Portraits

There is a typical feeling, a flavor to one's overall experience. It is what one 'gets out of' one's experience, and it is what determines one's experience too.This feeling summarizes the story of one's life, its tempo, its music, its crests and troughs. To wit:

>> The tragic ones: They feel that they never get what they deserve. And there is truth to this feeling. They come periliously close to the prize many times, but some accident or the other takes the better of them, and they end up settling for something which they believe betrays their inner greatness. Second-prize winners! (The intelligent sensitive schoolboy can't figure out why the beautiful girl he has a crush on, is busy flirting with a rich flathead against her own better judgment). They sniff out imperfections in others -- even though this does not deter their commitment to others -- just so that they can feel incomplete again. Around them everything becomes tragic. They always feel this discordance between the inner and the outer. They constantly scream out loudly, but no one can hear them. This is their tragedy, which is completely rounded/contained in itself -- which means they cannot speak about their inner Angst with others, or share this tragedy with someone else to ameliorate their pain, without feeling betrayed by the others. The wise among them accept this tragic fate of theirs, jusfitifying this fate as what belongs to the elite and the selected. And thus they come to have pride in themselves.

>> The lucky ones: They always get more than they deserve. Procrastinators who get the work done! They have a knack for timing; not the most diligent, but the most effective. Women like them. By hook or crook, they find a solution for everything. Selective sense of hearing; not interested in saving the world. Their typical experience lacks depth, but it is practical and pleasant. Always seem forgetful of suffering. Do not know themselves, but that does not matter! Around them everything becomes oblivious and light-hearted.

>> The perfect ones: They always get what they deserve. But their trick is to limit themselves, willingly and hence arbitrarily. Meaning: they do not mess around with what is alien and foreign because they respect their limits. But they respect their limits, because they do not want to mess around with the alien and the foreign! A self-contradiction! Which they sanctify as a desire for self-knowledge... Good at drawing perfect circles! Good at squandering a lot for gaining nothing. They radiate because they burn out. They donate because they inherit. They can cure because they bite. Champions of rebirth - they live because they have already died. The feminine. Around them everything becomes divine.