lesson from my mother

"Let me tell you something I’ve learned. Everybody’s fucking stupid. I know it with many of the people I've known, some of them doctors, some of them lawyers, when it comes down to it they’re all fucking stupid. I guess what I’ve learned is that I could have probably done all the things that they do. In fact I could probably have done them better, if only I understood that earlier. If there was one thing I would like you to know early in life rather than too late, it’s that."

I love that my little yoga loving, pilates practicing mama said this. It reminds me of one of my favourite poems:

the higher you climb
the greater the pressure.

those who manage to
endure
learn
that the distance
betweeen the
top and the
bottom
is
obscenely
great.

and those who
succeed
know
this secret:
there isn't
one.

Bukowski

""

The first time I read this I took it to mean that when you reach the top you realize that there is no real difference between where you are and where you were. The differences are in the imaginations of the those who look up, and perpetuated by those at 'the top'. It takes a certain kind of person, I think, to go along too easily with the illusion in the face of feeling like an imposter.

Now that I read it again, I see I may have read this entirely wrong... I'm not sure... Anyway, if that's the case, I think I like my interpretation better. And my mother's.