Finished

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Timothy Fleming sat on a bed with worn-white sheets questioning what good he was. Everyone wants to give something back, or at least feel like he's altered the world in some fashion. Previously, he thought he was a talented athlete. As a little boy, his tee-ball coach bragged about how fast he was. He beamed with pride at his natural ability. He made his speed a defining characteristic as he aged. He never wanted to rest on his laurels. The fastest runners in the world aren't born or made. They're both. He trained rigorously, beefed up his muscles, and read copiously on the mechanics of running. He took all the best paths in competitions and concentrated as singularly on excelling a possible. Throughout high school, he moved up the rankings in his state.
Timothy never bothered with academics. He did enough to avoid academic probation, but otherwise was disinterested. His only friends were other runners, but he rarely had time to socialize. Even on the long intrastate bus rides, he would close his eyes and run the courses over and over with Wagner playing in his ear buds. The local media covered the state race in his senior year. The sports writers speculated that Timothy Fleming was bound for the Olympics. Careening around the track earlier that day, Timothy knew he was on state record pace. He felt strong. He heard the metal of his spikes dig into the rubberized surface. The strands of blond hair fluttered about his scalp. Everything was as it should be. Crossing the finish line, he completed the race faster than anyone ever had in his home state. Hands slapped his back and his coach embraced him with his sweaty, hairy arms.
A pronounced sense of accomplishment never formed in Timothy's mind. High school competitions are kid's stuff. Legends aren't made in Springfield, Illinois. He wanted to set world-records. He needed to train more. His body had more developing to do. Then he could captivate larger audiences. They'd be in awe of his speed just like his tee-ball coach. Before the other events were over, Timothy was already thinking about how many reps he needed to do on the leg press tomorrow. Ascending the steps to the bus for the long ride home, a teammate called, "Congats, Timmy!" He turned his head around to scan for the face that matched the voice. Distracted, he clipped the edge of the second step. Quickly bringing his leg down to regain his footing, his knee joint gave. All the sinews in his knee tore, shooting pain up the relays to his brain. As Timothy fell forward in a heap, he knew his ACL and MCL were torn and hoped he was dying.
Waiting in an emergency room bed wearing a white gown with sky-blue small polka dots, Timothy wondered. Is it possible for a person to have a talent that goes unfulfilled? Nobody cares about high school records. I have nothing now. No prospects. I'm not good at anything else. What a waste of space!

Drifting

I feel like a child whose balloon has escaped into the sky. Unlike a child, I am not wailing. Instead, I am watching it shrink as it rises and wondering whether it is so lamentable. The gifts we receive in life can be like balloons handed to us as children. Though we adore their marvelous color and gravity-defining, rarely can we manage a lasting hold on it. We look away at another child passing by or towards the origin of screams coming from a nearby amusement ride. Our fingers open ever so slightly for want of concentration, and our balloon takes flight. "It was meant for the sky, not for you," says the grizzled grandfather. "There are other balloons," says the consoling father. "We'll get you another one," says the sympathetic mother. Sometimes we lack the motivation to jump after it, anticipating the futility of the action. Sometimes, we mourn the loss by swearing off balloons. I am simply gazing at it and making note of its bearings. So this is the way balloons leave: east, then northeast, but always up.
I am older now and realize I am still holding other strings even though one recently snuck out. Until we die, we are always holding at least one pretty thing on a string. Some children want to look up at what is lost and cry. The wiser ones blow it a goodbye kiss.

Erosion

Life has a way of eroding everything, good or bad. A man stumbles out of a hospital immediately after the death of his wife. Still the traffic lights change from red to green to yellow. Still cyclists pedal down the right lanes. Still turn indicators flicker. The world moves and wears individuals down as surely as water droplets do mountains. Even in our personal worlds, weathering is constant. A woman accepts a man's proposal, is thrilled, darts about making plans, is disappointed with her honeymoon, doesn't like the color of her bedroom walls, and lives to loath her husband. If the world was a person, we'd call her fickle. If life was a will, we'd call it capricious.
How can we have peace if there's no place to rest? What humanity needs are fixed points in the midst of flux. Could a person maintain concentration long enough to invent fixed points himself? No. Humans lack the necessary tenacity. How can people endure starvation then? A common strategy is to give oneself over to the flux which, in effect, gives the sensation of running on a treadmill. The contrary motions collude to create an illusion of stillness. A woman places her foot down on what feels like solid ground (she invests herself in a political campaign, for instance). But the surface is moving (the election comes and goes), and so she thrusts her other foot forward (she tries her hand at running a business). In all of this striding, she can look to the left and right and see the same walls. She thinks, "I have remained the same, and so has what matters." In truth, she is delusional. She has constantly expended her energy in different locations and has nothing to show for it but a demise in sweat and exhaustion, being flung off the track, and being hurled into the stillness of oblivion.
Even a man's memory is an agent of erosion. How many moments in a single day are lived through and discarded without ennobling it by lodging it in the mind? How many moments which a the time seem unforgettable and yet could never be recalled some months later. Time adds water to all the potent tastes of life. It tarnishes the shiny brass of love and rusts the defiant sheen of iron.

Ricochet

David Hume asks you to imagine that you had never seen before two objects colliding. Although you know everything you know now, you have no understanding of the physics involved in a collision. What might you predict would happen when a moving billiard ball strikes a stationary one? For all you know, a ball traveling north strikes a still ball and bounces southward. Equally as plausible, perhaps both balls move northward after impact. would it be so impossible for the balls, squarely struck as they may have been, to dart off on to the west and one to the east? How profound our ignorance of cause and effect! Had we never experienced physics, we'd never be able to project the state of the world into the future.
I must confess that we have as much a priori predictive power in regards to human affairs as we do the ways of the world. The original situation is merely a thought-experiment (and therefore a matter concerning only academic-types). The latter situations--who must not admit that he is in such a state of ignorance regarding his fellow humans? When we don't allow our biases and prejudices to be active, could we guess which way a person will break when running into a stationary object? (Life is a series of stationary objects that people bounce off of in one way or another.) Will a given person bounce to the right, say to become indignant, after running into a demotion? Or will she instead bounce to the left, say to resign herself to her new position. Will she bounce straight back and attack her boss, or will she continue forward and quit the company? That possibilities are various and the truth is we never know which way a person will break.
Here is a tricky thing about life: we cannot always trust the explanations proffered for one's actions. Take the following example: a certain woman appears generous. You take to observing her. She gives sundry gifts to her friends and family with frequency. She gives beyond her means, always taking wealth from herself and passing it around. She lavishes her circle with fancy cards on top and wrapping paper around the gifts, and often does not even stay near-by to watch them opened. She is pleased at a distance. The onslaught flatters her circle. Whenever she finds herself in an altercation with one of its members, she draws upon her philanthropic activities to mitigate her responsibilities. You watch this and think, she must be after something with all those gifts. Perhaps she wants approval or appreciation. Perhaps she just wants acceptance. Whatever the case may be, the sheer volume of her gift-giving is suspicious. You suggest in passing that she is to some extent "buying the love of others." At this, she explodes. "I have never done anything of the sort! I like being nice to people and showing them how much they mean to me!" Does her response count against your hypothesis? Is the violence with which she retorted further validation? It could be that she is buying the love of others and is not conscious of it. She could know that it would be ill-intentioned to be giving with such motives and thus respond negatively at the accusation. It could be that you have misread the situation. Perhaps the distance she takes after giving is humility.
Is there anything to gain from our own cases? Which way will you break? Don't you know. Ah! You are ignorant even of yourself. Poke and prod as a good scientist does and you chink your own armor.