weak character?

Over the past four years of my life, I’ve looked back at every prior year and been astounded at the limitlessness of my stupidity.  Grateful as I am, I’ll take whatever little marginal improvement that may stand to represent.  Today I ran into someone who I knew throughout high school, who felt it courteous much less acceptable to peel back a band-aid over a time period I would like to wipe from all memory and sd cards.  Overall it was an unpleasant affair and I now have to suppress my joy in knowing that this mirror is now a part of the organization I belong to, for the foreseeable future.

Some people are just unlucky and get hit with the worst blows right as they are doing their damnedest to change.  There is no refuge for the soul from itself, and one has to wonder whether they are really trying or just setting themselves up to get knocked out.