I slipped away the other day and strolled towards the limelight.
To much dismay and most out of the way, this light it shined too bright.
If I could just get closer, by whatever means how,
I could achieve the spoils of success, and revel in the now.
Advance after advance, success after success,
One would think, naturally, to progress was the key to this mess.
Slowly but surely, my goals marked complete,
Yet these checks on a sheet kept bringing me to my knees.
What lay behind the light - a driving attraction,
Kept me bound and confused, a terrifying reaction.
The struggle to succeed, at least in my mind,
Was a self-perpetuating frenzy of competition against a future place in time.
To fail in a contest against another is but a minor setback.
But to lose the race against oneself is a tragic putrid poison, uneasy to extract.
However, by seeing the nature of this self race, and to resolve to love oneself in hate,
Is to admit defeat of one's own fate and accept a self deprecating loss.
Yet as one succeeds in short, they see the nature of their quest.
These goals I take and win today, I strive without a rest.
To reorient with happiness as the goal, is to accept the love within us all.
In constantly improving, your life stays moving,
But beware this pace, as to much disgrace,
This ambitious race may make you lose face.
To seek and to find is to reap and rewind;
When I succeed in my mind, my dreams they do not subside.
Something is burning, deep down inside,
Quietly yearning for a love lost in time.
As Hyacinth passed up on the one he loved, Rosebud cried in toil and crud.
Caught up in the nature of the game, eluded by fame - yet to oneself, he fell insane.
This is a literary allusion to the German fairy tale *Hyacinth and Rosebud* by the Romantic author Novalis.