Going Through The Motions

I've been obsessing about success quite a lot lately.

Isn't it just chasing after my own shadow?

From dreaming, to working hard, to achieving my goal,

what then? What then, of the fall from great heights?

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At last, recognition, praise, admiration!

Yet how empty, distant the acclamations;

A moment, an hour, a month later?

Realizing the path trumps the outcome tenfold, hundredfold!

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Fantasizing about the seemingly impossible,

about that all-important idea, intoxicating.

Not at all the same as a bored confused dog,

barking and chasing after cars, one after the other

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How absurd are any goals, when we dare face lucidity.

An empty life sprinkled with a few shining medals

akin to a night sky, over the chasm, the overwhelming

dread that is our repetetive everyday lives

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Of hiding away at home, paralysed and numb,

escaping ourselves, our true nature, for mere shadows on a wall

A promotion, at last recognition, finishing a project

or mastering a skill, climbing that hill... Surely you jest

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Strolling the frozen road, in the dead of night,

I gaze at the houses, lit and warm, I picture these people

hiding away in comfort and lies, not even alive,

and walking down under the few stars that shine through

I face the tall spiked wall that is human nature;

to go through the motions, whatever happens, for that

is all we can do, comes success or death