Happiness – Page 13 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Blogger Versus Evil

Jack Burton: “Great. Walls are probably three feet thick, welded shut from the outside, and covered with brick by now.”

Wang Chi: “Don’t give up, Jack.”

Jack Burton: “Okay, I won’t Wang. Let’s just chew our way out of here.” – Big Trouble in Little China

Never make a deal to buy a guitar from the Devil. There are always strings attached.

The Exorcist is a feel-good movie. Well, at least it is for me.

I wanted to watch it when I was an especially wee Wilder, but for whatever reason, Ma and Pa Wilder felt that exposing a first grader to that particular film would be considered a war crime. I don’t remember how old I was when I finally saw it, but as I recall it was rented on a VHS tape.

By the time I’d seen it, I’d already been exposed to much more brutal horror: Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Norman Lear sitcoms. I’ll say this about reading horror – the things I conjured in my mind while tearing through the pages of The Stand were far scarier than anything I’d ever seen in a movie.

But I made a pretty bold statement: The Exorcist is a feel-good movie, so I guess you’re gonna make me back it up. Thankfully, I have that not only on my authority, but on the authority of the author of The Exorcist. William Peter Blatty summed up the reason I like horror films with this very simple quote:

“My logic was simple: if demons are real, why not angels? If angels are real, why not souls? And if souls are real, what about your own soul?”

Blatty even described The Exorcist as his ministry – it seems he’s religious. Who would have expected that?

What don’t demons wear hairpieces? Because there would be Hell toupee.

Much of what we see in the world we explain through simple materialism. But when I read novels where the demons are mere humans, well, (with the exception of Hannibal Lechter) I’m generally let down when the Scooby Doo® ending explains away the supernatural mystery at the heart of the story. Mr. Blatty’s quote describes exactly why.

“If demons are real, why not angels.”

Now I know that several readers are atheists. As I’ve pointed out before, this blog is sort-of a litmus test. People that are the kind of atheist that just hates God will generally not opt-in to reading this blog for any length of time. I have no idea why, but they just don’t. Actual, rational atheists that don’t turn rabid when the supernatural is discussed don’t seem to mind.

Maybe they look at it like I look at the WWE®: they can watch it and be amused, even though they’re certain it’s not real. They especially like it when Hulk Hogan® hits me in the head with a chair.

Where did Randy “Macho Man” Savage™ work out? The Slim-Jim©.

Regardless, I think most readers here share the same view of Evil (or even evil) in this world. It’s visible in the raw naked lust for power that we have seen repeated again and again from the Left. It’s also visible in their unbridled joy at the destruction of Truth, Beauty, and Society.

The Left revels in the Lie, the inversion of Truth, the inversion of Beauty:

Billions of dollars in damage in Minneapolis is a “peaceful protest” while a march on the Capitol is, according to President* Biden: “The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
They demand, using free speech, to restrict the free speech of those that offend them.
The Left demands you look at what is obviously a man, and claim it to be a woman.

It’s simple, really: everything that’s Bad is presented as good. And everything Good? Well, it’s Bad. How dare you think self-restraint and hard work is virtuous?

Sniff. “Smells like fraud.”

Let’s look at how a simple Good thing like a married man and woman having a baby is turned on its head:

What about the woman’s career?
Why not live the childfree life?
Why have the baby at all?
There are too many people on the planet already.

The last argument is especially Evil, because when the propaganda works, the headlines then sing out: “since we’re not having enough babies, we need to import multitudes to grow our economy.” “Meet the New Americans.”

It’s fun to use this technique on Leftists. I can recall a Twitter® exchange with a Leftist where I Tweeted™ that I opposed immigration to the United States on the grounds that people in the United States had the highest carbon footprint, so by bringing in more people into the United States they were destroying the planet.

Brain lock ensued when they couldn’t deal with the conflict between their two opposing beliefs. It’s fun to come up with these couplets to invert the Evil right back at them, though, in the end, there is no conversion for a True Believer outside of a gentle helicopter ride. They have given in to the Evil. They’ll avoid the conversation.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: three ways to dispose of a dead Leftist.

It is especially difficult for parents of children: what is innocent is sexualized. A first-grade boy isn’t old enough to decide what he should eat on a regular basis – why would the world think that he should be turned into a she?

It’s all around us, every day. It’s sold to us in media, it’s in the news, it’s everywhere.

And it’s attacking the Values of what we all know, deep inside ourselves, to be True and Good. That which is Good, True and Beautiful hasn’t changed within the lifetime of mankind on this planet, but when you’re confronted with people trying to sell that which is a Lie as the Truth?

You can be sure those people are Evil.

Not to say that people on the Right are immune to that – far from it. Eaton Rapids Joe has a great little story to that effect here (LINK).

To be clear, the ultimate aim of the propaganda of Evil is simple: to make Good people feel despair.

Why despair? Despair is the opposite of hope. It is the opposite of Truth. It is the opposite of Beauty. Despair is Evil.

And when propaganda wins? Evil wins.

H.P. Lovecraft was tormented by doubt all of his life. Imagine if he hadn’t slept in despair bedroom.

But that’s not what happened in The Exorcist. Father Karras, who had lingering doubts and was on the verge of Despair, conquered it.

Because he conquered Despair, Father Karras conquered Evil.

When you feel Despair, know that’s nothing more than Evil. And you can conquer it, too.

Yeah, I told you that The Exorcist was a feel-good story. And I was right.

———————————————

Extra Meme and Tagline, because I made one too many:

In other news, the 2024 election will be postponed until they find the results in Biden’s desk.

Money Is Not The Only Form Of Wealth

“Well, as I said, time has no meaning here. So if you leave, you can go anywhere, any time.” – Star Trek: Generations

What do you call a rogue sheep with a machine gun? Lambo.

When I lived in Houston, my job was all consuming. It’s been my theory that people move to Houston for one reason: to work. The climate is difficult. The freeways are often lines of cars creeping along like Joe Biden in an elementary school. One upside is that there can’t be a (Some) Black Lives Matter® protest because the Houston Astros© always steal their signs.

When I was a Temporary Texan, my life was consumed by work – and it was stressful work. Each day brought a new crisis we had to solve. It got so bad that I left home early to avoid the traffic, so I got to work early. I left work late to avoid the traffic, so I got home late. A fourteen-hour day wasn’t uncommon. I put blood, sweat, and tears into that job, so it was good that I wasn’t working at a restaurant.

The last time I went out for dinner, I asked the waiter how they prepared the chicken for frying. “Nothing special. We just tell them they’re going to die.”

For many weeks, I was gone every hour that baby Pugsley was awake during a weekday. I would, however, catch up with The Mrs. when I got home. That was a priority. We knew what we were getting into when we made the move from Alaska. Moving to Houston was, for us, entirely about work. I should have known during the job interview that something was up: they asked if I could perform under pressure, but I told them I only knew Bohemian Rhapsody.

Most (not all!) weekends I was able to keep the work at bay. I’d sleep in on Saturday, and then we’d do something as a family. By Saturday night I felt, “normal” but by Sunday afternoon I’d realize that I’d have to go back in to work on Monday and repeat the whole thing again. That made me feel pretty gloomy – it felt like time was slipping away.

This was how Sunday evening felt when I worked in Houston.

One Sunday night, however, I was getting my things ready for the next day. I was looking for my dress shoes (I was in an office that required them at that time) and couldn’t find them. Since I always took them off at the same place, that confused me.

After looking in all the logical places, the only choice then was to look in all of the illogical places. When you live alone, everything is pretty findable. When you have a wife, things move around on their own. When you have children under seven? The toilet gets clogged with decorative clam shell soaps that The Mrs. bought.

So, when I found my shoes under Pugsley’s bed, I wasn’t really surprised.

I was, however, touched. As near as we can figure, Pugsley had come to the conclusion that I only wore those shoes when I was gone all day. As near as his Gerber®-addled mind could conceive, if I didn’t have the shoes, I could spend every day at home with him.

Not bad. And I was touched.

I tried to buy running shoes the other day – but the only ones I saw were stationary.

One of the ideas of wealth is money. And I was in Houston, like everyone else, to make money.

But there’s another idea of wealth: time.

There are a group of people who are driven by playing that game and devote themselves exclusively to their business. That makes sense. The world needs people who are single-minded in wanting to change it.

Most people have read about people like Edison who never slept more than seven minutes a night and spent most of his life at work while making a fortune, and Elon Musk who famously slept in the factory to get car production worked out. And Musk and Edison both have another thing in common: they both got rich off of Tesla.

Meanwhile, the GPS is saying: “Recalculating . . . recalculating . . . “

If that’s what they choose? Fine. The idea of spending time on their passion for business is exactly that – a choice. Just like having a finite supply of money gives you a set of choices of what you can do in life, there is another budget – a finite number of hours.

And that is life. Life is made up of those hours that we use. Just as inflation eats away at the value of money, distraction eats away at the value of life.

What kind of distraction?

Well, pointless things – think Twitter® and most of Facebook™. I was on Twitter© a while back, and found it was good at exactly one thing: making me irritated.

I even take this aversion to not wasting the hours and minutes of my life unless it was a conscious decision to absurd levels. For several years of my life, I ate something I didn’t like all that much for lunch because there was no line.

I hate the idea of waiting five minutes of my life when I don’t to. This still applies even if I waste those five minutes on something unproductive. For a long time, I avoided history – I just couldn’t see a future in it.

I’m reading a book about the history of lubricating oils and bearings. Best non-friction book I’ve ever read.

But now society is built on creating and feeding distraction to people – the more distraction that’s consumed, the greater the profit level for these companies. And these are not even distractions that make us feel better – but distractions that in many cases just consume time.

I’m not sure that the idea of a “balanced” life is one that exists in reality. A human life is built up in phases. The long languid summers of youth give up to days that are packed with all the trappings of a family and work and the fullness of life. When my youngest, Pugsley, heads out into the world, who knows what I’ll do with the time?

Perhaps I’ll spend it finding places to hide his shoes.

Life Is A Struggle: That’s A Good Thing

“The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel. It’s a wonderful way to live. It’s the only way to drive.” – Rush

A computer once beat me at chess. It lost at kickboxing, though.

The Mrs. and I have recently been playing chess. It’s not a lot of chess, it’s mainly on Saturday nights when things are a bit slower. I’ve been enjoying the games. If I were to guess, before the last time we played, the games tilted slightly in my favor.

I think I’ve won about 30. The Mrs. was still sitting at, well, zero wins.

30-0.

Don’t think poorly of her. The Mrs. is going from a standing start. At one point in college, I lived with eight other guys in a house, and nearly all of the time a chess game was going. I could generally beat everyone in the house by the end of the school year. It took a while for one guy, about four months. First, he wiped the floor with me, then he and I traded games. By the end of two semesters?

I usually won. I have played a lot more chess than The Mrs. I will say this, though, she’s smart as a whip, and when I give her position analysis and show her why she lost the game, she listens.

The Mrs. doesn’t listen like someone who wants to defend why they did what they did. She listens with the ears of someone who wants to learn, who wants to get better. There has been exactly zero ego in learning the game for her.

Did I mention that The Mrs. is competitive? Really competitive?

Ever notice that Tom Cruise has a tooth perfectly centered under his nose, like it’s one-half tooth too far over? Now you’ll never be able to unsee that. You’re welcome.

The last time The Mrs. and I played chess, we played three games. The first game, I crushed her. By the start of the mid-game, I was up on pieces and position. It was like a velociraptor in a room full of bacon-wrapped kittens covered in pudding. Then the next game. Again, by the mid-game, I was up. I was toying with her king like a teacup poodle lords over a pork chop, getting ready for checkmate.

Then, she moved.

Then, I moved. That’s the rule, right?

But my move made it so she had no legal moves left. The Mrs. wasn’t in check, but couldn’t move. I was winning, decisively.

But if she has no legal moves and her king isn’t in check?

It’s a draw. The score was now 30-0-1.

My blunder, her draw. The next game went, shall we say, a little differently. The start went okay. Then, in the mid-game? She took control and by the beginning of the end-game? I was breathing for air harder than Biden sniffing a teenager. Which Biden? Apparently any of them.

What mall did they get this picture taken at?

Then? I caught a break. The Mrs. was up on pieces and position, but I found a way out. I could keep her king in perpetual check.

The Mrs. moved, I moved, check.

Note: I couldn’t win, but I could make the game as annoying as an 8-year-old asking, “Are we there yet?”

Thankfully, there’s a rule for that. It’s called?

A draw.

We went from me constantly crushing her, to her lucking to a draw, to me grasping to find a way out of a game without a loss.

30-0-2.

Good for The Mrs.

And good for me. Now I’m going to have to work to bring my A-game. And Saturday nights just got better.

Why?

Would it be better if I could crush her in chess every evening like Oprah crushes couch cushions? Of course not.

I told my barber to cut my hair like he would for Tom Cruise. He made me sit on two phone books.

The best victories in life are going head to head with someone near your level in skill. Going all out. Pushing each other to be better. I mean, I can beat up any number of third graders. Honestly, I have no idea how many third graders I couldn’t beat up.

I could do it all day. It’s really not a challenge. Seriously, I could beat up lots of them.

But fourth graders? I mean, I could be at least the third-best player on the fourth-grade soccer team.

Life is challenge. Life is struggle.

And thank heavens for that. Or thank Heaven for that? (Stick with me – this isn’t a sermon.)

Speaking of Heaven, from the time I was just a little Wilder, I caused a *lot* of problems at church. I distinctly recall that I colored a picture of Jesus with His skin being bright purple. On purpose.

My only excuse is that I was five and had no glitter.

The Sunday school teacher came up to me and said, “Johnny, you know that Jesus wasn’t purple.”

I replied, “Well, please allow me to retort. Jesus is God, right? Well, if He wants to be purple, He can be purple.”

How can you argue with logic like that? Even kindergartners score some points now and then. I last saw my Sunday school teacher when I was thirty. She was really thrilled to see me. I think she was just happy I hadn’t started the Cult of the Glittery Purple Jesus. And, yes, all of those things really happened.

But back to heaven, or in this case, Heaven.

When they described Heaven to me in Sunday school, I was as appalled and indignant as a precocious five-year-old can be.

Sunday school teacher, describing Heaven: “You’re happy all the time. Nothing bad ever happens. You wake up and everything is fine.”

Five-year-old me thought: “Well, that sucks. It’s stupid. That sounds boring.” Even then, I was wise enough not to throw out a level-five heresy in the middle of Sunday school. Jesus might turn me purple or something. I’m certainly glad they didn’t teach me about Valhalla then, because that sounds much, much better than Heaven: Wake up. Fight and get soused and maybe die. Wake up. Repeat.

What did the Vikings call English villages? Chopping centers.

Sure you teach little kids the things that you think they like. But me as a little kid? Peace was the last thing on my mind. But I’m not alone.

When you look at the life of Jesus, He didn’t spend it sitting on fluffy pillows and eating Ding-Dongs®. Nope. If you think WWJD, remember, taking a whip and kicking vermin out of church is within the realm of permissible actions.

Jesus was clear in that: life is the struggle.

Life is not about the easy way out.
Life is not about running out the clock in the 20 years until you retire.
Life is not about being nice.

If you played your life like a video game, your goal isn’t to have a pleasant but non-threatening experience. You want to climb the mountain, fight for the fair maiden, and drink from the skull of your enemy. I want The Mrs. to be kick-ass at chess, so when I win, it means something.

It meant something to The Mrs. when I had to force a draw to save my sorry (rare NSFW word coming) ass.

That, my friends, is life. Life is the struggle.

And my bet at Heaven is that it’s more like this:

LEVEL ONE COMPLETE.

PREPARE FOR LEVEL TWO.

I started a job digging deeper and deeper holes – but that was boring on so many levels.

Yeah. Let’s go. Let’s live life.

Bring.

It.

On.

Take big bites.

Who is with me?

Why I Write

“All work and no play makes Jack Phil a dull boy.” – The Shining

What do you call a Mongolian defeatist? Genghis Khan’t.

Stephen King, especially the coked-out version who doesn’t remember the entire Reagan presidency, often wrote about writing. This might have been interesting if all of those main characters in his stories weren’t writers, too. The Mrs. has felt that Steve has been a bad writer since, oh, 1992 or so. The Mrs. had been a big enough fan that she drove three hours to take part in an interview with him back in the day. I gave up on him around 2008. The Mrs. even Facebook®-told-him he was a “hack”.

I don’t often write about writing. But I write a lot. 652 posts since March, 2017, with a total word count before this post of 942,879 words. So, just like Mr. King, I’ve at least become a much more proficient typist since 1992.

Why do I spend the hours writing these posts every week?

Well, the first reason is I like to write them.

When I’ve finished a post and I’ve said absolutely everything that I want to say, and said it exactly the way that I want to say it, I feel great.

That’s a problem.

I run a weird sleep schedule because of the posts, and often finish up writing into the wee hours of the morning. On more than one morning, I finished the final touches on the post and scheduled it just as the Sun was coming up.

There have been one or two days when I went straight from the keyboard to the shower to work to back home and then directly to bed. Ugh. This (partially) explains why I generally only comment right before the new post shows up.

I’m so tired that I can only buy pizza from Papa Yawns.

But even when I finish so I’ll have a shot at getting a few hours of sleep, there comes the problem of feeling great, because there is nothing worse than going to bed at 3AM with a looming 6AM alarm when I’m so excited about what I wrote that I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve.

That makes me happy. But it also makes me as sleepy as Joe Biden before they take him out of the fridge and unzip the Hefty Glad Bag™ each morning to thaw him out.

I also write these because at least some people like to read them.

I’m not sure I’d put the effort into writing these on a regular basis if people didn’t come by. I used to journal but ended up putting that down after some ludicrous number of pages that no one will ever read. It got to be pretty repetitive after a while.

My neighbor thinks I don’t respect his boundaries, or at least he wrote that in his journal.

I know that some of you like reading these because you comment. Of course, there are those who are regulars who never comment – and that’s fine! Then there are those that only send me email. But there is a sense of real community that I’m seeing building in the comments. I consider it a win when half the comments are people talking to each other – and I try to stay out of that, mostly. It is a food fight, after all.

I write these because, on occasion, I think I’ve got something to contribute.

It’s no real surprise to anyone who reads here regularly that I’m fairly concerned with more than one set of trends related to our future. The biggest clue to that is seeing things that showed up in the past – Kipling’s Gods of the Copybook Headings (which I’ve written about before and I’ll reprint again below) seems written to describe our modern age. That may make sense – Kipling was watching from the peak of British power, and seeing the cracks forming in 1919 that would shatter less than 30 years later.

“I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize™.” – Barack Obama

I get that sense today, and get clues that we’re far from the United States – the Untied States? – that any of us knew in our youth. Just like Kipling used his genius and verse to create snapshots of the world, I try to do the same with humor and more than one bikini graph. Different times, different tools. Also, I doubt they’ll give me a Nobel Prize™ for literature unless they create one especially for me for bad puns.

Our future will be different, but I like to think that when the dust settles we don’t end up like Moscow in 1919 but the United States in 1787, the beginning of something better.

I do it because I like humor.

I have no idea why. I’ve been writing nonsense like this since I was a kid. It makes me as happy as Hunter Biden when he got the highest test score. I mean, the policeman holding the breathalyzer wasn’t amused, but . . . .

I do it because I want to leave something behind.

Yup. 942,879 words. If you read them all out loud, it would take you nearly as long as the Lord of the Rings trilogy movies. Unless you got the special extended version, which lasts 19.5 years. It may not be great, but just like the Federal Reserve® and money printing: I make up for it in volume.

Bruce Willis will play an older Frodo in the next movie. Old Hobbits Die Hard.

I do it because I want to get better.

The Mrs. challenged me on this one when I wrote my previous blog, and for the first year on this one that I wasn’t really trying. They were “fine”, she told me, but unless I was working to make them better, why should I spend all of that time and be content with “fine”?

She was right.

And it takes me a lot longer now to write a post. There’s a whole process, which, unlike Stephen King’s best work, doesn’t involve turning myself into a snowmachine but it does involve a lot of editing. The Mrs. doesn’t even think that I’m a hack, and she’d tell me.

And she’s mean. The Mrs. once (this really happened) walked by NFL® commentator Phil Simms (former quarterback) and said, exceptionally loudly so there was NO DOUBT he heard her, “Look, it’s Boomer Esaison.”

He was on camera. He paused in mid-sentence, just a half-second, but restarted and kept chugging on like a pro. But I could tell he was a little irritated. The lesson here?

If you make The Mrs. mad, you will pay. Just ask Stephen King or Phil Simms.

Ok, Boomer.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Truth: Never Give Up

“And remember, I’m offering the truth, nothing more.” – The Matrix

What is the first foreign language lesson given to French troops? “I surrender,” in German.

I remember walking down a very big hill. Big, in this case, was over 14,000 feet (28,000 meters) in height. When I convinced my friends to climb it with me, they were skeptical. 14,000 feet is, by most accounts, a pretty tall hill. And this particular one didn’t have a gift shop at the top.

Going up was actually easy. We even smoked a cigar back at our 12,000 foot (37 liter) basecamp after we climbed it. I tossed three beers in the glacier by our tents, but by the time we got back from the summit, one had frozen and cracked open. So, the three of us shared two beers. We each had our own cigar. I even Googled® how to light a cigar, and 43,800,000 matches.

That’s a lot of matches, which surprised me. Normally it takes me one or two.

We then slept after our trip, and spent the night at our basecamp. I’ve never had a meal as exquisite as the dehydrated chili-mac that I had that night. Our basecamp was so high that boiling water wasn’t very hot at all. And bugs? Not a problem. No mosquito can fly in air that thin. Really.

Normally, when you’ve climbed one of the tallest mountains in North America, you think, “Well, going down is easy, as long as it’s not over a cliff.”

That was what I thought.

I would tell more cliff jokes, but most of them are pretty edgy.

I climbed the hill in running shoes. It’s easy going up in those.

But down? That’s a different story. For me, the downhill part was the hardest. Those running shoes were loose enough that each time I stepped down on that path, they slipped. Maybe a quarter of an inch (57 kilojoules). Maybe even an eighth of an inch (34 megaergs). But it slipped.

The problem with a foot slipping on the inside of a shoe is that it builds up heat. The heat was absorbed by the sole of my foot (I’m assuming a metric foot is a hand?) and built up.

Halfway down the mountain, my feet really, really hurt. Pain focused my mind on the following thoughts:

Owwww, my feet hurt!
I never give up.
Owwww, my feet hurt!

When we got back to the Jeep® that originally took us to the trailhead, I gratefully tossed my backpack in. We then bounced down the hill, and then zoomed across the flatland to the place we were staying. If there’s anything as fine as having climbed a mountain and then feeling the wind in your hair (I had it then) as you scoot on a highway at 70 miles per hour (230 km/min), I don’t know what it is.

I heard that 98% of Jeeps® that have ever been made are on the road today! The other 2% made it home.

When I got back to where we were staying, I pulled my shoes off. When I peeled my socks off, the bottom skin of both feet came off.

Stop!

It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I had a blister that covered the entire part of both of my feet. When I, um, removed it, a slight breeze felt like a hurricane filled with stainless steel scouring pads. Again, a beer or two helped dampen the pain.

The good news?

My feet got better.

I’m telling you that not giving up has consequences. And most of the consequences are good, especially for pride.

My friends on the trip asked me this: “Why didn’t you let us carry your pack?”

My response was simple: “I carried it up, I’m carrying it down.”

Congress has a new sign hanging up by their copy of the Constitution: Not Responsible For Lost Or Stolen Articles.

Responsibility is like that. Once you own it, putting it down is much harder than picking it up in the first place. And giving up? Once you do that, it becomes a habit.

I speak, of course, of where the Right stands.

We’re not winning here in 2021.

The courts appear to be an extra arm of the Left.
The troops are being culled – if you have a belief to the Right of Ché Guévérrå, well, out you go.
Opinions on the Internet? They had better be the correct ones or they’ll never see the light of day.

So?

Ask me if I care if my opinions are unpopular with Google®, Coca-Cola™, Chick-fil-a™, or Nike©.

I do not.

The Truth doesn’t cease being the Truth because it’s mocked or because corporate HR departments blame it for (spins wheel) just being so damn pretty. The Truth always remains the Truth.

I guess there is a Colonel of truth to what he says?

I am, thankfully, of an age and status where I don’t ever think I’ll have to lie to anyone, ever, again in my life. The Mrs.? I told her when we met that I’d never lie to her, and I haven’t, which is why she never, ever, asks if those pants make her butt look big. Is it the pants, or is it the butt?

Never ask a question you don’t want to hear a Truthful answer to.

Everyone has the ability to have these superpowers:

Never Give Up
Always Tell The Truth
To Thine Own Self Be True

Okay, I got the last bullet point from Gilligan’s Island. Really. There was an episode where they did a musical version of Hamlet, which was my first encounter with the Bard.

There was an earthquake during the production. It was quite the Shakesperience.

But the biggest sin of all is this one: giving up.

The Boy texted me that Fox News® has lost over 50% of their web traffic since the election. That sounds like despair. And despair is giving up.

Me?

I’m not done. Why should I be? The one thing I could do to betray myself, and to betray everything I believe in? Is to give up. That would be giving up on me, and giving up on you.

I can’t abide by that.

Corporate powers may try to silence me, and may temporarily lower my traffic.

That won’t stop the signal.

And if I fall? A dozen others will take my place. Truth will win. It may make a thousand years, and billions of lives, but Truth will win.

Does gravity care if you believe in it? It does not. Neither does the Truth.

Which is why I won’t give up. And which is why the Truth will always win.

Welcome To Being An Outsider

“Now, I didn’t start it, but be sure as Hell I mean to see it through.” – Shooter

If you boil a clown you get laughing stock.

We’re Outsiders.

Well, not all of us. But when you look at the system, most of the people reading this post are Outsiders.

I happen to live in a place filled with Outsiders. Here in Modern Mayberry, you’re ten a hundred times as likely to see a Gadsden flag on a flagpole as a Bernie® bumper sticker. Besides the Bernie supporters around here have now all been kicked out by their roommates, you know, “Mom and Dad”.

That’s why it’s Modern Mayberry.

It’s not paradise. There are some thefts. There are some drugs of the most destructive kind. There’s even a hipster who was an outdoorsman before it was cool – you’d call him a homeless guy.

But yet . . .

People here still remember the United States that was, or at least the United States we remembered from our dreams. One where the Constitution was the rule. One where the dream wasn’t one of dependence on handouts. One where you could ignore it when the government called you at home – you could let freedom ring.

A friend of mine used his stimulus check to buy baby chickens. Money for nothing and the chicks for free.

Tonight I drove home along Main Street, and I saw people out and about. In one block I saw six people that I personally knew, and most of them made it off the sidewalk in time.

Yet all of us in Modern Mayberry are really Outsiders, and I think that we know that. And I think we cherish it, just like the EpiPen® my friend gave me as he was dying – I know I’ll always cherish it.

I watch the news stories of places that seem alien to me. I know that California in 1980 was overwhelmingly what we now call a Red state. Now? It’s alien even to many that were born there.

The politics that created what would have been one of the most prosperous nations in the world have given way to politics that has made California one of the most impoverished states in the United States. I know Gavin Newsom tried to fight poverty, but he kept losing. Homeless people can be deceptively strong when you try to wrestle them.

Sure, I’d love to have California back. I’d love to have Disneyland® back and the American Dream Vacation™, too, with bonus points for stops at the Grand Canyon and Uncle Eddie’s place. But the beliefs that I believe most readers here have aren’t shared by most voters in California in 2021.

There was a person who saw the California ban coming: No-Straw-Domus.

I don’t blame the native Californians – they voted against this insanity again and again, but were overruled from activist benches. We know what sort of trash is on the benches, but what is on the table for the United States?

Individual Rights – these are being replaced by group rights. Reparations for crimes committed nearly two hundred years ago? By the descendants of people who moved here from Germany in 1880?
Freedom of Choice – this is being replaced by coercion, explicit and implicit. Want to do business? You can have whatever opinion you want – as long as it’s the right one.
Due Process – this is being replaced by guilt by inference. Red flag laws, anyone?
Right to Keep and Bear Arms – this is being replaced by the right of approved people to potentially be allowed to purchase a limited number of weapons and keep them locked in a safe at home. As long as we know the weapons are kitten-safe.

Propaganda for collectivism has long been in the offing. For all of my life the programming has been in place to change attitudes to accept this – Leftists have monopolized the major networks since I was a kid. Society has changed in ways that promote collectivism. People move from location to location or live in monolithic cities or sterile suburbs that actively discourage people from acting together in the spirit of real community.

What is it replaced with? City governments. Homeowners’ Associations. Neither of those build community – those are, in larger cities, the expression of power and control. The Mayor of Chicago holds more power than governors of many states. That’s not any semblance of community – when is the last time you heard of anyone holding up Chicago for the face of election fairness?

What part of the mayor of Chicago weighs the most? The scales.

That’s the downside. But it gets better from here.

The first part of winning as an Outsider comes from knowing that you are an Outsider. There is power in being an outsider – it only took a dozen Outsiders to eventually change the entire Roman Empire from people who worshiped Funko Pop® figurines to Christians. Well, a dozen people and a few years.

Ideas are powerful.

Likewise, Outsiders are powerful. Once a person realizes that they’re an Outsider, entire routes open to them. This is a special type of freedom:

Freedom from the system. The system was built not to reward me, but to keep me in line, to keep me fearful. To keep me compliant. Recognizing that is everything.
Freedom from caring about the opinions of the world. Do I care about what France thinks about me? Do I care about what Google® thinks about me? Most (not all, but most) of the people whose opinions matter to me know it, and they all have excellent posture and dental hygiene.
Freedom to set my own goals. What is it that I value? What is it that I want to accomplish? This is mine, and mine alone. Oh, wait, except for trash day. I have to remember trash day.
Freedom to not apologize. When I make a mistake and I agree I’ve made a mistake, I own up to it, proudly. When I don’t, I don’t apologize. And I won’t. Especially not for the bad jokes.
Freedom to change the world. And I will. I’m going to keep going so I can inject my ideas so deeply into the Outsider psyche that the mRNA shot from Pfizer® will seem like a non-invasive procedure.

Kamala Harris is very concerned about COVID. She heard that super-spreaders were the problem.

One piece of the puzzle, interestingly enough, came to me from crappy Star Wars® movie, The Force Awakens™. The movie was horrible. One thing that I couldn’t figure out was why, after killing the Emperor®, that the Rebels™ were . . . the Resistance©?

The movie was awful, partially because it was poorly written and choked with social justice. But it revealed the mind of the Left in ways that I hadn’t realized before:

The Left wanted to identify with the Resistance© because they rely on powerlessness. Powerlessness is necessary to recruit Leftists – the core of Leftism is self-hate.
The Left is about power, but it refuses to admit it has it. That’s why Leftist professors from Leftist colleges complain about insufficient Leftism from Leftist politicians and Leftist media. And vice versa – it becomes self-reinforcing.

Leftists rely on powerlessness as a route to power. It is their foundational myth; it is their unifying element. They are downtrodden, even as they control every major corporation. They are disenfranchised, even though they control nearly every major media outlet – if there’s a cure for that, it’s unTweetable.

Twitter® is like a Leftist bank account – after you enter the wrong opinion five times, you’re locked out.

Given all of that, why am I so happy?

Because I’m free. I’m free of my illusions. I’m free to be an Outsider.

I’ll enjoy seeing the Gadsden flag tomorrow. After all, there were another group of Outsiders a few years ago who seemed to like that flag.

And you remember where the Gadsden flag first flew?

On a pole.

The Key To A Great Job? The Right Mixture Of Important And Urgent.

“Daniel Dravot, Esquire. Well, he became king of Kafiristan, with a crown on his head and that’s all there is to tell. I’ll be on my way now sir, I’ve got urgent business in the south, I have to meet a man in Marwar Junction.” – The Man Who Would Be King

Well, maybe not this doctor.

I have a friend that I’ll call “Joe”. Mainly I’ll call him “Joe” because that’s his name. Since there are estimated to be 1,782,432 people in the United States named “Joseph” that’s really not blowing his cover, except to (I think) two readers. And, no, his wife’s name isn’t Mary.

Joe is fantastically smart. He has an intelligence that makes correlation leaps that catch most people by surprise. In one instance he pointed out a basic physics flaw that showed a billion-dollar business deal was destined to fail. The company did the deal anyway. Physics won – physics always wins.

Joe had been right. You’d think that being right about a fatal flaw in a billion-dollar business would be rewarded, that Joe would be sought after for advice.

If you think that, you’ve never worked in the corporate world. Being right about something like that means that an executive was wrong. Executives never like to have people around them that remind them of when they turned $1,000,000,000 into $100,000,000.

There are times it doesn’t pay to be smarter than the boss.

My boss caught me taking NSFW selfies. They’re serious about mask-wearing.

Besides being right when an executive was wrong, one problem that Joe had is that he had a fairly high capacity to do work. Normally that would be a good thing, but most work was routine for Joe. When he and I were working as peers, he would often do no work at all for days on end.

None. He’d goof off all day, or just play and experiment. He’d break the software in his computer just to see if he could fix it.

Then, in a furious burst of energy (often before a deadline) he’d work. Sometimes, the work would last through multiple 20 hour days.

“Joe, you realize that you could have done that work last week when you were trying to get unauthorized access to the company’s main software server and setting up an unsanctioned private e-mail just for the group. Why didn’t you?” I asked.

“That would be boring,” Joe responded, “so I waited until I didn’t think I’d be able to do the work on time and that I’d miss the deadline. Then it got interesting.”

I got pulled over while going to work with my loom in the front seat. The cop said I was weaving all over the road.

In truth, I’d seen some of the same characteristics of creative procrastination in me, so I immediately understood what Joe was saying. The work itself was rather routine, so the way to bring challenge was to wait until the real risk of losing my job led to peak production. I had a mortgage and Joe didn’t, so I didn’t fly nearly as close to the flame.

But that’s not the only kind of job there is out there.

On the other end of the spectrum is a job that’s chaos. Everything is an emergency. Everything is urgent.

Priorities keep shifting on a daily basis – sometimes on an hourly basis. It feels like there’s no end to the work, and the pressure is unrelenting. There are long lists of things that have to be done – now. The previous day’s plan gets thrown into the trash due to the events of today.

Well, that’s not a job that’s boring.

Don’t worry – they got jobs with Elon Musk, so they could go to otter space.

Lose a day on a job like that, and it feels like the business might implode. I once told The Mrs., “I can do any job for two years.” I had that particular chaotic job for 32 months. 32 months really was 8 months too long – there are only so many 70 hour weeks that I could do consecutively and not become as mentally vacant as Joe Biden circa 2021.

An example from my time in ChaosCorp®: on Sunday around noon when I just started to feel normal, I’d realize that tomorrow was Monday, and I’d have to go back to work. Goodbye feeling normal. I knew there would be some fresh crisis on Monday, I just didn’t know what it would be this week.

This was a time when life was too interesting.

Perhaps, though, there was another way?

Going into my Wayback® Machine, I actually created a picture that I can use to illustrate this. This is from a post back in 2018 (Franklin, Planners, The Terminator, My Unlikely But Real Link With President Eisenhower, Star Wars, and Kanban):

Gotta love Microsoft® Paint™, making a $500 computer just as effective as a box of Crayons® and a sheet of construction paper (plus a sticker).

In this particular graph, one axis shows how important a task is, and the other how urgent. We’ll skip the unimportant stuff, and only focus on the two boxes on the right side of the graph:

Important and Urgent, and Important and Not-Urgent.

The job I described above where everything was chaos? Almost all of our work was Important and Urgent. It’s the kind of work that causes people to get ulcers, gray hair, a facial tic, and start muttering to themselves when they’re hanging out by the coffee machine.

That was me for thirty months.

The “boring” first job I described? That was one where almost all of our work was Important and Not Urgent. This was reasonable work that was really important, but we had sensible timelines. Being generally Type-A personalities, there wasn’t enough pressure for Joe (and me), so we had to invent it ourselves.

Recently, though, I’ve come on a revelation: the optimum amount of work types (for me) is probably about 80% Important and Not Urgent and 20% Important and Urgent.

Pareto would be proud of that blend.

I tried to put my dog on a vegan diet, but we ran out of vegans.

The nice thing about Important and Urgent work is that it gets me going. Rather than get to work and plan about the plan I need to schedule to put the Important and Not Urgent work together, Important and Urgent work has to be done. Now. It has immediacy. It gets me going. Once I get momentum and a pace going, well, it’s easy to keep it going.

Then I get the Important and Not Urgent work done.

The great thing about a day with a good mixture of work like that is that, at the end, my productivity is nearly maximum. As I get in the car to go home, I realize that, yeah, I really did give it all at work, and it felt pretty good.

But writing these posts? That’s Important and Not Urgent. Until I wait to 11PM to get started on writing, like I did tonight.

Then writing becomes Important and Urgent.

Joe would be proud.

Hey, look, the Sun is coming up . . . .

A Wolfe, Stab Wounds, Dolphins, And Snot

“I’m Winston Wolfe. I solve problems.” – Pulp Fiction

What’s the difference between a knife juggler and a multiple stab wound victim? Practice.

I first started reading Claire Wolfe back around the turn of this century in Backwoods Home Magazine. I have several of her books and have enjoyed them greatly. Claire is one of the most wonderful of wordsmiths about freedom, and she has a great post up (LINK) now. The title says it all: “Freedom Is Dying: Be Of Good Cheer.”

Of course, regular readers know that I couldn’t agree more.

Claire has a great story that’s contained in the post. A person named “Lox” came into Claire’s Internet freedom group, and the group tried to help him to freedom:

But “poor” Lox sucked up everything we had to offer, then spat it back out. None of it applied to him. He told us a thousand reasons why all our ideas and experiences were worthless. We were blind and insensitive to the depths of his plight. Nobody had ever been as unfortunate as he. Nobody had ever been as helpless as he. No one had ever been as depressed, as oppressed, as mistreated, as ugly, as inept, as trapped, as misery-laden as he.

Of course, there’s more, and Lox shows himself to be even worse than what’s written above. Seriously. I’ll let you read the rest over at her place, because if you’re not going to her place regularly, you should.

Genghis Khan was a ruthless baby. Why, I remember when he took his first steppe . . .

I’d like to focus for this post on what Claire wrote about Lox in the quote above.

When I was younger (and not yet a wiser Wilder) I can recall running into more than one person like Lox. The names were different. The situations were different. But the behavior was always exactly the same, so I will collectively name them Blandy Blanderson:

Blandy has a problem. It is the worst problem of anyone ever.
I try to help, either though giving advice, or giving them assistance. I’ve moved furniture on a Sunday evening when Blandy was being kicked out of an apartment, I’ve waxed dolphin armpits (flipper pits?), and I’ve even lent Blandy money so that the Auckland Auk Ark Cartel wouldn’t break his leg.
Even if the initial problem is solved, Blandy will then have another problem.
I try to help. The next problem is solved. I’m never going to do dentistry on a dolphin again, let me tell you.
Blandy then comes up with problem number three.
I decide that Caller I.D. is worth every penny.

If I Photoshopped® myself a dentistry license, would that a doctored image?

I had finally figured out that Blandy didn’t want the problem to be solved. And I realized that there would always be a problem. Blandy was in love with the problem.

This was new to me. I have always had a sunny disposition – one of my Professors in college always said, “Keep smiling, John.” That’s why it took me so long to understand Blandy. Why would anyone want to be sad?

I couldn’t understand it, so I observed it.

I noticed that whenever I helped Blandy, especially if my help solved the “problem of the day”, Blandy would never, ever say “Thank you.” Why would you thank someone who took away the problem you secretly loved?

I can only speculate the causes of Blandy’s behavior:

If Blandy could blame someone else, then they weren’t responsible for their situation. Someone or something else was responsible. They could live their life blaming others.
How could Blandy get attention? Having problems got people to pay attention.
By having problems, Blandy could get sympathy from others. Without problems, what would start the sympathy flowing from others?

I’m sure that after I stopped helping, I became yet another one of the long list of Blandy’s problems. “Oh, Wilder, he’s so lucky and fortunate, but he never helps anyone else.”

Dracula returned a mirror to the local Wal-Mart®. When they asked him why, he said, “I can’t see my self using it.”

In one sense, Blandy’s behavior is vampirism. Blandy takes a personal tragedy and exploits it so he can get fun and prizes and emotion from others. The bonus for people playing along at home is that Blandy can also shield a fragile psyche from the consequences of his actions.

But wait, don’t people have real problems? Don’t people really need help sometimes?

Certainly.

I recall one time calling up a friend and saying only, “Bar. Now.” It was noon. It was an awful day. He picked me up in 20 minutes, and he got me home safely later that night, even though it took more than a little while to work myself out of the problem.

There are times that people have streaks of bad luck. I can recall once when I was on such a streak. I called my friends for help. They did. But I noticed that the longer I had my problem, the less one particular friend was interested in talking about it.

That’s when I realized: by staying negative on a topic and not owning it and putting it behind me, I was starting to turn into Blandy. That was my signal that it was time to put the problem behind me and stop complaining.

Even Liberals aren’t safe you see; the Left always eats itself, yippee!

Perhaps the biggest takeaway in learning to deal with my problems is that I own my attitude – no one else does. If something bad happens, well, I could spend every moment of my life being mad at the situation. Does the situation care?

No.

Heck, I could spend every moment swimming in the salty warm viscous mucus of self-pity. If I do that, all I get is sticky and become the Michael Phelps of victimhood mucus swimming. Maybe Coca-Cola® would sponsor me?

Good things and bad things will happen to me. If my happiness is dependent upon only good things happening to me? I’ll be forever disappointed because bad things happen, too. Tires go flat. Plates break. The Yellowstone volcano erupts.

Know the difference between snot and broccoli? A five-year-old won’t eat broccoli.

The Truth as I’ve seen it so far: if I’m happy on my bad days, I’m going to be ecstatic on my good days.

Do I see many difficulties in the years ahead? Certainly. Does sitting around worrying about them make them go away? Does it make them better?

Nope.

The Blandy Blandersons of this world waltz through it surrounded by a cloud of misery.

I think I’ll skip that.

It’s much more fun being John Wilder. I’ll echo what Claire says: “Be of good cheer.”

Fear, Rats, G. Gordon Liddy And A Machine Gun Bikini

“Hold them back! Do not give in to fear! Stand to your posts! Fight!” – Return of the King

I can jump higher than any fence. Fences don’t jump very well.

When The Mrs. and I were newly married, and before the stork brought The Boy, The Mrs. and I had time to just do, well, whatever. That often involved driving, and driving in that involved radio. We listened, mainly, to talk radio. We had to, because we had been banned from a gas station for listening to a song by The Who too loudly.

I guess we won’t get fueled again.

One day we were listening to the G. Gordon Liddy show. For those of you who don’t know, Liddy was sent to prison as part of the Watergate break in during the Nixon era. If I had just one word to describe Liddy, it would be intense. I hear that Liddy was doing five hundred sit ups a day, but had to stop – he couldn’t take the ab use.

In particular, I remember one story of Liddy’s very vividly. The dialogue below isn’t exact (this was over 20 years ago and I slept at least once since then) but it’s pretty close:

“When I was younger, I had a particular fear of rats. It was a very, very strong fear. I didn’t want to be afraid of rats, but I was. So, to get rid of the fear, I killed one, cooked it, and ate it. I was never afraid of rats again.”

If a relative passes away, you can get a free Starbucks®. It’s your mourning coffee.

See? Intense. Also the kind of thing that made me glad that Liddy wasn’t afraid of me, since I have no idea if I’m good with ketchup.

On one hand, that level of behavior is bordering on insane. On the other, it showed an amazing amount of self-awareness. If Liddy’s goal was to go through life without fear, facing it was certainly the way to overcome it, although I’ll say the number of times I’ve come face to face with rats is exactly zero. If that’s your top fear, you’ve gotten rid of most common fears.

I’ve related in the past how when climbing a really tall mountain I reached a ridge and looked down over, expecting that there was no way it could be as steep as what I had just climbed. I was wrong. Sheer cliff. I was looking down very far.

Several mountain climbers caught the ‘Rona but didn’t give it to anyone. Scalers aren’t vectors.

I never had vertigo before, in fact I never had much of a fear of height at all. But in that moment, I developed it. From then on, whenever I could find a tall spot to stand on and look down, I would. And I’d stay there until the vertigo went away.

It was a lot harder than just killing and eating the cliff. It also took a few months, but the vertigo went away. It’s mostly vertigone now, though I will admit that sometimes I get a chill when I watch Internet videos of people doing stupid stuff on very tall buildings. Most of the videos seem to come from Russia, for whatever reason. I’m betting it’s vodka, but it could also be . . . no, it’s vodka.

Bad pun? Check. Bikini? Check. Machine gun? Check. Russian hat? Check.

Not all fear is bad, and not all fear is debilitating. A lot of Evil comes from fear. I used to think that all Evil came from fear, but that’s certainly not correct (Three Kinds Of Evil).

But a lot of Evil does come from fear. Why? Fear is fuel for Evil:

Fear leads to cowardice.
Fear leads to deceit.
Fear leads to anger.
Fear leads to hate. (Quote about the Dark Side®, there may be here.)
Fear leads to regret.

Cowardice might be the worst, though.

The reason is that cowardice is, at the root, a betrayal. First, a betrayal of internal values. Second, a betrayal outwards. A perfect (but small) example is someone who is afraid of the consequences of disappointing a customer. That leads to a lie to the customer. Which leads to another lie, which will eventually end up with a very angry customer.

The Mrs. and I started our relationship with a strict “no lies” policy. That’s why The Mrs. never asks me, “Do these pants make my butt look big?” She knows I’ll tell her the truth.

“The pants? No, the pants don’t make your butt look big.”

It was half an hour outside of Bakersfield when the catnip began to take hold.

Fear is natural. A healthy respect for fires and firearms is a good thing. But when any single fear? That fear has to be confronted.

It has to be killed and eaten. It can change the world. Say, if you were afraid of undercooked bat . . . .

Purpose, Virtue, Starlets, And Inexplicable Comments About Italy

“I disagree with what you said about the underlying theme of chapter eight in this book. It’s really not about man’s struggle with double-sided tape. It’s a metaphor for the Mesopotamian social hierarchy during the Bronze Age.” – Homestarrunner

The easiest way to get gold, silver, and bronze Olympic medals? Kleptomania.

One theme I keep returning to in this blog is purpose. I have a friend (you’re shocked, I know) and we talk from time to time. One observation that he’s made is that they’ve done studies of people who have won medals in competitions like the Olympics®. You’d think that the person who was happiest was the person who won gold.

It’s not. It’s not the person who won silver, either.

It’s the person who won bronze.

Third place? Well, they know it wasn’t a fluke that they didn’t win. There is that “second place” guy who pops that illusion bubble. But they made it to the big show, and, heck, they’re third. Not bad!

Bronze is the Libertarian Party of medals.

The person who wins silver is usually very, very unhappy. Why? Every minute of the day they have to wonder:

What if I had worked just a little harder each day?
What if I had listened to my coach?
What if I hadn’t spent the night before the Olympic© finals at the strip club drinking tequila shooters with Crystal and Svetlana?

Little things like that begin to nag at them. Plus they get Brady Cake:

Tom Brady is so old . . . he won his first Super Bowl® while the world was still in Standard Definition.

So, gold medal winners should be happy, right?

Some really aren’t happy. They’ve climbed the mountain. They’ve spent, in some cases, tens of thousands of hours in practice at the highest level. They’ve skipped going to parties when others were having fun. They lived, in some cases, like monks to climb to the greatest levels of human performance.

Some of them get there and ask . . .

Is this all there is?

Those folks who ask that question were working for the wrong purpose. Their idea wasn’t to be the World PEZ® Flicking Champion, it was someone else’s idea.

So they went with it.

Don’t say this three times fast.

You can see those folks, especially a few years after the Olympics®. They’re the ones that are on the third DUI or are the 4’6” gymnast that looks like they’ve swallowed a refrigerator. Which, I will say, does make tumbling easier. If you call rolling “tumbling.” Meghan McCain does, especially if it’s toward a buffet.

So, what about those people who win a gold medal and are just fine? What’s different?

They have purpose. Their sport was only a part of their purpose, and was only a part of what drove them. They are centered, and the biggest part of their purpose isn’t achievement. Achievement is a byproduct.

The folks who win and don’t self-destruct have a purpose, and a purpose rooted in virtue.

To be clear, very, very, very clear:

Virtue does not guarantee victory. At all.

Virtue (and a purpose rooted in virtue) just makes victory bearable.

Why do so many early twentysomethings mentally implode when they achieve fame and stardom and immense wealth? That’s an easy question – they find themselves in a world with no real restraints. The real question is why don’t more starlets become headlines? I’m pretty sure Miley Cyrus isn’t in a good mental place.

In Europe, she’s known as Kilometery Cyrus.

In one respect, not being wealthy and famous is a great substitute for willpower: you can’t end up dead in a hotel room in Thailand surrounded by heroin, empty take-out boxes of food, bottles of Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum, and vats of industrial-strength skin cream if you have to get to your steady job.

A mortgage and car payments have probably saved a lot of dads uncomfortable phone calls from the Italian Government as to why their 22-year-old was found “improving” the Sistine Chapel painting. Thankfully, back then they charged the fines in something called “lira”, which is just like money but is instead made of colorful Christmas wrapping paper.

An aside, things to trust Italians on:

Food.
Wine.
Car body design.

Things not to trust Italians on:

Anything you need tomorrow.
Anything electronic or electric.
Anything where the oil or engine coolant is supposed to stay on the inside.
Anything remotely resembling fiscal discipline.

Italians are great at soccer – you change sides halfway through.

And, apparently, never trust John Wilder to wander off on a tangent on a Friday post. I’ll get back to virtue and purpose, and promise not to wander too far again this post.

I’ve written several posts about Virtue. It’s been a common theme. Here are a few:

Kardashians, Hairy Bikinis, Elvis, Wealth, and Virtue

Roman Virtues and Western Civilization, Complete with Monty Python

Ben Franklin and his Thirteen Virtues

Why Character Just Might Be A Better Indicator Of Marriage Stability Than What Her Butt Looks Like

Regrets? Don’t Regret Anything, Unless You Want Me To Slap You When You Are Old.

So, have a purpose. Live your virtue. And when you have high achievement, when you win the gold, when you achieve amazing business success? You’re ready to deal with it.

I’ve heard of a village in Africa where they’re dealing with a drought and thirst. I hope they “Get Well Soon.”

But let’s say that you don’t win the gold. You don’t have amazing business success. Virtue allows you to be ready to deal with that, too.

Or you could just win a bronze medal and have a mortgage?

Nah, go for the virtue. You’ll eventually pay the mortgage off.