Heroes

Human life is not for everyone.  Some people are not well suited for it.  They struggle to adjust, and continue struggling just as hard at eighty years of age if they happen to make it that far as they did at eight months.  Just because you are born does not mean the road ahead is perpetually straight, perpetually flat, perpetually sunny, paved with newly-poured pothole-free asphalt throughout its duration, and overhung with apple and citrus trees boasting epicurean fruit ripe for the plucking every step of the way.  For some people that scenario may be and is the case, but for others—for an unfortunately copious number, in fact—the aforementioned road is a godawfully curvy, hilly, overcast, pothole-infested nightmare with poisonous snakes periodically lunging at them from the suddenly barren apple and citrus trees. And these people have no choice but to adapt quickly and learn to survive as opposed to thrive, to count their blessings as opposed to whimpering loudly about the occasional hurdle, to settle for small pleasures in contrast to being the recipients of major oftentimes undeserved largesse, and to be satisfied with mediocrity in the end.  That’s right, to settle for mediocrity and, furthermore, to feign happiness with it.  Life is not fair, and these faux heroic people stand as Case Example #1 to support this assertion.  They did not choose life; life arbitrarily chose them and pursuantly threw significant obstacles in their pathway, but they are nonetheless left to deal with the mess they were handed in the best manner they know how.