Sooty Mangabey

"There is no room for complacency..." - from Evolutionary Analysis, 4th Ed. by Scott Freeman and Jon C. Herron

The quotation is taken completely out of context, and I found it awkwardly melodramatic in a textbook setting. Freeman was discussing the repercussions of HIV and its toll on human life. He says that we shouldn't be satisfied with the medical treatment of HIV/AIDS because it is still very prevalent. In fact, the life expectancy of Botswana went from 65 to 40 once HIV was introduced and is still declining (Freeman & Herron, 2007). So no, there is no room for complacency.

Maybe it's not melodramatic after all.

I, however, took it differently. What I realized from the reading was that progress, while positive, does not necessarily equate to success. As truistic as it sounds, only success can be success. So while we pander to ourselves about how much better we're getting or how we have been improving, it cannot be forgotten that these concepts, while under the guise of sycophantic praise, can be retrogressive in nature, at least in terms of attaining a goal.

There is no room for complacency if success is not reached.

My DAT is this Friday, and slowly I am realizing the difference between progress and success. School is in full swing, my dental application awaits just yonder, behind the horizon of "the test". Stress is inescapable, and while I think of myself as a relaxed person, my mental and emotional flexibility is constantly being tested even before the actual exam.

So maybe I was just looking for some words to thrust me into confidence, but somehow, even if it did seem like extra information I didn't need to know before something so monumentally important, reading for my Evolution quiz helped me study for my DAT. I took something completely out of context and meditated on it. A simple sentence that, if put into another context, could have such powerful significance, or, if you're reading an Evolution textbook for a class, mean next to nothing at all.

Maybe we just need to meditate on things more, even if the intentions of those statements are obvious or self-evident ("homo-evident").

Maybe we already know these things in our minds but forget their worth in the daily chaos of our lives.

Maybe we don't really need these little ditties and motivational lines to drive us because we are already driven.

Maybe we do. Maybe we need reminders. Maybe we need something beyond ourselves to succeed.

And maybe some days we are satisfied with our lives, happy to be living simply because it is life, reaching for our goals that we'll attain sometime in an impersonal future.

But, in my own experience at least, we must remember how crowded our lives can be, like a car that's moving your possessions from one residence to another.

And in this car, there is no more room for complacency.