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A Frostian Bargain

Faust was an erudite man - a scholar. He was a voracious learner. And so when he met the devil, the devil offered him all the knowledge of the world. For the meager cost of his soul. This is the Faustian bargain. It is supposed to be a warning tale for the ambitious who may give up their morality or humanity for a goal.

But can you really blame Faust? In a world which potentially has no meaning, created out of sheer dumb luck, an ambition helps one feel purposeful, gives one direction. The sense of achieving something, of reaching a goal is liberating, and makes one feel in control of their destiny.

Frost, on the other hand, was an American poet. He was a regular man, living off regular means, and he wrote about regular things. He wrote about the world, and people, and how their interactions played out in minute detail - but from these quotidian details, he brought out beauty and lessons that were anything but. For an example:

Nature’s first green is gold
Its hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf’s a flower
But only so an hour
Then leaf subsides to leaf
So Eden sank to grief
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing Gold can stay.

And in that example also lies who Frost was to me. He realised each moment was ethereal, transient. Frost to me is a person who exists, observes, and feels. And it is the last part that is key to me. To feel is to know that you exist, to be frozen in a moment that is all yours to take in, to observe, to be in. It reminds you that the world around you has been, is, and will be long after you. You don’t need to have a larger ambition or goal to be. You are self contained. Frost, had perspective. The best way to summarise is another Frost poem.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars – on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much closer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

My dilemma here, is that I am constantly torn between being Faust, and being Frost. Sometimes all I want is to push myself to that goal I’ve been dreaming of. To feel like I have a point, a purpose in this world. Other times, all I want to do is to be. To observe, to me a part of yet, apart from. To take in all the emotions and the visuals. It is tough to find a balance. I do not get to choose what state I wake up in or end up sleeping with.

But perhaps I am better off with the both. I consider myself lucky to have both vantage points. To be able to roll my rock up the mountain like Sisyphus, and to be able to view the goings on like Descartes. They each make the other better, and my life sweeter. That is my Frostian Bargain.

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