Category: Significance

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.

Life: We Spend It Every Second

“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.” – Fight Club

In life, don’t burn your bridges.  They’re all made of steel and concrete now.

I was talking with an acquaintance the other day, and asked him what exactly it was that he wanted out of life.  I know that sounds weird.  But I like to understand people, so I ask them weird questions.  The really odd part of that is if you ask someone a question (especially an odd one), most of the time they won’t lie.

I have no idea why.  It’s the same reason that when you ask Joe Biden a question he says, “Umm, er, ahhh, blonde leg hairs, wanna touch ‘em?”  See, not all politicians lie.  Just the ones who don’t have dementia.

Back to my acquaintance.  “What do you want out of life?”  He paused.  It was a longer pause, so I was expecting something profound.

“You know, I think I’m looking forward to being old enough to retire.”

This particular gentleman is in his thirties, and plans to retire at 65.

Rowan Atkinson is now a has-Bean.

First, retirement at 65 might be a dream for most people in their thirties today.  I have no idea what the future economy will look like.  It may involve Bitcoin® and jetpacks, or it might involve cannibalism and burning old VHS tapes of Who’s The Boss? so Tony Danza can keep us all warm with family-friendly humor and the thermal energy from burning plastic.  In 2021 I’m betting on Tony Danza.

Second, I can recall being in my thirties pretty well.  The one thing I certainly wasn’t thinking about was retirement.  I was thinking of ways to have fun, and ways to contribute to humanity.  Heck, back then I thought I might even start writing at some point in my life to both contribute and have fun.

At some point.

Here, among people I know, is an example of a person who is actively sleepwalking his way to being 65.  My acquaintance is wishing his life away.  Now, I have a lot of faults and have done things that would have made the Portrait of Dorian Gray melt like the reactor at Chernobyl, but wishing my life away isn’t one of those sins.  (I do apologize for green chili flavored-PEZ™, which was sort-of my fault.)

Yes, there have been times that I couldn’t wait for something to finish, especially when it was the end of a seemingly endless stream of 84 hour work weeks.  Yeah, I was glad when that was over.  But I’m also glad I did it.  Nothing tells you what you can do until you’ve done more that you thought you ever could.

What’s Joe Biden’s favorite gum flavor?  Retire-mint.

Ben Franklin said it best, in a quote that I’ve used multiple times:  “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.”  He was right.  And Franklin was not known for wasting time, especially when it came to the ladies.  The man was a beast on Tinderâ„¢.  Here is his message to Mistress Fancy Pantaloons 1769:

“If thou desire many things, many things will seem but a few.  A few compared to my most magnificent biceps and firmly corrugated abdominal musculature.”

I have become convinced that a significant number of people in society have not only started squandering time, but are intentionally doing so.  They are stuck shuffling their feet, mark time, until some future event when “things will be better.”  What future event?

There are many:

I was ready to go home after a few days on a sleepover, and called my Mom.  “Mom, I’m ready to go home.”  Her response?

Ma Wilder just said, “John, you’re married.”  Yeah, my first marriage was pretty bad.

So, I object to wishing your life away.  I mean, unless I’m at the dentist.  I just want that stuff over with.  But each and every moment of my life has one thing in common – it is a minute of my life that is forever lost.

Died in 1973:  Still releasing books on a more regular pace than George R.R. Martin.

Certainly, there are minutes that I cherish more than others.  But as I get older, I find that I have fewer minutes that I want to spend on bad movies.  If I’m going to spend some time in someone else’s dream, it had better be a damn good dream, and not the ones I have when I’m sleeping about forgetting to wear my pants to the White House and finding that Joe liked that idea.

(shudder)

As I get older, I find that I certainly think differently than I did when I was just a kid.  Fluid intelligence, that innovative creative rush that allows physicists to intuitively feel their way to ever more accurate and complex models of reality at both the subatomic and galactic levels seems to peak at around thirty.  I still wonder why my “the Universe is actually a melty plate of cheesy spaghetti with meat sauce” theory never got the attention it deserved.  I guess that the other physicists thought I was an impasta.

Thankfully, for older folks, there’s more than one dimension of intelligence.  Crystallized intelligence, which consists of the increasing ability to connect ideas and increasing ability to communicate them seems to be dominant later in life.  This may explain while an older professor might not be doing world-shaking innovation, but might still have much to add to science, and would almost always be a better teacher.

Regardless, whatever I end up doing, I know that for me to make the most of life I actually have to live it in the here and now.  Sure, I have to reminisce about the past – that’s how I learn.  And I have to plan for the future – that’s how I avoid criminal charges for tax evasion and fines for my grass being too long.

Communism is like tax fraud.  Both seem great at first, but both end with government agents knocking at your door.

Dwelling in the past is a recipe to live with regret.  Dwelling in the future is a way to live in the false opiate of the dream.  To make the past worth the scars you earned and the future possible, you have to live and take action in the present.

Action.

Action is what men do.

If the action is worth taking?  It requires courage.  Courage, because failure is always a possibility.  Courage, because a future worth taking action for isn’t an easy decision.  And courage is required to stand up to the school bully, even though it’s been quite a few decades since I’ve beaten up a seventh-grader.

I’m not saying it didn’t feel good, but when I had my lawyer sue her?  That was the best.

The good thing about the past is, at least, that it’s over.  The bad thing is that if the scar tissue is too deep, it can cause me to hesitate.  There are tons of different ways that things can go bad, and in my life, I’ve explored more than one of them.  Heck, when I told The Mrs. she should embrace her mistakes, she hugged me.

There is hope, however.  A friend of mine once told me when I was down:  “John, if you had a line of troubles in front of you, half that you’d lived through, and have that you hadn’t you’d always pick the ones that you have already conquered.”

Most problems (not all) that make me the most apprehensive are the problems I haven’t faced.  Is that a lack of faith in me, or a fear of the unknown?

I’m not sure.  And I’m not sure that it matters.

Why did PETA send cats to Mars?  They heard about the Curiosity rover.

But I do know this:  each and every day I have a choice whether to phone it in, or to give it everything I have.  I won’t lie, there are days I phone it in.  And there are days when I get in the car to come home and say, “Yeah, that was utterly worth it.  Nobody could have done that better.”

Those days normally run like a breeze – I walk in the door and can’t believe it’s time to walk out.

Sadly, by doing more and being more, subjectively, I’ll burn through my time much faster than my acquaintance.  That’s okay.  I’m living for something, not just passing the time.

And when I type these words, I’m doing everything.  I’m living in the moment.  I’m using my past.  And I’m doing whatever little bit I can to help the future.

Don’t just exist.  Mean something.  Be significant.

The Wilder Response To Mr. Biden

“It’s perfect. We traded one nuked civilization for another.” – Battlestar Galactica.

Bill Murray wasn’t cast as Thor by Marvel®.  They figured that no one likes an electricity Bill.

I had an utterly different post planned.  It was so funny that the laughing that it would induce would have caused your ribs to exit your body.  It was a post so funny, it was dangerous.  Comedy, as they say, is not always pretty.  I try to do those posts on Fridays.  Why?

I had a boss that gave sage advice:  never give your boss bad news on a Friday afternoon or a Monday morning.  I figure that people need a palate cleanser going into the weekend, and try to provide a bit of fun.  And this post that I had planned?  It would have been banned by the Geneva Convention as a Weapon of Mass Hilarity.

Sadly, that post might now be lost to history, since I have to replace it with this one.  Normally, my posts are created weeks in advance and focus tested against a cross-section of laboratory badgers who have no spleens.  Why no spleens?  They tell me that’s important, something about we don’t need no spleenin’ badgers.

But no, the Occupant-in-Chief decided to make the single most irresponsible statement ever made by someone who was sworn in as President since Richard Nixon said, “What’s the worst that they can do to me?”

I don’t want to be accused of taking Biden out of context (not that there’s much of a chance of that) but here’s his quote, to the most accurate degree I can find:

“Those who say the blood of patriots, you know, and all the stuff about how we’re gonna have to move against the government, if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

First, Biden is as articulate as a fourth-grader with fetal alcohol syndrome who’s just smoked a bowl of Hunter Biden’s crack.  And, yes, his Fraudulency has a son who smokes crack with hookers and takes videos of it.  This is a thing that really happens.  Of course, the response from the Left is to say Putin is corrupt.

Sorry.  I’ll try to stick to the topic.

Second, that’s also the same logic as a fourth-grader with an extra chromosome or three who’s just huffed a can of sparkly gold spray paint.  Abraham Lincoln made the obvious response fairly well:

“All the armies of Europe and Asia could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

Lincoln was wrong about a lot of things.  He was right about a lot of things, too.  He is correct about this:

“As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.”

Joe Biden could have the armies of the united States get him a drink by force from any river in this land.  But Joe Biden and all the armies of the united States couldn’t hold the length of the Missouri or the Mississippi for a single day by force.

The armies of the united States number some 1.3 million men oh, wait people oh, wait, xim/xers.  Add in the Reserves?  Let’s round WAY UP and call it three million.  Total.

There are three million males in Missouri.  I pick Missouri only because they recently decided they’re going to tell the Feds to attempt to compact a very large object into a very small space when it comes to firearm laws.

Go, Missouri.

Not all of the three million males in Missouri would be on the side of freedom, since there are always some disgusting gelatinous slugs of humanity that will side with Evil over Truth.  But there are enough.  And don’t tell me that neighboring states wouldn’t flow in.

No, Mr. Biden.  The only one who needs F-15s and nuclear weapons for control is you, you disgusting pile of fake hair, fake teeth, Alzheimer’s degraded brain, who gets his only Father’s Day card encrusted in cocaine dust and whore DNA.

The united States governs only, let me make this clear, only by consent of the governed.  As citizens, we’re generally pretty good.  But we are horrible, horrible at taking instruction from tyrants.  It’s in our DNA.

No, literally.  This is not an exaggeration.  My family line came across an ocean to tame a continent.  That was their resume.  That was their job description as they rocked back and forth on little wooden boats in the midst of Atlantic storms.  We didn’t come here because we were weak.  We came here to fight and die and bleed and make this land our own.

We came here because we were strong.

We came here because we yearned for freedom.

Mr. Biden, your butt-sniffing and shoe-licking parents and your degenerate sons and personal weaknesses are abhorrent to every fiber of my body.  Mr. Biden, you are disgusting.  Mr. Biden, your forefathers were horrible.  Mr. Biden, you and your weaknesses represent everything wrong with this country, and everything that has led to where we are today.

How dare you threaten me?

  • To threaten me is to threaten Duncan MacWilder of the Clan MacWilder, who came here before this was a country.
  • It is to threaten Hans Wilder, who came here to leave tyrants behind in Europe before World War I.
  • It is to threaten my forefathers who died hewing a civilization out of this continent with their blood and sweat and toil and dead babies so lazy writers like me could exist.

The deal we made in 1776 is the same one we have today, Bucko.  We are here because we have certain inalienable rights.

Mr. Biden, you want to threaten me with jet fighters?  Mr. Biden, you want to threaten to use nuclear weapons against your own citizens?

We didn’t come here for that.  We didn’t die here for that.  We didn’t bury our sons and daughters on dusty plains and hills and hallows across this country, building it with our blood for that.

Reparations?  We paid for that in blood in places you have long forgotten, like Manassas Junction.  Everyone I’ve ever been able to research on any part of my family has been someone who made the united States better.

Every.

Single.

One.

We taught Eisenhower (really).  We built farms.  We built bridges 150 years ago that still exist today.  We built infrastructure that serves tens of millions of people – this is not an exaggeration.  We built railroads across mountains that mountain goats couldn’t cross.  We took trains up those mountains when the snow was 20 feet deep.  With our kids.

Just for fun.

We raised and nurtured children and taught them freedom.

Our blood is in this soil.  Our children are buried here as payment from sea to sea.

My blood is in this soil.  My forefathers weren’t evil.  They were Big Damn Heroes.  Odin and Thor and Jesus would be proud of them for their courage.

Did other people build this land as well?  Sure.  But Wilder blood is spread here from the Mayflower to today.

  • I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Duncan MacWilder would have said:
  • I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Patrick Henry would have said (distant relative, according to an aunt):
  • I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Hans Wilder would have said:

No.

And, to mark the first time I have ever used this word on this blog?  Each and every one of them would have added:

Fuck you, Mr. Biden.

Bring your jets.  Bring your nukes.  The only way you have to dislodge us off this continent we conquered with our blood and sweat and buried kin is to kill us all.  We will never give up.  We will never surrender.  This will not die with me.  Or my children.

You will never defeat us.  Never.  Our blood is here.  Here we make our stand.  We can go to no other country for freedom.  We can go no further to a distant frontier.  Despite what you will try to do with us, despite the injustices you will visit on us, we will win.  We will mock you, and your grave will be pulled up and your bones used by our children for their amusement.

We will smile, and nod.

We did not choose this.  We do not want this.

You spiked the ball too soon.  Maybe two generations into the future, they would go gentle onto that goodnight.

Too soon, Bucko.

Fuck you.

The Beauty Of The Red Pill

“Hey Samantha, don’t take the Red Pill!” – Grandma’s Boy

If my son wanted to be a fiction writer, I’d send him to college to study journalism.

Have you ever not asked a question because you already knew the answer, but were afraid to hear it?  I’m willing to bet we all have.  I try to leave occasional breadcrumbs here, especially during my Monday and Wednesday posts, but I’ve stopped short of leaving my posts in the forest near a witch’s house.  Besides, I hear Hillary has security guards.

The Truth is shocking.  Many times, the Truth isn’t pleasant.  I remember coming to one unpleasant Truth realization in college:  the college didn’t care if I did well or even if I graduated.

It hadn’t been like that in high school.  But in college?  I was just a number.  It sounds silly to me now, but back then it was quite a realization for me.  Gradually, more Truths started showing up in my life.  In many cases, I denied them as long as I could, but they eventually became inevitable.

They call this the Red Pill, after the scene in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves gets a job painting pills red.

Never let Morpheus do the cooking at a Matrix cast barbeque.  There’s a reason they call him Lawrence Fishburne.

Part of the problem with discovering Truth is that it can make you feel alone.  Much of our society is based on covering uncomfortable Truth with pretty little lies.  It has always been so, but in 2021 it’s at the very worst that it has been in the history of the United States.  People were censored a year ago for telling what are now the (generally) accepted theories about CoronaChan.

The Truth is that we still don’t know where it came from, but vary from any generally accepted truth about COVID on YouTube® and you’ll be censored.  Thankfully, YouTube™ is so committed to “truth” that they gave themselves an award for being so courageous about it.  Really – there isn’t even a punchline.

Here’s another Red Pill:  no one (and I mean no one) is coming to save you.  No one (and I mean no one) is responsible for your actions but you.  If you can’t save yourself, you’ll just have to depend on luck, which is a crappy strategy.  There is no secret cabal of government good guys like Qanon® used to put in his cryptic message board posts.  Q is not coming to save you.

I guess QANON was just another 4Chan teller.

Part of the problem with taking a Red Pill is that, once you’re finally awake and aware of how the world works, just like Ebola, you want to share it with people.  That’s a bad idea.

The unfortunately named Desiderius Erasmus Roterdamus made the silly quote, “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” and with the new Red Pill knowledge, you want to share it far and wide.

Sadly, Desiderius, the one-eyed man is not king.

As H.G. Wells wrote, the blind people can’t see what the one-eyed dude describes.  They think him mad, and if they have a chance they’ll tie him down and remove that silly eye that keeps giving him all of those wild notions and that awful practical joke of leaving the plunger in the toilet.  People will fight nearly to the death to keep a pretty lie alive, especially when the Truth is ugly.

I wrote a check to a charity for the blind, but I’m worried they’ll never see a penny of it.

But there is opportunity for an individual once the first real Red Pill hits.  Seeking Truth becomes a habit.  And you find that Truth exists in many, many more places than you might imagine.  When I go to find Truth, I know one place I can find it very quickly.

Truth is in the Iron.

I started lifting again this week for the first time since COVID raised its head.  I was stunned at how one of my standard lifts was half – HALF – what it had been 18 months ago.

That is Truth.  The Iron is Truth.

Was it at all pleasant to find my strength had dropped that far, that fast?

Of course not.

But it is True.

I gave up on lifting cases of Pepsi® for exercise, it was just soda pressing. 

I cannot hide from the Iron.  I cannot cheat the Iron.  The only things there in the weight room are the Iron, Gravity, and Me.  The only thing that changes in that equation is me.  I can’t blame the Iron.  I can’t blame Gravity.

The Red Pill?

No one will make me physically stronger but me.  And the only way I can do that is to wrestle against Gravity with the Iron.  And, unless I am quite ill, it will always work.

And here is the hope.  Here is where the Red Pill really begins to pay dividends.

I’m the one responsible for:

  • my physical state,
  • what I eat,
  • how I react,
  • what I say,
  • what I watch,
  • how I treat others,
  • my own Virtue,
  • who I am, and
  • where my life ends up.

I’m not responsible for who loves me.  I’m not responsible for how much they love me.  Those are the output.  If I control every bit of input in my life, what happens, happens.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing more wonderful than that realization.  It goes beyond winning and losing.  It goes beyond the opinions of others.

The downside, of course, is seeing all of the pretty little lies and all of the attempted manipulation.  Even worse:  the attempts to numb minds, to distract, and to pretend that the new lie doesn’t contradict the last lie.  The stunning thing to me is how many people will flitter from one contradictory opinion to another like butterflies in the Sun, with never a thought.

When I take responsibility for myself, I am a changed person.

I was born a male, I identify as a male, but according to Stouffer’s Frozen Lasagna®, I identify as a family of four.

That doesn’t mean the battle ever ends.  The first struggle is, always, against myself.  Why am I weaker?

I had weights at home, but didn’t lift.

Why?

Well, I could make any number of excuses, but none of them matter.  I didn’t lift.  That was it.  So, my choice is simple:  will I work to get better every week, or will I be complacent with where I am?

I asked the Iron a question.  It told me the Truth.

Now, my choice is how will I answer?

I have only one answer.  Sweat.

It’s never lonely when you’ve got Truth for a companion.