Thank You, Gilda Radner, Maya Angelou and The Giants

People always talk about how failures "build character", how adversity "makes you stronger", and how we learn "what we're made of" when faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Well, I generally consider platitudes suspect and view them with derision. Throw-away phrases are used to oversimplify things and reassure others when we don't know what the f*ck else to say. There is undoubtedly an element of truth to such statements - I won't deny that - but at the same time, to sum things up in this way necessarily dismisses what I call the "layered-ness" of things, for lack of a better term. And I wonder why. Isn't the intricacy of experience the most fascinating - albeit infuriating - part?

The late Gilda Radner put it more eloquently than I ever could:

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity." - Gilda Radner

Lately, though, in the midst of a kind of watershed period in my life - in which I took a great risk which has sort of turned out to be a free-fall without a net - I feel the urge to cling to those very tired expressions and cliches. I'm not far enough removed from my current quagmire to relish the complexity and those damn platitudes seem so much more comforting...Hey, any port in a storm, right?

Well, in an effort to stop the self-flagellation that is my unfortunate tendency, I have decided that the words of the great Maya Angelou may be more appropriate:

"You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it." - Maya Angelou

So, when this mess does resolve itself - and it will, because if the Giants can beat the Patriots in spite of the latter's undefeated season, I can get through this - I hope that this experience will be one more failure that I can "rise from". And at some point - weeks months, maybe even years - into the future, I know I won't feel so disenfranchised from the ambiguity.