Epitaph of a Small Winner

Machado de Assis
Tr. William L Grossman

These are my thoughts as I disembarked at Lisbon and set out for Coimbra. The University was waiting for me with its long list of difficult subjects. I studied them with profound mediocrity, which did not prevent my acquiring a bachelor's degree; they gave it to me with all the customary solemnity, at the end of the number of years required by law. The beautiful ceremonies and the festivities filled me with pride and, even more, with sadness at having to leave. I had won at Coimbra a great reputation as a playboy; I was a harebrained scholar, superficial, tumultuous, and capricious, fond of adventures of all kinds, engaging in practical romanticism and theoretical liberalism, with complete faith in dark eyes and written constitutions. On the day when the University certified, in sheepskin, that I had acquired a knowledge which, in truth, I had not, I confess that I felt somehow cheated, although nonetheless proud. Let me explain: the diploma was a letter of enfranchisement; if it gave me liberty, it also gave me responsibility. I put it with my other possessions, said goodbye to the banks of the Mondego, and came away rather disconsolate, but with an impulse, a curiosity, a desire to elbow other people out of the way, to exert influence, to enjoy, to live--to prolong my college days throughout my life.

I left him with these suspension marks and went to take off my boots, which were tight. One relieved of them, I breathed deeply and stretched myself at full length, while my feet, and my whole self with them, entered a state of relative happiness. Then it occurred to me that tight boots are one of the greatest goods in the world, for, by making feet hurt, they create an opportunity to enjoy the pleasure of taking off your boots. Torture your feet, wretch, then untorture them, and there you have inexpensive happiness exactly to the taste of Epicurus and of the shoemakers. While this idea was working out on my famous trapeze, my mind's eye turned toward Tijuca and saw the young cripple disappearing on the horizon of the past, and I felt that my heart would soon take off its boots. And that is exactly what this lascivious fellow did. Four or five days later I was to enjoy that swift, ineffable, spontaneous moment of pleasure that succeeds a bitter pain, a worry, an illness...From this I inferred that life is the most ingenious of phenomena, for it sharpens hunger only so that it may offer an opportunity to eat, and it creates corns only because without them one cannot achieve the relief that is perfect earthly happiness. In truth, I tell you that all human wisdom is not worth a pair of tight boots.

Sobs, tears, an improvised altar with saints and crucifix, black curtains on the walls, strips of black velvet framing the entrance, a man who came to dress the corpse, another man who took the measurements of the coffin; candelabra, the coffin on a table covered with gold-and-black silk with candles at the corners, invitations, guests who entered slowly with muffled step and pressed the hand of each member of the family, some of them sad, all of them serious and silent, priest, sacristan, prayers, sprinkling of holy water, the closing of the coffin with hammer and nails; six persons who remove the coffin from the table, lift it, carry it, with difficulty, down the stairs despite the cries, sobs, and new tears of the family, walk with it to the hearse, place it on the slab, strap it securely with leather thongs; the rolling of the hearse, the rolling of the carriages one by one...These are notes that I took for a sad and commonplace chapter which I shall not write.

I guess there are two ways of looking at things: either we think that no matter what happens in this world, where you are is a reflection of your mettle, how hard you scraped and scrounged and pushed and persevered and that if you are doing well in life, it's because you earned it, or we think that mostly it's just how things worked out.

The generation before this current rising one, and the baby boomer generation, these (at least in the US) experienced quite a bit of prosperity and good life. They worked hard and they profited and they were able to raise the next two generations in a atmosphere of plenty.

So what would it mean if the national debt got too big, if the US economy followed the Greek and Portuguese economies into untenable standings? And what would happen if in this difficult economic situation, even the scrapers and scoungers, the pushers and perseverers found that it was not enough?

Those who prospered in the last generations no doubt prospered because of their own merits, but what if people are like seeds? Tossed into lousy soil in a time of drought, how will seeds grow? I do not mean to demean the achievements of the generations before us that provided such plenty and comfort as we were raised, but I want to ask, how much of these accomplishments were bought on borrowed time? The US national debt is $13,043,347,548,011.01 (as of June 30, 2010 at 12:29:01 AM GMT). I don't get the feeling that anyone is going to stop spending money they don't have soon.

So where is this going? Well, you know the maxims, You work hard and you'll be alright. Hard work and honesty have their rewards. But what if it has a lot more to do with the crap shoot of when you are born? We already know that location has a lot to do with plenty. If you're born to a powerful king it's more likely that you'll have food to eat everyday than if you are born to a crack addict in Imperial County. I'm contending, I think, that it's the same time-wise, and that the generations before us managed to be born into prosperity, as were we, but that this prosperity was purchased at the expense of both past and future.

But still, that isn't much more than whining. And it might even be an argument for sitting around on your sorry ass watching television shows like Glee and Heroes. I do believe that hard work matters, scraping and scrounging are mostly good, as are pushing and persevering, but also the more than healthy realization that if you have anything, you got a good deal lucky. So open your hand and act like what you have is what you were given, not what you earned.