TM #202 - If life's a game who do you think is winning?
Nobody wins.
She used to think that money was enough. Fame was enough. Beauty was enough. That all you needed was one of the three, or even better, the right combination of them all, and you won. The president may have his critics, but he's still the most powerful man in America, isn't he? Rich heiresses may get thrown in jail eventually, but they'll still have more money than most people will make in their lifetime, and without ever having to work for it, won't they? Supermodels will one day fade, but even as they age, they live knowing that at one point in time they were more beautiful than some people will ever be. Even before they fade.
It was a pretty flimsy definition. Get what you want from life, and you automatically win. Everyone else who never quite makes it, they lose. It didn't seem to matter if it made you happy. Getting what you want sometimes seems like a default happiness anyway.
Then one day, she caught up with her mother. Maria Santini had left the family when Lauren was only 15. She seemed to think that there was something out there for her, something more than what being a mother offered. So she headed out to California, trying to find it. The something more that people instinctively feel like they're missing without ever having had it before. But it didn't make her happy. It didn't make her life any better than it had been before. Instead, she'd ended up missing out on so many things. And too many of the mistakes she'd made were irreversible. There was just so much she couldn't undo.
Lauren realized that for everything we gain, there is something to be lost. That sacrifice is the prerequisite for success, and that nothing necessarily equals happiness. And at the end of the day, we're all still dying anyway. So the truth is, no one is winning. Life is just a really long process of losing that last inevitable battle.
And a lot of smaller ones in between.
Lauren Santini
Original Character
340 Words
She used to think that money was enough. Fame was enough. Beauty was enough. That all you needed was one of the three, or even better, the right combination of them all, and you won. The president may have his critics, but he's still the most powerful man in America, isn't he? Rich heiresses may get thrown in jail eventually, but they'll still have more money than most people will make in their lifetime, and without ever having to work for it, won't they? Supermodels will one day fade, but even as they age, they live knowing that at one point in time they were more beautiful than some people will ever be. Even before they fade.
It was a pretty flimsy definition. Get what you want from life, and you automatically win. Everyone else who never quite makes it, they lose. It didn't seem to matter if it made you happy. Getting what you want sometimes seems like a default happiness anyway.
Then one day, she caught up with her mother. Maria Santini had left the family when Lauren was only 15. She seemed to think that there was something out there for her, something more than what being a mother offered. So she headed out to California, trying to find it. The something more that people instinctively feel like they're missing without ever having had it before. But it didn't make her happy. It didn't make her life any better than it had been before. Instead, she'd ended up missing out on so many things. And too many of the mistakes she'd made were irreversible. There was just so much she couldn't undo.
Lauren realized that for everything we gain, there is something to be lost. That sacrifice is the prerequisite for success, and that nothing necessarily equals happiness. And at the end of the day, we're all still dying anyway. So the truth is, no one is winning. Life is just a really long process of losing that last inevitable battle.
And a lot of smaller ones in between.
Lauren Santini
Original Character
340 Words