Purely a Matter of Relevance - WE ARE NOT THE SUM OF THE MISTAKES WE HAVE MADE

We are not the sum of the mistakes we have made.

This is something important to remember. This has been a personal mantra for some time now. Every morning as I reach for my night stand to hit the snooze button, I have to remind myself that regardless of the constraints timekeeping has perpetuated onto our existence, I am not less of a person because I will be late to my occupation this morning. As I brush my teeth and can feel the hair of last night's bender on the roof of my mouth, I have to remind myself I am not less of a person because I enjoyed an evening at the bar. As I sit quietly in my train seat and the odor of yesterday's laundry still clinging to my skin creeps into my nostrils, I am not less of a person because I'm going to work in the same clothes I slept in.

These are all basic constructs of our daily routine that without the correct mentality can easily offset your entire week. Preparing myself for another "case of the Mondays," I will don my teflon coat of indifference, rest my helmet of acceptance upon my head and arm myself with rifles loaded with the bullets of understanding that I will fire into the crowd like tear gas into the unruly opposition that stands between me and my goals. But can the riot gear protect me from what hurts most? The sound of doubt echoing through the halls of my mind. The sting of anxiety coursing through my bones. The fire of depression burning deep within the furnace of my belly. What can protect me from what cannot be touched? This is when I remember my mantra. We are not the sum of the mistakes we have made.

In the short period of time I have spent wandering this marble hurling through the amyls of time and space, I have committed more mistakes than I could even recount. Sometimes I feel as though my entire existence has merely been a series of fuck ups with a sprinkling of brilliance dispersed intermittently throughout the years. These moments of weakness, moments of poor judgment, they are not what define me as a person. We don't remember historical figures for their collection of short comings. I pose these questions to the reader. Do you think Dr. Martin Luther King ever walked out of a diner and forgot to tip? Do you think JFK ever drank slightly too much and hit on someone not named Jackie O? Do you think it possible that Abraham Lincoln said a racial slur in his lifetime?

You may be thinking to yourself, "Reese, you can't prove or deny any of these notions.  These are not facts."  Well, sweetheart, I can tell you this; George Washington in fact owned slaves. Malcolm X was in fact a felon. It is a fact Jesus consorted with thieves, whores and lepers. Yet, this is not what we remember these icons for. They will be remembered for the groundbreaking and forward thinking actions they accomplished. I can't say it's a fact, but I can say with some fair certainty that all of these men masturbated at some point in their lives.  Ok, maybe not Jesus, but you get what I'm reaching for here. These men were human, no more human nor less human than you or I are. I ask though, if these masturbating mistake-making men achieved greatness, why can't I? Why can't you?

There's a funny anecdote I like to quote that goes to the tune of, "build a 1,000 bridges and suck one dick and you will forever be remembered as a dick sucker and not a bridge builder." I didn't realize until writing this editorial how incorrect that statement truly was. If that dick was sucked on a level such that exalts you above all other dick suckers, a fellatio to be remembered for all time, then yes, you will be remembered for being a fantastic giver of a blow J. Your mediocre bridges will wither and fade away with the sands of time, crumbling in on themselves.

BULLSHIT.

That dick was a road bump in the ongoing map of your success story. Your bridges will stand tall for years to come, and a hundred years from now, when they speak of the greatest BJ in history, they will speak of the great bridge builder and recount his contributions to the architectural community. You will not be remembered for the mistakes you have made. Don't let your mistakes burden you and stop you from achieving the levels of success you were built for. I plan on making many more mistakes before I depart from this world, as well as I plan being remembered for something far greater than fucking up wasting my youth and squandering my twenties, but then again, this is purely a matter of relevance.

Mr. Irrelevant