That's All Folks!

Here's a thought I had this morning:
Earlier I tweeted a question asking what Wile E Coyote was eating in the meantime until he actually caught the roadrunner. Someone responded on Facebook saying that maybe it was all in his head. I took that a step further...

What if it's like An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge? What if one morning Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius, went out to the mailbox to find that his Acme flying suit had arrived and he set about to catch himself a roadrunner. He spent the better part of the day climbing a mountain and then, like Icarus and Daedalus,  he took to the heavens. He flew after the roadrunner up and down the desert valley before eventually being outsmarted by the roadrunner and flying headfirst into a cliff.

What if everything that happened after that was all in his mind? What if it was an experience akin to his life flashing before his eyes, except it just one fantasy after another of him still chasing that roadrunner? His subconscious couldn't accept the inevitability of death, but his confidence was so dashed that it couldn't play out to see him actually catch the bird. Instead, he just had this seemingly endless cycle of adventures, one after another, where all of his best efforts (sometimes literally) blew up in his face.

Those delusions weren't meant to be taken literally. They were manifestations of his sense of failure. After all, here was a self-proclaimed supergenius. It said so right on the business card that he handed Bugs Bunny in an old episode. Here was a man who placed his entire self worth in academia. What was Chuck Jones trying to say to us about human nature? Far too many of us correlate our accomplishments, our resumes or CV to our sense of self worth. Some of us aren't able to accept failure and we'll chase after our idea of success with reckless abandon, failing to consider that our hunger is leading us over the edge of a cliff.

The coyote was tormented up until the moment of death by endless cycles of coming so close and falling short at the last possible moment. And just when he was ready to dust himself off and try again...

CRACK

He broke his neck flying full speed into the side of that cliff and his lifeless body fell to earth like Icarus, another victim of hubris.