...but the fighter still remains

"In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade, and he carries the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him till he cried out, in his anger and his shame, I am leaving, I am leaving, but the fighter still remains"
-The Boxer; Simon & Garfunkel

Anyone who has ever known me for any duration of time will know that from time to time I will alter something about myself and more often then not it is dramatic. Whether it be something physical as a new crazy hairstyle or whether it be something mental as some new life philosophy, every now and then there is some new effort I put forth to try and remodel, remake, and improve myself or my perception.

So it is a new year and as such it is almost obligatory that I have a renewed sense of purpose in life. For quite a while I have been delaying the redesign and relaunch of my blog. I had noticed that my old blog with all the different links, falling java leaves, streaming music, everything was just getting out of hand. I wanted to simplify things, emphasize my art, and make a basic and clean redesign that emphasizes the writing, the blog itself. A back to basics philosophy in redesign. After months of struggling to tame the tangled mess of html, I gave up more or less. Except til just recently when I figured writing in my blog more often could be a good new years resolution of mine and hobby to take up again. There's still a bunch of kinks that need to be troubleshot and I haven't even added links to the sidebar yet but I'm very happy with the banner art I've made. It does not hurt either that Nate would constantly bug me relentlessly to update and post for a good couple of months straight.

I have sat at this table in front of my lap top trying to figure out some sort of creative way to express this new sense of vigor and excitement I have for this upcoming year. Yet nothing is really coming to me and all I have to reflect upon is how lacking last year was. Truth be told, a lot of big changes happened in my life last year and I handled many of them as I usually do, either by ignoring them, or completely shutting down and preserving myself for some moment in time in which I can latch onto as an excuse and say "Hey! I'm back for another round!" The more I reflected on last year, the more I realized how absolutely false this sense of new optimism is. That regardless of the new shorter hair style, the new resolutions to get back into a better physical shape and conditioning, a new blog and whatever new life philosophies I adapt, my progress as a human being has been nothing but stumbled steps as of late. I find myself making the same mistakes, apparently having never really learned my lessons from them before, and regressing to a depressed mess of a man. And suddenly yesterday's shadow is so foreboding that I can no longer bring myself to write this blog reintroduction with the same enthusiasm as I had originally planned...the same unrealistic enthusiasm at least.

"It's times like these, you learn to live again. It's times like these you give and give again. It's time like these you learn to love again. It's times like these, time and time again."
-Times Like These; Foo Fighters

I think the reason why so many people default on their new years resolutions and a lot of goals they set in life is because they are unrealistic about them. I think people underestimate the magnitude and difficulty in reshaping and remodeling one's lifestyle or habits. It is one thing to announce and proclaim that you will quit smoking, or eat healthier, or drink less, or go to the gym more consistently, or whatever your poison may be and yet so few people truly have the conviction to stick to their guns that they often do not make it past the first week or so. Even some of the most determined and dedicated are usually only able to follow through on a few of their goals and even still for only a month or two and I seriously must call to question the veracity of any one's success with long term life modifying resolutions. And while the action in the resolution or goal may not in itself be too demanding, it is more often than not the expectations of frequency and consistency that are unrealistic because as soon as that one occurrence where you're too busy due to external circumstances to perform the ritual or the moment you relent even for an exception, the whole ball begins to unravel because that's when you start allowing for more and more exceptions and digging yourself into a deeper and deeper hole until you've lost the initial momentum of the new year and have given up on the resolution all together. Bottom line: People make unrealistic goals by underestimating the difficulty of reconditioning one's lifestyle or habits and few have the self conviction to stick to them.

You see, when I dealt with my demon called depression, I promised myself that I would never consider suicide again for the sake of not making my mother cry. I was determined to live life with a renewed sense of appreciation and try my best at enjoying life and not allowing myself to become overburdened by life's pressures. I told myself that I was going to be happy again and that I was going to be excited for the future (this was at a point in my life where my plans for the future had been radically altered) and that I was not going to fall back into depression. It worked too, I had an amazing first semester at Boulder, met a lot of new friends (a feat uncommon for a shy person as myself at a school w/ few old friends to fall back upon), kept active in club sports and renewed my passion for martial arts, and was genuinely interested in my classes (well, most of them anyway). My second semester was pretty decent as well. But midway, my impenetrable armor started to crack and my momentum started to come to a screeching halt. Thus would start a chain of events that would constitute a crummy year that had its fill of ups but mostly downs and a lot of transitions and changes that I haven't exactly been able to easily adapt to. I survived only to tell myself that next year would be better and that I would get myself back on track again.

So here I am, it is the next year and I am all gungho and adamant about my future once more. Yet for how long? For a month or two only to fall apart midway through the semester? Or maybe I'll make it past the semester and regress during the summer and revive myself with the oncoming fall semester? Just as I am about to renew some lofty and unrealistic goals for myself I have become self aware and self conscious of my constant flux in self esteem. So after some reflection and some reading, here is my resolve.

"Pain throws your heart to the ground, love turns the whole thing around. No it won't all go the way it should, but I know the heart of life is good."
-Heart of Life; John Mayor

Life is tough. The Buddhist believe that life is suffering and yeah, they're partially right. Deep down I am optimistic about life and while I am not quite convinced that life is all suffering, it definitely is a fight at times. Each year is a another round and from time to time we are going to take hits and blows and we are going to get cut and bruised and knocked down from time to time. It takes a lot of strength and heart to pick yourself off the floor and keep fighting, keep living. There have been and there are going to be times when I do not want to get up and keep fighting, when all I just want to do is throw in the towel and while I have come dangerously close to considering it, I still fear the thought of retiring completely from the fight. The truth is that I have been a very naive and arrogant fighter. Every amateur or professional fighter knows this truth from the minute they enter a fighting ring or cage or square and receive that first punch to the jaw, kick to the leg, take down or whatever. That truth? That no fighter is invincible. That regardless of how good your defence is, you're still occasionally going to get hit and to conceive the false notion that you're going to go through life without taking your bumps is naive and is going to get you hurt in the long run.

"It is right it should be so;
Man was made for Joy and Woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the World we safely go.
Joe and Woe are woven fine,
A Clothing for the soul divine."
-Auguries of Innocence; William Blake

So no, I can not promise that this year will be different or that it will be better. That I will succeed any more this year than I did last year. Or that I can make up for the failures of my past or move on with my life when others have. I can not promise that I will no longer get depressed or melancholy from time to time; I realize now that I am not invincible. And as pessimistic as this all may sound, I am actually quite enlightened and hopeful for this year as I feel like I have come to a sort of compromise and understanding in my life, an epiphany I suppose. I do intend to try my best as always at all future endeavors, I do intend to seriously start training and competing in Taekwondo and improve as a martial artists, I hope to do better in school, and I hope I continue to meet and make new friends while keeping in touch with old friends all the same. I guess when I think about it, not much has really changed, just that now I realize that it's okay to stumble from time to time and that instead of trying to ignore my weakened resilience to depression I am staring my demons straight in the eyes. In the end, it is as my close friend has told me, it is not the radiant success nor utter failure, it is that resolve to reach that point in which we grow to value the most as we learn to live.

I'm a fighter and as long as I have the strength I'll keep fighting because that's what a fighter does; he doesn't give up, he doesn't quit, regardless of how many times he's been knocked down or cut, he keeps fighting. And that's what I'm going to do, keep fighting.