“Look at the symptoms: temperamental behavior, mood swings, facial hair. Uh oh, Dad, I think you have menopause.” – That 70’s Show
There ended up being roughly 732 books in the Dune series. I stopped after book four, which was one book too many.
(Note, this is a repost from 2019. I was working on a post and got started two hours late and then Conan the Barbarian came on. Life.)
In our basement we have a wrestling mat. It would be unusual if we had a wrestling mat and dismembered mannequin parts strewn around the room and baby doll heads covered with blood red paint, but we don’t. The Mrs. and I decided we need to leave some projects for after the kids go to college. So we use the wrestling mat for the more conventional purpose of practicing wrestling. Both Pugsley and The Boy enjoy it, and so do I. Pugsley has expressed an interest in winning a lot of wrestling matches, so he fairly enthusiastically led us to doing independent wrestling practice at home so he could improve.
One night it was time to practice. The Boy was ready. I was ready. But Pugsley said, “I’m not in the mood.”
The Boy turned pale. He knew what was coming next – the kraken was about to be unleashed. I did a quick Internet search. I then looked up from my laptop screen and quoted the following:
“Mood? What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises — no matter the mood! Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset [JW: a musical instrument]. It’s not for fighting.” – Frank Herbert, Dune
If you’re not in the mood, make it so.
The lecture he got that followed that quote exceeded the amount of time that we would have practiced. It’s the same lecture The Boy had gotten several years earlier, and he joined in to poke his brother with verbal barbs as well. You may call it bullying, we call it raising children with values. Maybe we should have stopped before we gave him a swirly?
The context of the quote is from the novel Dune which has spawned one bad movie (the early 1980’s version) and one underfunded movie (the early 2000’s version). In the novel, young Paul Atreides is the son of a space Duke somewhere in the far future after humanity has spread through the stars. Paul has the benefit of being royal, so he has a rather rigorous curriculum of everything from math, physics, and gender studies to small arms combat. Just kidding. Study math and physics. Ha! Studying math and physics is a sucker game: study those things and you’ll have to pay taxes.
This would have been a better plot than the early 80’s film.
Like all boys, Paul was looking for a day off. His combat arms teacher, Gurney Halleck, rightly told him the truth: when trouble is brewing or there is work to be done, the Universe does not care about your mood.
Like all boys, Pugsley was looking to push and see just how far he could get away with slacking. The answer was simple: he couldn’t. He had made a commitment to his brother, to me, but most importantly to himself. But sometimes, like all boys, he needed a reminder from his father that duty comes before mood. So, he got the big speech. I quote books, I quoted Patton, I quoted my father, I quoted Mr. Rogers®, and I noted that I hadn’t taken an unplanned sick day since before he was born. Call in to the boss on a Tuesday morning with a sore throat? No.
If you’re not familiar with wrestling, the guy in purple is like France at the start of World War II.
As an adult you have to do a lot of things that you don’t enjoy. You have to go to work when you know it’s going to suck. You have to take your punishment when you know you’ve done wrong. You have to pay your bills. You have to work out. You have to meet the commitments you made, no matter how painful.
Keeping your word to other people is how the world sees that you have good character. Keeping your word to yourself is the sign of real integrity. Some days you don’t want to hit the weights. You don’t want to go to work. You don’t want to go to school. You don’t want to go to practice. You don’t want to meet that pesky General Grant at Wilmer’s place in Appomattox.
Boo hoo.
I heard you don’t have to lose the war if you’re not in the mood to lose the war. Also, is it just me or does it look like they’re playing Battleship® on paper?
When you start failing to keep the commitments that you made to yourself, you’ll stop keeping your commitment to others. What matters is turning on the alarm clock, and getting out of bed when it rings or beeps or whatever it does. Every day.
You don’t need seminars. Or pep talks. Or motivational posters. Or Tony Robbins and his weirdly white teeth (I swear that man has the grin of someone who likes to eat things that are small and squirming because they’re still living) and a $2000 seminar.
You need discipline. Discipline is better than motivation any day.
Why do you need discipline?
Kevin Bacon understands.
Because motivated is a mood.
But disciplined is a way of life.
Just saw a headline about a new drug resistant ringworm which is actually a fungus.
All kinds of new and old diseases will be brought by the indispensable replacements but the Magic Soil will keep the first world party going.
Catching me in the not in the mood department could be Defcon One mode and I would make sure they never forget it.
We should update the Defcon with the traitor occupational government.
Get ready for 100 million replacements and TRANS everything because it is important to Big Mike.
These things happen when you can’t control “your” illegitimate sewer pipe of evil government.
Surely all of these people like Paul Stanley of Kiss and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister didn’t visit Pedo Island as they walk back previous not for TRANS tweets.
Mr. Mars WEF Elon put on his Baphomet shoulder pads and hired a D.I.E. pioneer to run the TWIT because he is the good guy?
Honk, honk!
And here I was hoping he would hire Whoopi Goldberg or some other member of the View to lead to Twitterati to 1000 years of glorious victories.
Without Iron Will and discipline there is nothing.
Wow! Diversity, is there nothing it can’t do?
I usually apply it to working out but it fits everywhere. While I have never regretted going to the gym when I really, REALLY didn’t feel like, I almost always regret it when I make an excuse and don’t go.
I told them I walk every morning because I don’t want to.
Exactly. Enjoy now, regret later.
You do a repost about discipline and willpower so you can take some time off from writing to once again ponder the riddle of steel. Fair enough.
https://t-layhew.medium.com/the-riddle-of-steel-the-philosophy-of-conan-the-barbarian-8978e01d57d7
What would the boy and Pugsly say? Slacker
Well, yeah. He does love rubbing it in . . .
Hahaha! No, I had the discipline to stop writing (which I love) so I could get some Zzz’s. Love that post.
Kevin Bacon just came out as a drag booster. He should get another
Kevin was getting the Bacon. Without Vaseline.
Indeed. Maybe two.
Yup, discipline, where did it go?
I guess if you are getting a “free ride” do what thou will.
OD on some tainted poisoned drug.
Ha! Good Dad, good Dad
Yup, and it’s paid off. As a dad, my job is really done.
Look what discipline did for “Paul”. He became Portland’s Mayor. Well, he was on “Portlandia”.
Yeah, that was funny, especially the bit that his parents were funding the city.
Okay, you watched A Shock To The System.
Next mission: acquire and read The Patton Papers. Both volumes.
Better than Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, and Shakespeare combined.
Leave it where the boys can find it. I worked my way through both tomes in a couple of weeks of mornings in the library one semester, when pneumonia put me on a mandatory light schedule.
It’s basically everything not previously published the man ever wrote. Diary entries, letters home, etc.
I still have the notebook of notes I made kicking around here somewhere.
“Do your damnedest always.”
“The only discipline that matters is self-discipline.”
“If you had time to sleep last night, you had time to prepare.”
“Read the manual. It’s for the honest 80%. The smart 10% don’t need it, and the stupid 10% won’t bother to read it.”
It also reveals that that imaginary “belief in re-incarnation” horseplop peddled by legendary historical idiots like Ladislas Farago and Francis Ford Coppola was Patton’s own poetry and poetic license, not his doctrinaire insanity fabricated by Hollywood screenwriters.
His writings also reveal why he finished West Point (after a year at VMI to gear up mentally when he failed the WP entrance exams) as 46th out of 103 academically, but was Cadet Sergeant Major and Cadet Adjutant, in charge of all drill and ceremonies, and meticulously and scrupulously turned out every single day.
Then re-watch the opening chapter of Patton, from where he takes over in Tunisia to “Rommel, you magnificent sonofabitch, I read your goddamned book!” in light of the man who wrote that, had 5 years of the strictest military education on the planet, shot bandits in Mexico, led tanks on foot in WWI, taught cavalry troops in the lean years between the wars, and taught the Army how to fight armored warfare in the deserts of California and the bayous of Louisiana in the years gearing up to WWII.
Luck is when preparedness meets opportunity.
Preparedness comes from discipline.
Whether you feel like it or not.
Work hard, seek knowledge, and adhere to absolute standards of excellence ~ Dad.
Don’t forget your sleep, prayers, and enthusiasm ~ Grandpa.
We need men to be men. D V.
I’ll get ’em both that for Christmas. My (volume 2) is sitting right beside me. I’ve folded over countless pages. I can’t make them read them, but I can make them feel guilty.
“Duty is heavier than a mountain;
Death is lighter than a feather.”
~ Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors, Japan, 4 January 1882.
***
It’s one of the two family sayings of the imperial Hartmann family in my books.
Pretty sure it’s from Musashi in the Book Of Five Rings, centuries before 1882.
My mistake for trusting wiki. I thought their pre-20th C stuff was on more solid ground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Rescript_to_Soldiers_and_Sailors#cite_note-3
And, I’ve always got their second family motto to fall back upon…
“Si non potes facere bene
melius facere malum bene”
Great quote. Oddly, I have (and have read) the Book of Five Rings, but didn’t remember that quote. Getting old, I guess.
If not, it may have been somewhere in Sun Tzu’s Art Of War.
Either way, it’s centuries older than Meiji-era Japan.
No points for guessing what I read after I polished off The Patton Papers.
And I promise you, that duty/death quote made a lot more sense to me after a tour in the Corps.
Oh, no, you’re probably right. I just didn’t remember it. Gettin’ old, you see.