“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.
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.
Great stuff. Very quotable. The last four lines comparing discipline and motivation are priceless. I sent the link to some impressionable young people.
Thank you! I hope they enjoy it. I won’t say mine enjoyed it, but they remember it.
Basic stuff, but the basics are rarely discussed. And I’ve never seen it so well put. Bravo on today’s effort!
Thank you, sir!
Discipline requires avoiding long periods of time glued to a smart phone. My observations reveal this will not happen.
You may be right. Maybe that’s why I enjoy my vacations to cell-inaccessible-zones are so much fun.
I will venture to quibble on a couple of things. First, the 1983 “Dune” is not the best movie ever made (that would be the 1966 “Flight of the Phoenix,” the real one with James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, and Hardy Krueger.) It is, however, way better than the book. I plowed through the first two of Herbert’s interminable books, and decided that, given the choice between a third one and having my ears removed by a clumsy sadist with a rusty file, I’d have to think it over.
Secondly, it’s Mr. Rogers, not Mr. Rodgers. Truly minor, that.
By the way, “Flight of the Phoenix” has the single most delightful line in cinematic history. Hardy Krueger (“Heinrich Dorfmann”) to Jimmy Stewart (“Frank Townes”): “You behave as if stupidity were a virtue.”
Flight of the Phoenix is awesome. I stumbled upon it one Saturday afternoon and loved it.
I guess, sadly, that we’ll have to disagree about the book/movie ratio. The movie could have been great without the stupid “sounds kill” boxes. And if Sting wore more clothes.
Spelling error fixed.
That was a great line.