no such thing as the final word

celebrate or bemoan? flaunt or hide? triumph or defeat?

my jeans have grown too large.

this occasion presents me with the aforementioned dilemma. i have not just an excuse, but a moral obligation, to buy new jeans. how many times does that honestly happen to you? in america, unless you're a lumberjack or a nine-year-old shortstop, you're not often in real need of new jeans. but you can ask the people seated in the row behind me, to whom the need is very clear when i stand up. i have to keep my thumbs in my belt loops if i'm going to walk more than a block or two. from the back, i look like a deflated balloon. my stride is foreshortened. a belt only compounds the problem--it's an assist gravity. it's getting to the point where negligence looks like intention, and a mid-twenties white girl intentionally dressed as a preadolescent skater boy just looks silly, unless she has a recording contract. i don't have one, so--moving on...

i get to buy new jeans--that is the first good.
second, my jeans haven't really grown bigger. apparently i have shrunk, i am smaller. i don't see it in the mirror, which is weird--don't you think i should see it in the mirror? and after a year or more of hoping and trying, suddenly to require a size down is a strange benison. it is very sudden. and there still are days when the jeans feel uncomfortable...although i cannot recall the last time that was the case.

it seems like i got what i wanted.

i wonder. will this last, or is this a hormonal change, a seasonal change, a climatic change? a worse thought is what if, while this size jeans are too large (and, necessarily, very comfortable when they are not slipping down and off), the right size is uncomfortable? what if it clings too well, only a little too well?

what if what fits me is not something i like? am i to forever be caught in this sartorial purgatory? obligated to discomfort ad eternum?

and worst of all, i tremble to discover that i am too small for the big size and too big for the right size, for fear of what it will do to my diligence and resolve. futility has historically driven me to mediocre forms of self-destruction. pinned between sizes N and (N-1), i can see myself howling like king lear and loping about in a wilderness of obliterative inactivity, and shortly finding myself scanning the ebay listings in a shameful online search for jeans in a size (N+4).

hm.

at this time, i do not know who richard p. feynman is, but i read a quotation of his that somehow addresses the present subject:

"To develop working ideas efficiently, I try to fail as fast as I can."

i have been working on this perspective for several months, trying to anchor failure as a necessary step in the process toward success, to think of it as a tool at my disposal, instead of a monster under the bed. failure, in this instance, would be failure to fit into the jeans i want to fit into, and the near miss would be quite as crushing as the total miss, as it would be indicative of insufficient self-knowledge.

self-knowledge is an insatiable pursuit, and the industry that exists around it is not one i wish to support. self-satisfaction, though equally toxic as a focal point, seems a lot more benign than the other when present as a by-product of the work of living. the only person the wistful cynic seems to really hate is the self-satisfied, and i think it's not because they are satisfied with themselves, but because they are satisfied at all.

possession is nine tenths of the law, isn't it? if you possess the attitude, the confidence, and the clothes of the person you wish to be, who is to say you aren't that person? who besides you?

do you know who richard p. feynman is?