Sometimes I just want to fuck. I hope that you’ll forgive the use of a word that I know is offensive to some. However, saying that sometimes I just want to have sex does not aptly convey the sheer, brutal intensity of the urge that I’m addressing. There are certainly times that I see a woman and desire her. However, at these times it’s generally fairly easy for me to look somewhere else, or walk away. This kind of temptation I generally deal with fairly well. However, there are other times that I just want to fuck something. It doesn’t really matter what: man, woman, old, young, animal… seriously, at these times a 12 year old girl and an 80 year old man are equally attractive to me. At these times I find the neighbor’s dog or my friend’s hula lamp attractive. These are times when my only choice is to run to God in humility and utter, complete desperation, because there is nothing I can do when this urge hits me.

This urge is also generally combined with an overwhelming sense of failure, especially when I fail to run to God and instead wind up searching the internet trying to find something that is marginally close to porn without actually making me feel like I’m watching porn. Needless to say, this isn’t a good place to be. I’m not going to lie, I struggle with porn from time to time. I don’t like porn, I don’t think it’s acceptable, or that it should be acceptable, but I do struggle with it from time to time. So… overwhelming sense of complete, abject failure. Again, when I’m in this place I find that I have to go to God. If I don’t then I generally find myself curled up on my bed in the fetal position as the sledgehammer of depression bludgeons my soul.

Being that feeling like an abject failure is fairly common in today’s world (see my post on striving here) it’s not difficult to understand why it’s a problem for me. However, there are a few things that I try to remember when I’m feeling like a complete and utter failure: Confucius, Socrates, John Huss, Vincent Van Gogh, H.P. Lovecraft.

Each of these men was a complete and utter failure in life. Confucius wanted to be a high level politician, a close adviser to a powerful king. However, he never managed more than low-level government jobs before finally giving up and returning home to be a humble teacher. A few hundred years later, though, his ideas became the foundation of the governmental system that ran China for over two thousand years.

Socrates and John Huss both died in disgrace, executed because of their beliefs. Yet the philosophies of Socrates have inspired thinkers for the last 2000 years, and the theology of John Huss served as the foundation for various movements during the Reformation.

Vincent Van Gogh was an utter failure during his life. His art was ridiculed and he was considered a ridiculous, worthless buffoon. Eventually he committed suicide. However, today Van Gogh is considered one of histories greatest artists.

H.P. Lovecraft was an author around the turn of the 20th century. While he was an excellent author he was generally unsuccessful and had a very unhappy life. He was underpaid for his stories, he had a short, failed marriage, and he eventually died of a very long and painful illness. However, his writing (which amounted to a few dozen short stories, a novella, and a short novel) inspired an entire sub-genre of fiction (Cthulian fiction), and influenced the entirety of Science Fiction and Horror writing.

There are plenty of other examples, but these are my favorites. Men who were utter and complete failures in life, but still managed to change the world. These men give me hope for my own life, and they give me hope for my own failures.