Significance – Page 4 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Space Between The Words

“Well, I don’t care if it was some dork in a costume. For one brief moment, I felt the heartbeat of creation, and it was one with my own.” – Futurama

I love my step ladder, but it’ll never be my real ladder.

It was March of 2005. I remember it fairly well. It was when we were living in Alaska. The move had been a big risk for The Mrs. and I – moving north across the better part of a continent for work. I was fortunate to have a good boss and good co-workers.

It was there that I had what I would normally call an epiphany, but epiphany seems too strong. A realization? Maybe. Regardless, to me, it seemed profound.

The Space Between The Words . . . it was a throwaway line by a guest on a radio show that The Mrs. and I were listening to on KFBX, the local AM station. But sometimes a phrase sticks with you, and this one stuck with me like the phrase “floozy crotch snout” sticks to Kamala Harris.

Or am I the only one who calls her that?

Yup, real quote. Her real words are better than almost any meme.

Regardless . . . The Space Between The Words. It seemed as insignificant as Hunter Biden’s willpower until in that hypnogogic state between wakefulness and sleep I thought about it . . . The Space Between The Words.

What exists there, in The Space Between The Words?

My realization was that The Space Between The Words isn’t made of silence. It is far from that dead and sterile nothingness that silence implies.

My HVAC guy sure has his ducts in a row.

For me, that space is infinity. It is the engine of creation itself.

I wrote “The Space Between The Words” down on a piece of Post-It® note and taped it to my computer monitor. I still have that piece of now-faded pale yellow paper stuck in a book I carry with me every day. To me, it is a touchstone and a personal reminder.

Why does it matter to me?

When I am talking, (or doing public speaking, which I do 10,000% more often than I want to do and potentially 20,000% more than the audience wants me to do) if I ever get flustered, I can just stop. I can pause. I realize that I can tap into The Space Between The Words, that creative power that allows me to choose whichever of the thousands of words I know as the very next one. I get to choose that next phrase. I get to choose the way the conversation can go. I get to create the possibilities with only the choice of my words.

The Space Between The Words is crucial.

If I choose well, I can turn a simple conversation into something meaningful. One of the powers of words is that, when applied correctly, is that they can become something transformative. A simple conversation can change a person’s life forever. Especially if it’s on tape – just ask Richard Nixon.

My buddy and I got a huge contract to make toy vampires. There’s only two of us – I have to make every second Count.

The choice of words is, as I mentioned before, the power of creation. I don’t claim to own that power. Again, the word I would use isn’t that I came up with the idea or invented the concept I’m describing now. I just discovered something that I’m sure many others before me knew was there, just like I discovered that someone was keeping a list of all of my jokes in a dad-o-base.

I won’t claim to be a great or charismatic public speaker. I’ve had my moments. But I do know that I’ve changed at least one or two lives through things that I have said, and I do know that I’ve said more of what I mean with greater clarity when I allowed The Space Between The Words to guide me.

I bet no one expected that meme.

Likewise, when I write, I don’t claim to be a great writer. I do, however (when it’s not 3am!) try to carefully edit what I write so that it has the meaning I want to share. Sometimes I don’t get there. Sometimes, when writing one of these posts, the content takes a sharp turn, and I let it run. I know that the full idea I was trying to get out will get born, eventually.

Or it won’t.

That’s the beauty of The Space Between The Words. Even when writing, it is there.

And, to a certain extent, it has changed me. I’m no longer afraid to stop, to pause, and to collect. In one sense, that vast galaxy of creation that I feel I’ve tapped into is something much greater than I will ever be, especially if I keep losing weight.

I wonder what other planet worms exist on . . . otherwise why do we call them Earth worms?

In a religious sense, it feels like I’ve come into a brief (and unworthy!) contact with Logos – a deep universal well that I can only see dimly. Not Legos®, but Logos. Legos™ just hurt your foot when you walk down the hall in the dark.

In my experience, The Space Between The Words contains wisdom. The Space Between the Words contains creation. The Space Between The Words contains . . . redemption.

Listen for it – I assure you there is no silence there between the words. There is no self-doubt. It is calm. It is patient. It is Good. And, for me, it has certainly been worth keeping that Post-It® note around.

Warning: next week we’ll take a darker turn, probably all week, if not longer. I’ll still try to be the “Mary Poppins of Doom” and interject humor and a smile where I can, but realize – there are many twists and turns ahead, and probabilities leading to a dark future are rapidly coalescing.

The Modern World Part IV: What To Do?

“Would you say I have a plethora of piñatas?” – Three Amigos

He was also the first person to use CTRL-C.

So, I promised three blogs on the Modern World. They are here – The Modern World Part I: Health And Strippers, The Modern World Part II: Wages, Subscriptions, and Dating, and The Modern World Part III: You Exist To Be Farmed. As I sat preparing to do the blog tonight, I realized there was one more post to provide the capstone to the series, which I present in this post.

How do we deal with modernity outside of moving to a cabin in Montana?

Listen, despite the name, Ted made more than one bomb.

First, if you’re not healthy, get healthy. That’s actually horribly simple to do for most people.

Limit the amount of food that you eat – we’re provided with a plethora of food choices daily. Most of it I don’t need. As I’ve railed for years, most (not all!) people in the United States could go without food for two weeks with no ill effects, and many would find the experience a positive, not a negative. Here is some sound advice I’ve incorporated into my life: you can’t outrun your teeth. But I can outrun most Leftists – you can tell they like carbs.
Sure donuts (in metric, doughnuts) are good. Avoid them. Will one a week kill you? No. Will one a day? Maybe. Same with chips. I had a “snack size” bag of chips two weeks ago. Since I’ve been eating well, they made me feel queasy. Same with donuts. When your diet is good meat and real vegetables, donuts and that gooey cheese they serve with movie-theater nachos taste like . . . a chemical product. Which they are. Corollary: don’t let your teeth dig your grave. I wouldn’t want to ruin the gravedigger’s hole career.
Pick foods that are as close as possible to actual food. If you’re gonna have a chicken sandwich at McDonalds®, pick the one that’s made out of actual chicken rather than some sort of processed chicken stuff. A baked potato or French fries? Baked, thank you. Seriously, once I stopped eating crap, crap tasted like crap. If it has vegetable oil or a list of ingredients longer than, say, seven, once a week. At most. Heck, I even had a kid’s meal at McDonalds today. It sure made his parents mad.
The food pyramid is even poor geometry – heck, I read Pharaoh used slaves to build his. Bricks might have been easier? Regardless, real fats and meat (butter, a well-marbled ribeye) are good for you and make you feel full. Flour spikes your insulin and all the breads (except the ones I make from grinding the bones of door-to-door salesmen) are made from flour. Insulin tells your body to store fat. Do the math.
Get exercise. It’s good for you. If nothing else, walk. If you can’t walk, undulate like a snake on a baby oil-covered shower curtain. One thing I’ve seen in life – when a man stops walking, death isn’t far away. Keep moving. Even if your legs are weak, you can still do diddly-squats.
Avoid it, except, say, once a week. Maybe. I’ll have an entire post on that at some point.

The other day I said, “Alexa, turn on CNN®. I want to hear the news.” Alexa responded, “I’m sorry Lord John, you’ll have to pick one or the other.”

Second, feed your mind.

Feed your mind like you feed your body. Go to the source, and check everyone (even me!) and determine what isn’t Truth. Journalists are now being taught in journalism school (it’s like real school, but they use pictures and coloring books) that being an advocate for the globalist, Leftist viewpoint is the point of news reporting. Understand that virtually every news story you are reading today in mainstream media is written by a rich kid who wasn’t smart enough to go to law school and believes that lying to you is ethical, as long as it advances The Agenda and The Narrative. And sometimes they change The Agenda and The Narrative in less than a week. Don’t believe me? Ask Psaki about COVID.
The media lies. But I repeat myself. “Truth is the first casualty of war,” quoted Ethel Annakin-Skywalker in 1915 according to something I read on the Internet. Remember that “nurse” who told Congress of Iraqi soldiers tossing infants out when they took incubators from hospitals when Iraq invaded Kuwait? She was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Look it up. Before you believe a single thing coming from Ukraine, look it up, and understand this: your emotion is the aim. Heck, I hear manipulating your emotions is all the rage.
Propaganda: even when you’re aware of propaganda, it’s effective.
Look for things that make you happy. When I go on the Internet, sometimes (when I’m in a growly mood) I look for things that will make me mad. There’s plenty. Twitter® is a sea of it. Most social media is a sea of it. That’s why (except for when writing for research purposes) I avoid it like the plague – remember, all work and no plague makes for an entirely different 13^th
For 95% of people, there is no reason you can’t be happy in this moment, right now. There are people in this world who have serious problems, but for the most part you’re really not one of them. Even if you are, why would you let those problems rob you from a moment of being happy? There is a time to grieve, a time to be sad. When you let it rule your life, you’re a victim. Stop it. Don’t make me come over there and make you.

I brought a grenade to a water balloon fight once. It did level the playing field.

Then, there’s marriage. These rules aren’t for 1970, (though they would have worked) but more for today – the world has moved on. It is far harder today to find a good match than it was even when I met The Mrs. two decades ago. If you’re happily married, ignore and skip to the next section.

If you’re not married, take care in picking your partner. A lot of care. A bad match will last just as long as a good one (if you have kids) and be amazingly costly. And never pick woman obsessed with Star Wars® – divorce is strong with this one.
Avoid dating apps. They’re really just casual sex apps. And never go casual. Get competitive.
If you’re a young dude (below 35), try to get a wife who is no older than 20-24 years old and marry for values and character. Why? Nothing good happens with a single woman in their mid to late 20s now.
If you’re a young woman, find a quality guy who has values and character, and stay a virgin until marriage.
If you’re a young person, especially a man, avoid marrying a spouse whose parents divorced when they were young (0-16). Understand their family and their values. Understand that the values on display with the parents are another clue to how your future spouse will be.
If you’re a man, don’t let your wife’s work interfere with raising the kids and keeping the house. Raising kids with decent values are more important than most luxuries.
And while we’re there about kids, understand this – the move to turn government schools into an indoctrination center has never been higher. Which values do you want your children to have? Yours? The governments?

But I hear it’s at a pretty low interest rate. Heck, I think we could refinance New Zealand to make the balloon payment.

What about economics?

Avoid debt to the extent possible. Never borrow to buy a car, unless it’s the only choice. Never buy a new car unless your net worth is over $1 million or a company you own is paying for it. Heck, I hear the best way to get back on your feet is to miss two car payments . . . .
I have one. I could pay it off in cash. Why could I pay it off? Because I never borrow to buy cars (since 1997). I hear Spongebob® isn’t paying his mortgage – his house is underwater.
Understand that luxury has multiple costs: first, there’s the cash that has to be paid every month. Second, there’s a moral cost. Just like a donut, occasional luxury won’t dull the character. But every month, and forever? It robs bank accounts and robs the most precious thing that any person controls – their time.
Video games are a luxury. If a person spends 20 hours a week playing video games, what else could have been done with their time? Imagine if Hemingway spent his spare time playing Grand Theft Auto instead of sitting under the Catalan Sun drinking wine from a bota and watching bullfights? GTA is a life stealer. And for Ernest, so was a shotgun.
Why live in a big city? The high housing cost? The crush of incessant humanity surrounding you? Oh, yeah, you can get Thai food at 3am.
Realize the dollar is going to die. The United States prints them, and then other people take them. When Jen P-saki said that this was “Putin’s Inflation” I asked the question: “When did Putin take control of our money supply and then started printing trillions of dollars?” If you salted away a bit of gold and silver (and lead, too) the best case is that you could give it to your kids when you pass on. The worst case? Well, between you and me, silver and gold might be the biggest bargains of the century in 2022 (I am NOT an investment advisor).
Realize that in the future, there is a high degree of probability that having “divergent” opinions to The Narrative will result in cutting people off from their money – it has already happened in Canada. You may not believe it, but it’s Tru-deau. How will you prepare for that?
You have a year’s worth of food, right? You buy a little extra each month and salt it away? It’s a lot easier to do when the shelves are full, and when shortages hit you’re not part of the problem – you’re part of the solution because you won’t be adding to the panic. It’s not hoarding if you bought it before the panic hits.

I heard he was sad later in life. He had a Kipling depression.

The Modern World thinks that this is a new scenario. It isn’t. Kipling wrote about this many, many years ago in 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!

Hedonism Leads To Nihilism

“Shut up and pay attention to me, Bender. Look, I love life and its pleasures as much as anyone here, except perhaps you, Hedonism Bot. But we need to be shut off. Especially you, Hedonism Bot.” – Futurama

One thing I learned in high school – always date homeless girls. It doesn’t matter where you drop them off.

I know that lots of people had it rough in high school, that they felt that they didn’t fit in. They felt as awkward at Whoopi Goldberg at a bris.

Not me.

I’m not bragging, really, it was just how it worked out for me. I had a great time in class, a great time in athletics, had great friends from nearly every walk of life. Heck, I even had hair back then.

I was also really lucky with the ladies. Thankfully there were no small number of girls with daddy issues in town, a drive-in movie theater, and a pizza place. Of course the pizza was not entirely necessary for a seduction, but a guy gets hungry. Seducing girls burns up calories.

Let’s add in the last element of hedonism: beer.

There was a bar where if you had the $5 cover charge, you were of drinking age as long as you weren’t stupid enough to wear your letter jacket. I should know, because I got in when I was 16. I went in with my friend’s (who was of drinking age) license. He was four inches taller than me and was probably sixty pounds less than me. I wasn’t fat, he was just skinny enough to fit down the barrel of a 12 gauge and not touch the sides.

I dived off the stage at an Oktoberfest party. I went krautsurfing.

Yes. At 16 I thought it was a good idea to sneak into a bar holding the license of someone who resembled me only in the fact that they were another human male who had blonde hair and blue eyes and in only those ways. And that same person who barely resembled me was also walking in with me.

I had no idea what sort of ludicrous story I would tell them if they asked. “Oh, sorry, I thought I was another person?” No. “Oh, when I was at his place I accidentally put his license in my wallet and hid my own license?” Hmm. “I was fighting with my multiple personality disorder and physically split into two people?”

Thankfully, the place was nearly empty and the bouncer never asked me for an ID, just took my $5 and stamped my hand.

I saw a drunk caveman walk home once. It was a meanderthal.

Apparently, I made enough of an impression that night that they never once carded me, ever. After one night, I was a regular and knew most of the people that worked there by name. Not so amazingly, about half the people from my social circle made the same discovery, and on a random Friday night, it wasn’t unusual to see a dozen juniors and seniors in the place. Of course in 2022, the Safety Police would probably summarily execute the owner and the staff, but this was a kinder, gentler, drunker time.

It was life on easy mode. Plentiful girls with dubious morals. Cheap beer. Great success in nearly everything I tried. I’m not saying I peaked in high school, no. Heck, I’m not even sure that I’ve peaked yet. But it was easy.

One thing I did was try to connect emotionally with those frolicsome fräuleins of my hometown. That seemed (in many cases) like a lost cause. One night while sitting under the moonlight in the Wonderful Wildermobile, between hickie sessions, I looked up at the Moon and said to my girlfriend at the time, “It’s amazing to look up at that, and think how much smaller it is than the Sun. How much smaller the Earth is than the Sun. It’s a fantastic Universe we live in.”

Her response? “The Sun is larger than the Earth? No way!!!!”

Okay, our relationship was over pretty shortly after that comment. And that also changed me.

I bet my old girlfriend thinks Starbucks® is a currency that aliens use.

I had an epiphany. I was living a life of hedonism. And although I had a life of pleasure, there seemed to be a lack of meaning. I had everything that every guy on the football team could desire.

But I felt empty. Not dead inside, but empty. I felt that the things I was doing were, while extremely physically pleasing, were devoid of meaning. It was like being Hunter Biden without being a Biden, smoking crack (or meth), and getting money from anonymous donors for my retarded attempts at painting to try to influence my dad.

I’m betting that this is the first time Scotty and scotch were used to explain nihilism.

The feeling of empty was a tough one. It helped me see how someone can go from that feeling of empty in the face of pleasure to a feeling of nihilism. I looked up the definition of nihilism, and came up with more definitions than I had girlfriends in high school.

I’ll give this one, which I found after looking at a dozen (many contradictory) definitions on the Internet: “as the view that nothing we do, nothing we create, nothing we love, has any meaning or value whatsoever.” That is the one that mirrors the emptiness that I felt.

It is the inherent danger of a life that borders on the libertine. What matters if life is so easy?

Thankfully, I’m glad I caught that as early as I did. I can see easily of how falling down the rabbit hole of hedonism could lead to nihilism. As I got older, I realized that, whatever definition used, nihilism is the worst of philosophies, and the worst of the human condition.

Even though the Universe is large, and there have been countless years since the start, and, perhaps, countless years until the heat death of the Universe, we matter.

What happens in this world does matter. We have meaning. And fighting the good fight for Good over Evil does matter. Life and meaning are built not in the pleasure, but in the struggle to be better, to do more, to be more, and to add value because we were here. Those are the stories worth telling – they are the ones that will be sung around campfires in 100 years.

I hope Aaron Burr didn’t name his son Tim. It would have been awkward to look for him if he ever got lost in a forest.

Never give up, because what we do here matters. What you do here has value. Even as we stare at the vastness of a Universe that no one can comprehend, it matters that we are here. And it matters what we create.

And our love? It perhaps has the greatest value of all, though it is rarely found in the bottom of a glass of beer, unless there’s a live band.

Did I mention they had live bands at the bar?

How I’m Doing My Resolutions, Complete With Rocky II

“Well, you should have had him! Now don’t let up on this man. This man is dangerous!” – Rocky II

After he got the “Eye of the Tiger” he got a lifetime ban from the zoo.

It’s the new year, so, I have to buy a new calendar. Objective achieved!

When I was a young kid, say eight or nine, there were several things that I never quite understood. The first was the impact of foreign debt flow on monetary policy. The second was why people got so excited about changing from one year to another.

At best, New Year’s Eve seemed a useless waste of an evening. My parents would occasionally go to see friends, occasionally they’d host the party at our house. They’d talk, and drink, and generally have a good time. My interest in hanging out with them approached zero. Oh, sure, they were all nice, but the “got your nose” game loses its luster past the age of, oh, one.

What’s the sentence for shoplifting a calendar? 12 months.

Honestly, I really thought the concept was overblown until 2020 – I couldn’t wait to see that year in the rearview mirror. 2021? Potentially worse than 2020, and I’m glad it’s gone, too. I’m (honestly) not very optimistic about 2022.

But one thing I have learned is that I can use the concept of a new year, as stupid as it is, for me.

The nice thing about most Christmas/New Year holidays is that I have time off – time to think, time to get back with the family, and time to reassess:

who I am,

Am I following the virtues that I value? Am I being honest and truthful? Am I doing the things that provide the most value? Is my driver’s license data correct, I mean, with the exception of the weight because everybody lies about that?

what I am, and

Am I doing the things out in the world that add the most value? Am I changing the world for the better? What are the things I need to stop doing? What am I intentionally avoiding? Did I leave the waffle iron on?

where I’m going.

Am I on a path, or am I just wandering? What is keeping me off the path? Do I really have to wear clothes outside like the court order says?

Drinking alcohol doesn’t solve my problems. On the other hand, neither does drinking milk . . . .

I do this annually now. I find that one of the best places to think about these things is in the hypnagogic state where I’m not awake or asleep. I’ve had some very good insights during those moments. It’s (for me) a great place to find uncomfortable truth – things I really already knew, but that I was hiding from myself. Those insights can be utterly lost in the clutter of everyday life and the constant actions and demands.

Some of the past successes from these New Year reviews have been amazing for me, lost weight, and bad habits quit among them. I’ve used those times to understand me better.

I used to be a taxi driver, but the riders were boring. About all they said was, “Hey, I don’t live in the woods . . .”

I’d give you a list of what I’m doing/changing/quitting this year, but I’m not sure it’s at all interesting. My life is mainly a fairly boring one and except for the “acquire a chimpanzee named Bear and ride around the United States having wacky adventures” most of the items on the list are probably all items on millions of lists belonging to other people.

What happens next, though, is action. Thinking is one part, but once the decisions have been made, life comes down to taking action and making sure that I have sufficient discipline to do what I’m looking to do.

With small goals, discipline is easy. It’s not changing habits and patterns that I have built into my life over the course of decades. Changing habits that have been around since I was 18? Those are far harder. For those levels of issues, the only real solution is fanatical discipline, repeated and sustained. Muscle isn’t built on one good day at the gym. Muscle is built on hours of effort and pain.

And if the unvaxxed are a danger to the vaxxed, aren’t I putting myself in danger from the unvaxxed if I get the vaxx?

For me, the best goals are based on real, hard data. When lifting weights, the iron never lies. Choosing those things that I can describe with absolutes is crucial. “I will not ever . . .” is much better than “I’ll try not to . . .” When I combine “I will not ever” with a value? I have a goal that is stark and sleek, and one I can’t fudge.

I want this to be about the change I want versus me. I want it to be measured, clearly, in absolutes. I want the absolutes to be in my control. If I say, “I will never kill a zebra with a Ronco® Pocket Fisherman™, that’s something that’s absolute, even if that stupid zebra had it coming.

One example of a hard goal is dealing with The Mrs. When we met and dating got serious, I told her simply, “I will never lie to you.” I haven’t. It’s simple.

It’s absolute.

I also don’t have to revisit that every year. Since we’ve been married, that’s been a promise I’ve kept.

I think these absolutes scare the Left. They like to deal in degrees and shades of grey. A fudge here. A cheat there. A value subverted, and then (in many cases) a value inverted.

The last part is about failure.

Just because I start a change, doesn’t mean I have to follow through. I’m allowed to change my goal, especially as my knowledge changes. Heck, I could even be getting the opposite effects from a change that I anticipated. Time to reassess.

The last part is failure. Just because I decided to do something and failed doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try again. It doesn’t mean that I should be afraid of trying again. In many cases, (like Rocky II, for instance) the difference between failure and victory is just getting up one more time.

Also, with the Biden administration, failure is not an option. It comes with the basic package.

Finally, I’ve learned to not fear success. What happens if I succeed with all of my goals? That has happened, and more than once.

Add more goals. I’m breathing. I’m not done. And I’m not perfect. More discipline, and getting up one more time? That’s the key.

I still think celebrating a new year is silly, but I’m going to use it this time. With enough discipline, 2022? That could be, for me, the best year ever. Heck, might as well put the new calendar to good use . . . .

Dead Romans Agree: Don’t Let The Small Stuff Bother You

“Happy premise number three: even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won’t.” – Bowfinger

I hear that Marcus’ wife was a perfect X.

Mike, the proprietor over at Cold Fury (LINK), is going through a very difficult time. Big Country has set up a gofundme for him here (LINK). Much more information at the gofundme site.

Now to the post . . .

I woke up this morning just irritated. No particular reason. In all fairness, it was entirely an internal feeling, and I imagine most people never noticed. I was nice and polite to nearly everyone I interacted with. And why not? None of them were my ex-wife.

I wasn’t irritated with them, I was just irritated. There were no issues. I wasn’t in pain. No one around me was in particular trouble. Thankfully I’m not an electrician – people might dislike me not being positive at work.

As I thought about it, what was irritating me? I couldn’t quite put a finger on it. There was no rational reason at all. During a conversation tonight, though, I had a reason to quote Marcus Aurelius:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Not mine, but I couldn’t resist.

Sure, Marcus Aurelius’ kid was an utter tool, but when you become Caesar at 18, well, it might tend to go to your head – think of Commodus as Miley Cyrus, 180 A.D. Back to Marcus, though. Marcus genuinely did his best for the Roman Empire. As near as I can tell, Marcus was a pretty good leader.

And that little quote above wasn’t written for you and me. It was written for Marcus, by Marcus. He was reminding himself that the external things in the world had only the power he gave them. He was giving himself a pep talk.

Marcus Aurelius was right. In the conversation I was having tonight, the person was very upset (most of you don’t know the person, though specific readers in California and Indiana do – hi guys!). The reason she was upset? Nothing rational at all. So I quoted a dead Roman emperor.

Who says that Stoics aren’t compassionate?

Did it help? I don’t know. I’m beginning to see a pattern where crying people don’t stop crying when I quote dead Roman emperors. I’m beginning to see why the kids call The Mrs. when they want actual human sympathy.

My irritation (I think) came from the same place. Nowhere. I felt fine (except for my right knee which is much better now) and the day generally went fairly well. I realized that the advice I gave was meant just as much for me as for the person I was talking to. I was just being irritated because I let myself be irritated.

Once I was done and realized I didn’t have to be irritated?

My hands disappeared today, but I can’t really point my finger at what caused it.

My irritation disappeared. I know that the way I feel is (generally) my choice. I can choose how I feel: salty, Wednesday, or even drunk. The only reason that I’m not happy every morning is if I choose not to be happy on some particular morning.

Are there actual reasons why I might have different feelings? Sure. If I had mental problems (other than an unseemly affection for awful jokes and a desire to consciously be able to make my fingernails grow absurdly fast) that might be a reason to have a feeling other than what I choose.

Don’t know. I do know that there are people with actual mental problems. There’s proof: some people actually voted for Biden. But, going back to Marcus, that’s not external. Being sick or goofy enough to vote for Biden isn’t external.

Marcus Aurelius might have voted for Biden – Marcus is dead, after all.

Physical pain also is an internal source that can destroy moods. I once (for a few months) had sciatica. I was irritable enough every morning to chew nails and spit bullets. Then I discovered that I could work out for a few hours on an elliptical trainer to make the pain go away. A week later?

I was fine. My irritation vanished along with my sciatica, never (hopefully) to return.

That was nearly 15 years ago. Sure, I’ve felt pain since then, but most of it was the good pain from a hard workout. Heck, most days the worst thing that happened was the crisp morning breeze running through my back hair.

My mood depends on me. My attitude depends on me.

Does that mean that I can’t see the actual situation we’re in? Of course not. I see a nation tearing itself apart. It’s worse: it’s not just a nation, Western Civilization seems to be happily thrashing about as it marches down a path to extinction.

Is that good?

Of course not.

Does it mean that I should walk around every day being sad?

Of course not. I am doing, I assure you, everything I can think of to stave off that darkness. I mean, those memes won’t make themselves.

Never buy a sculpture of Bonnie Tyler. Every now and then it falls apart.

And I am doing it cheerfully. I laugh every day. I smile because I know that most of the things that I worry about can have no power over me unless I give them that power.

Make your choices, and understand that while you might wake up irritated – it’s your choice if you wish to stay in that mood for a minute or an hour.

Me? I like being happy, so I choose that, even in moments where it might not be appropriate. I might even need to stop high-fiving people at funerals.

So, I got started late typing this after a day I chose to just be irritated. And, I’m going to choose to end now.

With a smile on my face. Go and have a great day. Most of the time, having a great day is just a choice.

Choose wisely.

Recharge Yourself.

“They recharge? I just keep buying new phones.” – House, M.D.

It’s cool everyone in the world charges their phones with an American Bee. Oh, wait, they call it a USB.

Some things just wear me out faster than the inseam of Oprah’s pants.

Thankfully, some things just make me feel as excited as the Autopsy Club at open Mike night.

Things that wear me out are, thankfully, not so common. Besides, if I listed those, I’d just be whining. Besides, it’s a lot more fun to focus on the positive when I can.

Here are a sampling of things that recharge me:

Learning new things.

The older I get, the more I realize that my ironclad knowledge of youth was . . . wrong.

Not virtue, mind you. What is true and virtuous hasn’t changed. The lessons of morality from my youth from parents and grandparents have been constant guides. So, not that.

But how many things were skipped in history? What’s left to learn in science? Amazing amounts. Heck, I was shocked about some of the things I learned about electricity.

That’s one tough cut of meat.

Writing a post that I like.

When I write a post where I felt that the beginning, middle, and end all work and mesh seamlessly together with the bad jokes and memes? I’m in heaven. I hit the “go” button on the software to schedule the post, and then hit the comments. If it’s a particularly late night, that’s the worst, because I’m excited about what I wrote, but it’s two hours before the alarm goes off.

I took my goldfish to the vet. “He’s having seizures.” The vet responded, “He looks fine to me.” “Sure,” I said, “but wait until I get him out of the bowl.”

It’s worth it even though the two most common synonyms for unemployed are “writer” and “blogger”. One thing to note: some of the posts that I personally like the best aren’t the ones that get the most traction. That’s okay. I’m still learning (see the first point).

Teaching someone something new to them.

When I, with ten minutes and a few hundred words, can change the world view of someone, I cherish that moment. It’s all well and good to go through my daily life just doing my thing, but when I have the opportunity to change the way a human mind works and sees the Universe, forever?

That’s the best. Doing my own thing, I’m limited. The surest way to multiply my impact is to share ideas. I’ll die. If the ideas I taught live on and spread after that?

I still win.

Coming home and sitting down in my chair.

I have a chair upstairs. It’s a nice, soft brown chair, next to a coffee table stacked with too many books. I walk in after a day away, pop my book bag on the floor, and ease down into the chair. From there, I can go anywhere. Most often, The Mrs. will curl up on the couch and we’ll talk about the day. Or if she’s not there? I’ll sit and read. Or sit and sleep. Or . . . whatever.

I told my son that if he’s got a paralyzed girlfriend to take her wheelchair if she wanted to break up. She’ll come crawling back.

Getting up and drinking coffee in my chair in the dark morning in an empty house after everyone but me has headed away.

There is something peaceful about sitting in the chair before the chaos of the day begins. I often turn off all of the lights and sit in a still, quiet house, reading about what happened while I slept. I look at my watch and follow the time until it’s time to go.

A crisp autumn day.

Winter is my favorite time of the year because I love the weather, the colder the better. An autumn day is nice, too. The heat of summer has burned off. The potential for a cool autumn day is endless. Work outside? Sure. Open the windows and paint a room? Sure. Weld up the mailbox supports? Can do. An autumn day gives a last look before winter.

Autumn days are filled with infinite possibility. I guess that makes me a Fall Guy. I got that nickname through the school of hard equinox.

One out of our four cats.

We had one cat, and it is an awful cat. Last November, The Mrs. and Pugsley conspired to bring home a second. I was against it. My reasoning was that atheists own more cats than Christians. Pugsley countered that it’s illegal to own Christians.

But about the cat? Sadly, I was wrong. That cat is a pretty good cat. I like it.

The two cats that showed up afterward? I’ll pass, thank you, and they can stay outside unless the apocalypse comes and we need extra flavor for the ramen.

But I like that one cat quite a bit.

I have the reflexes of a cat. Remember, a dead cat is still a cat.

A full Saturday afternoon reading a good book.

A few weeks ago it was cool during the week, but hot on the weekend. I grabbed a book around 9AM and started reading. I read through the morning (stopping for lunch) and then read until I took a nap.

That was nice. I hadn’t done it in years. There’s a magic in getting lost in a world, letting it open up in your mind. One boss of mine said that, “Books are the only way that one human can talk to another through time.” He was right. But I make it a point to never read a braille horror book – I can always feel when something is coming.

Sleeping in on Saturday but still being the first up.

The stillness of the house in the morning brings possibility. What will happen next? Who will the next person to walk down the hall be?

My friend kisses his wife goodbye every morning. The Mrs. asked me, “Why don’t you do that?” It’s a good question, but I don’t even know my friend’s wife that well.

As I look through the list, there’s a pattern: I seek new knowledge so I can share it. I look for stillness so I can create thoughts, and then put them into action. While I love taking action and making things happen in the real world, I like to think that the knowledge I pick up along the way and share might make any action I take look, over time, quite small.

What charges you up?

Time: It’s The Only Thing You Have

“I didn’t invent the time machine to win at gambling. I invented a time machine to travel through time.” – Back to the Future 2

I have two dogs, Rolex® and Timex™. They are watchdogs.

Time.

Of things that have long fascinated me, time is at the top of the list. Even when I was a little kid, time fascinated me.

The idea that time, of all of the physical parameters of the world there was the one that we couldn’t control. Humanity has mastered the power of the atom, at least partially. We haven’t tamed fusion, but we can create it, and have several fewer islands in the Pacific because of it.

Humanity has dammed the largest of rivers, giving us power. We have used technology to shrink the world. The first recorded circumnavigation of the world took 1082 days. Magellan didn’t quite make the whole trip, but he still gets the credit on a technicality.

Now? The International Space Station does an orbit in 90 minutes or so at 17,150 miles per hour, which is nearly as fast as Haitians are entering Texas.

Humanity has conquered the riddle of steel – we’ve made steel buildings that reach upwards into the sky to please Crom. We have conquered climate – people live at the South Pole in perfect comfort, as well as managing to live in Houston without melting into puddles of sweat.

Batman® couldn’t solve the riddle of steel, but he could name the worst riddle: being riddled with bullets.

We can see at night. We can talk, nearly instantly, with people a continent away.

My phone buzzes every time there is motion outside my front door – it’s like having a superpower of sensing where and when there is activity at a distance. Another superpower is being able to access obscure facts anywhere on the planet that can reach a cell signal.

But time remains fixed. It flows only one way. And it is the most subjective of our senses. Even Pugsley notices it: “This summer was so short!”

He’s in high school. That’s when the transition from the endless summers of childhood begin to transform into the fleeting, never-ending carousel of years that is adulthood.

Best thing about being in Antifa® is that you never have to take off work to protest.

I’ve long felt that I understood why this was. Let me give it a shot.

For a newborn, the second day it’s outside and breathing is 50% of its entire life. For a six-year-old, half of their life is three years – much more. It’s not a big percentage, but it’s much smaller than 50%. For a sixteen-year-old, half their life is eight years.

If you’re forty – half your life is twenty years. 1/8 versus 1/20? It’s amazingly different. We don’t perceive life as a line. We’re living inside of it – we compare our lives to the only thing we have . . . our lives. Each day you live is smaller than the last.

But that’s not everything.

As we age, novelty decreases. When we’re young, experiences and knowledge are coming at us so quickly that we are presented with novel (new and unique) information daily. New words. New thoughts. New ideas. That’s why babies keep falling for that stupid “got your nose” thing. They don’t realize that I can reattach it.

Three clowns were eating a cannibal. One clown says, “I think we started this joke wrong.”

Over time, though, novelty decreases, as does the percentage of your life that each day represents. Ever drive a new route somewhere? When I do it, I have to focus my attention. It seems like it takes longer because I’m having to deal with novelty.

I’ve had my “new” laptop nearly seven years. I had my old laptop for longer than that, yet my “new” laptop still seems like it’s temporary.

There are only so many routes I can drive to work, so much novelty that I can find in a daily drive. Even a commute of an hour begins to fade into a brief moment in time if it’s the same commute, day after day.

Work is similar. Over time, we gain experience. Experience shows us how to fix problems (and sometimes how not to fix them). But that experience of taking a solution and modifying it to fix the next problem isn’t as hard as fixing the first problem.

The fact that each day is a smaller portion of my life, combined with the fact that as I get older, the possibility that I see something new dims. I’ve solved a bunch of problems in my life. Finding a new one is . . . difficult.

Life goes faster, day by day for me. Every endless summer day of youth is in my rearview mirror.

And yet . . .

Each day is still 24 hours. I can still use each day and live it with all of the gusto of a 10-year-old fishing for trout after building a tree fort, playing with his dog, and building a model of a Phantom F-4 to dogfight with the MiG 21-PF already hanging from the ceiling.

They did not see that coming.

Even though those 24 hours seem shorter now than at any time in my life, they are relentless in their exact sameness. I get to choose how I spend those moments in my life. I get to choose what I want to produce, and how hard I work to make it happen.

Humanity may never have the ability to crack time – it appears that even today, outside of sands falling from an hourglass, we can only describe time as a fundamental entity, something we measure against.

Does the flow of time vary? Certainly. But only if we’re moving at large fractions of the speed of light or are caught in a huge gravity well, but let’s leave your mother out of this.

Gravity is just a social construct invented by an English Christian to keep you down.

I have come to the conclusion that I will likely never understand what, exactly, time is, outside of this:

Time is all we have – it is what makes up life. We measure our lives in it, because no man can buy an extra hour of life. We have the hours we have. The only difference is what we do with that time.

I mentioned in a previous post that (during the week) I often get by on scant hours of sleep. That’s because I have more things that I want to do in my life than I can fit in a day that’s less than 20 or 22 hours some days.

I choose to try to do more, to try to make use of this time, because each moment is a gift.

Maybe I can settle for that definition of time: a gift. Each moment is a gift.

Don’t beg for more, or live in fear of losing them. Just make each moment count.

Perhaps that’s the secret and precious nature of time. It is the one thing we should never waste, and never wish away.

Fear And The Consent Of The Governed, 2021

“This is a consent form to stick a wire into your brain. It’s important for hospitals to get these signed for procedures that are completely unnecessary.” – House, M.D.

When a dentist makes a mistake, it’s always acci-dental.

What I’ve seen from the Federal government recently is something unusual: fear.

The January 6 demonstration at the Capitol is exhibit A. A group of (mainly) unarmed civilians decided that they’d like to wander over to the Capitol to express their displeasure on what many feel is an election that was largely fraudulent. With the early ballots in California, I guess transvestites can commit mail fraud and male fraud.

Elections are supposed to be the safety valve in a society that has them. You voted, and if it goes your way, great. If it doesn’t, well, we’ll vote harder next time.

In theory, it’s a good system. Elections give the loser the thought that, “if we do better next time, we’ll beat ‘em.” That transfers emotions tied to losing into building a party to win the next time.

That assumes that the election is a fair one. Certainly, there have been elections in the past have been manipulated. There’s a reason that people make jokes about corruption and Chicago politics: over 150 Chicago politicians, employees and contractors have been convicted over the last 50 years. While you might think that Chicago would be dangerous with all of the graft and corruption, my friend says it’s not, and he should know. He’s a tailgunner on a Chicago school bus.

I had a friend who started drinking when the kids finally were back at school. Worst teacher ever.

One of the large benefits of the Electoral College system is putting up a firewall against fraud. Chicago could vote 100% for whatever Democrat was running for president, but the corruption would be isolated because it didn’t change the outcome except for that single state.

2020 was different. An unelected cabal worked to get states to change voting systems so that fraud was easier. They worked to get hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for their objectives. They distorted the public debate. And then they bragged about it (LINK).

For whatever reason, 2020 was the year that they decided that they had to win, whatever the costs, whatever the consequences. They weren’t going to let anything stop them.

There are claims the “no significant voter fraud has ever been found” but I couldn’t find my butt if I never looked for it. And, it really, neither of them have been looked for. The idea that people are too stupid to be able to get an ID to allow them to vote, yet are required to get one to eat in a Burger King® in “post-jab” America is nonsense. Yet, it is the basis of Leftist philosophy: 100% control of the people the Left hates, and 100% acceptance of any conduct from the people the Left mines for votes.

If he gets enough across, he doesn’t even have to manufacture votes!

The childhood meme of “majority rules” isn’t correct, however. The idea of a Constitutional Republic was based on the idea that the majority is really often quite wrong and should be walled off from power like a four-year-old going for a wall outlet with a fork. The rights in the Bill of Rights were built on the idea of restricting the power of both the government and the majority.

Those restrictions were based on experience. The Founders had been through a war to overthrow a government that they felt had overstepped its bounds, and their reaction was one based on keeping all kinds of tyranny at bay.

It was a good idea. The idea of sovereign states was also a winner. It allowed the most control to take place locally, not nationally. Ideally, the Federal government was a weak creation. Of course, good things never last. The Federal government accrued power, but was still kept in check.

When the patriots told jokes, was that star spangled banter?

In part, this was due to the mathematics of violence. An individual American marksman with a Brown Bess rifle was the equal to (and sometimes better than) the typical British soldier or Hessian mercenary. They were, after all, fighting for their country. Couple that with the long supply lines of the British, and the American Revolution was the equivalent of their Afghanistan. Well, at least until they made it to the real Afghanistan.

This pointed out that any government of armed men exists only by the consent of the governed. That was a direct consequence of those mathematics of violence. In one well-documented case, the citizens of Athens, Tennessee took up arms in 1946 to stop an election from being stolen.

They relied on the ballot box.

Nah, just kidding. They brought machine guns and service rifles and threw Molotov cocktails and dynamite at the jail that was holding the ballots to prevent fraud. They won the election, and the fraud was so evident that I believe everyone just looked around and whistled and pretended that it never happened. I can’t find a record of any person going to trial for making sure the law was followed. Using dynamite.

If you date a girl from the zoo, be careful. She might be a keeper.

How would that play out in 2021? Don’t know. I’ll tell you after Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial.

But in 2021 we live in a society that was originally based on the idea of freedom and fair play.

I had a thought a few weeks ago. It nearly died of loneliness. It went, however, something like this: what percentage of a population would it take to simply stop society by withdrawing their consent?

I picked Modern Mayberry for the start, since it’s always best to start small. Let’s assume there are 10,000 people here for round numbers. 10% of the population would be 1,000. That’s certainly more than enough. 1% is 100. Is that enough?

It certainly outnumbers the police and sheriff’s department. So, yes.

Tyranny can’t stand 1% noncompliance, locally. How about nationally? If there were 80,000,000 on the Right (a number I think is low) then 1% is 800,000. Initially, I would have said that wasn’t enough. But last week we saw 70,000 some-odd Taliban roll up the 300,000 strong Afghani army in less time than it takes Leonardo DiCaprio to dump his starlet of the week.

Is 1% enough? Maybe. Is 5%? Certainly.

I do know this: the Taliban’s victory shows that the mathematics of violence haven’t changed much since 1776 or 1946. Despite the massive investment in tech and the ability of superpower-level tech to own a battlefield, the war isn’t conducted on battlefields anymore. It’s conducted street by street. House by house.

I hear that place was a Messerschmitt.

Perhaps the final piece of the puzzle is that “the jab” is being rejected by up to 30% or so of the armed forces. Will the military blink, or will the individual soldiers blink?

I don’t think the military will back off.

The Joint Chiefs have shown themselves to (mostly) be completely compliant with whatever Resident Biden wants. I imagine that many of those that will be subject to being drummed out will be some of the most skilled members of the military, and most committed to the cause of freedom.

The jab just might be the cleansing of the military for the Left, a final mechanism to find those who will follow whatever orders come down.

Why do this?

Because they’re afraid

What are they afraid of?

Losing the consent of the governed.

How far are they away from that?

Emotional Bank Accounts – Another Form Of Wealth

“I’m yours, Lurch. My heart. My soul. My bank account.” – The Addams Family

If it’s 2% milk, what’s the other 98%?

I generally try to be an upbeat person. I’ve got good reason to be. So far, at least, most of the worst things in my life have led to most of the best things in my life. And it seems the worse the initial event is, the better the final outcome.

The track record is pretty good. I’m optimistic. Heck, with a small thermonuclear war, who knows how good things will get for me!

Optimism is one of my personal keys to life. And it’s key to my relationships.

One thing I’ve learned (besides the fact that cats float but don’t like it) along the way is this: what I get out of my relationships is just like my job or any other aspect of my life. The more that I put into the relationship, the more that I get out of the relationship.

“I have become Fluffy, Destroyer of Worlds.”

Stephen Covey called this the Emotional Bank Account®. I put the little ® there in this case because Stephen Covey ® almost everything under the Sun.

The idea of the Emotional Bank Account™ is simple: every relationship that you have is one where you’re either doing the things that build the relationship or doing things that cause the relationship to fade faster than Johnny Depp’s career.

A ramen noodle warehouse burned down. Dozens of dollars in inventory were destroyed.

This is a simple and important concept. In my career I’ve worked in lots of different office environments and seen lots of different characters that quickly developed an overdraft situation with me:

The Complainer: There’s a problem with everything, in the view of a Complainer. It’s like working with Goldilocks, but the porridge is never, ever the right temperature. There is no topic that isn’t complained about. Heck, if they were the manager of the Tesla® plant, they’d complain that the place smelled musky.
The Helpless: Helpless people simply cannot do any particular task, and need help each and every time they do it. If you allow it, they’ll pawn off as much of the task to you as they can, each and every day. What’s the name for a collective parasitical group of people like this?
The Woe-Is-Me: This is a perennial victim. Everything in their life that’s bad? They’re not responsible for it. How bad is their life? They have to shop at Wal-Martyr®.
The Untrustworthy: Think you’ve told them a secret? Soon enough the entire office knows. And untrustworthy people who use marijuana are worse. They’re guilty of high treason.
The Emergency Room Doctor: Everything has to be done now – it’s all urgent. And there’s a sense of criticality about even the most mundane tasks. I mean, if your parachute doesn’t open, why panic? You’ve got the rest of your life to fix it.

Those people are draining. Don’t be one of them. How do I know this? Once I was going through a rough patch, and was slipping into Woe-Is-Me. I could sense from my friends that I had ridden that pony a little too long, or maybe I needed to up my deodorant game. I decided to stop complaining.

Then The Mrs. complained that I don’t buy her flowers. I have no idea when she started selling them.

I decided that if I had a problem worth complaining about, I’d deal with or shut up. Even my best friends have a max tolerance level for dealing my emotional complaints. The Mrs. is even more direct. When I whine, her only comment is: “And what, exactly, are you going to do about it?”

Oddly enough, though, I found that (in most circumstances) when I’m a positive person, people like to see me around more. They ask me for help. They offer help. My account balance is full.

It’s not just at work. It’s not just my friends. It’s my family, too. If every interaction that I have with them is negative, people aren’t exactly happy when Pa comes home.

Hopefully, this knife joke wasn’t too edgy.

Being a positive, productive, trustworthy person? When times are good, it’s important. When times aren’t good?

Maybe even more important. And when we talk about wealth, being surrounded by good, trustworthy people is wealthy, indeed.

The Greatest Game

“A member of an elite paramilitary organization: Eagle Scouts.” – Red Dawn

I have a friend who has a trophy wife. It wasn’t first place.

I once had a position with a certain paramilitary organization aimed at youth who identified as were boys. I have always raised my own children by a simple rule: if they thought they were old enough to try something, they probably were. A related rule was: if I thought they were old enough, I’d make them try something. Especially if it made my life easier.

Five-year-olds can do drywall. I mean, through the tears, that is.

Obviously, this got mixed results. The judgment of a ten-year-old is not as good as that of even a boy two years older. When I asked Pugsley to warm up the car one winter evening when he was 10 or so, while sitting in the front seat he did a neutral drop at high RPM. Right into the house.

Live and learn. Weirdly, we managed to put the wall back into place (mostly) with a mallet. Was I irritated he ran a car into our house? Certainly. But, independence has costs.

Learning is never free.

I promise to stop using police-related puns. I’ll give them arrest.

When I later became a paramilitary organization leader to other boys in addition to mine, I found something interesting: most parents hadn’t taught the boys even rudimentary life skills or woodcraft. Lessons I had learned just tromping around Wilder Mountain seemed like magic to them. It made sense. We don’t really live in a world that values those skills.

In my first campout with the boys, one of the skills we focused on was simple: building a fire. To my amazement, half of the boys hadn’t done that, ever. One of the oldest boys on the campout was around sixteen. He worked on his fire for over an hour. In that hour, he learned a lot of ways to not start a fire. Finally, he got it going.

Me: “Okay, good job! You can put it out now.”

He didn’t. It was the first fire he’d ever made, and he stoked and babied that fire like it was the first one that mankind had ever mastered. And, for him, that was true. He kept that fire going for hours.

There was a fire at Goodwill® today. No injuries, just some secondhand smoke exposure.

I learned as much from the boys as they learned from me. In this moment I learned a real, hard fact of life. When that boy made his first fire, he didn’t need a badge. He didn’t need a medal. What did he need?

Nothing. He had struggled for an hour to make that fire. His reward wasn’t anything outside of him. His reward was the skill. In a sense, that real, physical fire had started a metaphorical fire in him.

Give that a thought. Soccer leagues give children participation trophies so their feelings aren’t hurt. I’m not sure anyone understands the damage done by those hunks of gilt plastic. The trophies are cheap, but the sense of entitlement created by them lasts a lifetime.

When a man makes a fire, or wins a judo match, or does something that is his and his alone, the medal isn’t the accomplishment, the medal is the acknowledgment.

A child who grows up in Montana who can ride a horse, skin an elk, and shoot a rifle straight and true doesn’t need a medal. They don’t need outside affirmation. They are who they are.

Arnold was a great gardener. They called him the Germinator.

That’s the rule of the Greatest Game. Struggle. Learn. Master. Repeat.

Missing? A trophy. Why is it missing? It’s simply not necessary.

We live in a culture where people don’t have to struggle. I imagine the only meal missed in recent memory by readers here is one they chose to miss. Food in this day may be more expensive than it was last year, but it’s still everywhere. The calories to feed a person are plentiful.

So why are video games popular?

They’re popular because we’re wired to Struggle, Learn, Master, and Repeat. Deep down inside, though, we know it’s only a pale shadow of the Greatest Game.

Technology has improved so much that it has interfered with the programming that is at the core of what it means to be human. To be the best that we can be, the struggle has to be worth our time. The game has to be worth playing.

No matter how bad you think you are, Moses was worse. He broke all of the Commandments at once.

I think that a lot of the dysfunction in our society stems to that – people who would have mattered to their tribe back in 200 B.C. or 1,000 A.D. are simply playing their parts in big machines. Our technology has changed our culture. Our culture has changed our roles in society.

These changed roles weren’t made with men in mind, they emerged from the technology. Even 140 years ago, the typical farmer and his family often had to fabricate many if not most of the things that he depended on. That led to independence.

The farmer was free in a way that people chained to an international financial system and a technological corporate machine aren’t. He was free to succeed, or free to fail.

What mattered was how he played the Greatest Game.

We’re still here. We can play the Greatest Game, because, surprisingly, it’s still out there. Each day we have the chance: Struggle, Learn, Master and Repeat.

Me? I’m still learning to make a fire or two.