“For those regarded as warriors, when engaged in combat the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior’s only concern. Suppress all human emotion and compassion. Kill whoever stands in thy way, even if that be Lord God, or Buddha himself. This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat.” – Kill Bill (Vol. 1)
Yeah, a great movie. Also describes my freshman year at high school. If you replace samurai swords with fish sticks.
I was playing a game the other day – a silly app that The Mrs. had downloaded onto a tablet. It has (I kid you not) small children driving tanks and planes and what not while you attempt to destroy them with poison gas and bombs. I’m not sure what the name of the game is, but I think it really should be called “War Criminal®.” Anyway, there are several modes you can play it on, and one of them is “single life.” Rather than “single life” being a video game about an old, sad, single bachelor eating over a sink, it refers to the number of lives the game gives you before it’s over. Generally you start with the dozen or so lives like we humans all have, by switching to this mode the game makes you live just in a single life. And when you’re done? You’re done.
What I noticed when I played the game in “single life” mode was that I died much earlier than I normally lost the first of my dozen or so lives. By playing conservatively to try to save that single life, I had actually played much worse than I normally do. Maybe there’s a lesson in there?
Yeah, there is.
A colleague at work recently purchased a new car – the car of his dreams. A car he keeps . . . in his garage. He won’t take it out to drive. Don’t get me wrong – I understand the idea of engaging in things you enjoy only sparingly to keep them special, but in this case – he just likes the car so much that he doesn’t want to risk anything happening to it.
Tracy Goss wrote a book called “The Last Word on Power.” When I first saw the book, the title put me off. I thought it was a book about how to get power – sort of like Machiavelli for the modern cubicle-dweller set. But then a boss took me aside, “No, John, the book is about getting power over yourself.” He’d actually gone to one of Ms. Goss’ training courses. Said it was pretty powerful – powerful enough that an executive there had broken down realizing what a mess he’d made of his life. Yikes!
He took me through the book. It’s good – maybe I’ll review this 25 year old book sometime in the near future, but right now you can buy it at the link above. I get no compensation if you do (or don’t) as of the time of writing this post – but that may change. And it’s not likely that you’ll break down into a puddle reading it.
Anyhow.
Goss writes about samurai – and why they were awesome. The swords, right? Or the hair? Or the armor? Or the ability to turn into smoke and fly like a bat? No, that’s ninja-vampires, not samurai. I always get them confused. Ninja-vampires are the ones that look like raccoons, right? Maybe not . . . .
The real samurai (not my ninja-vampire-raccoon thing) were especially effective as fighters simply because they didn’t care if they lived or died. They would prefer to live, but if they could die a really glorious and Tarantino-esque death, that might even be better and more honorable than living. When the samurai went into battle, they were awesome precisely because they didn’t care. Oh, and the swords, and the years and years of arduous and intense physical training. But without the attitude, they would have just been a group of robed acrobats with cool swords who ran like sissies anytime they cut their own finger and saw blood.
From the time when the French Foreign Legion showed up on your newsstand every week, between manning remote outposts facing sudden death . . . .
Goss continues with her military metaphors – bringing up the French Foreign Legion. For those of you unfamiliar with the Foreign Legion, it is open to foreign soldiers joining – even today, 75% of the soldiers in the Foreign Legion are not French (all officers are French). The Foreign Legion is world renowned for its bravery. One reason? Traditionally the men who have joined the Foreign Legion have given up their home nationality, their history, and, in some cases, even abandoned their name as they joined to avoid angry fathers, husbands, or juries.
Here’s Frank Sinatra in his Foreign Legion outfit, along with his son, future president Bill Clinton.
How amazing was the Foreign Legion? In Mexico in 1863, the Foreign Legion became legends (from Wikipedia® – edited to remove parts of the autism):
A company led by Captain Jean Danjou, numbering 62 Legionnaires and 3 Legion officers, was escorting a convoy to the besieged city of Puebla when it was attacked and besieged by three thousand Mexican loyalists. The Legion detachment made a stand in the Hacienda de la Trinidad – a farm near the village of Camarón (JOHN WILDER NOTE: I THINK THIS MEANS SHRIMP). When only six survivors remained, out of ammunition, a bayonet assault was launched in which three of the six were killed. The remaining three wounded men were brought before the Mexican commander Colonel Milan, who allowed them to return to the French lines as an honor guard for the body of Captain Danjou. The captain had a wooden hand, which was later returned to the Legion and is now kept in a case in the Legion Museum, and paraded annually. It is the Foreign Legion’s most precious relic.
So, 90% of your men – dead. Surrounded by 3,000 Mexicans. What do you do? Fix bayonets and charge. All six of you.
When I was a freshman in college, Caller ID hadn’t been invented. We called the local bowling alley:
Juvenile Us: “Do you have 12 pound balls?”
Bowling Alley Dude: “Yes.”
Juvenile Us: “Then how do you walk.”
Bowling Alley Dude: “I don’t. I strut.”
Yes. This really happened.
This is his hand, along with some drawings of the event. Totally tough dudes, and they still have the hand – it’s not lost in a desk drawer or a moving box like it would be if it were in my house.
And even though the six Foreign Legion guys didn’t work in a bowling alley, they could certainly strut – they had displayed amazing, bowling-ball-sized bravery. How?
Surrounded by 3,000 Mexicans – they attacked. They knew that they were dead. They were living on borrowed time. So they did the only thing they could – they made the most out of every last second.
We tossed it out. As soon as it started the blackmail notes. Which were not written in English, but were written in mouse blood.
We have an awful, awful cat. It started out as an inside cat, but was such a mess (evil in more than the usual cat way) that it became an outside cat. One night The Mrs. and I pulled up in the Wildermobile®. We saw our awful, awful cat outside. It had a mouse. The mouse was totally alive. The cat was torturing it – allowing it to think that maybe, just maybe, it would live.
The cat had the mouse between both of its front paws – the mouse was on its back. Evil Cat moved its paws away. Rather than run, this mouse jumped up and bit the cat on the nose – hanging on until the cat managed to shake it off. I hate most mice, but I really love that one mouse.
The mouse didn’t get away.
But you’re not a samurai facing other samurai. Or a member of the French Foreign Legion facing insurmountable odds at an isolated desert outpost. Or my friend at work who won’t take his dream car out on the road (and, I’ve given him crap about that, so I’m not tattling on him on the internet).
Yup, best decision ever.
I’ve tried to make this point before – and I’ll keep doing it – we don’t have much time on Earth, but we act like we have forever if we’re only careful enough. And being too careful . . . it ensures that we achieve far less than we are capable of. Yes, charging 3,000 Mexicans with your five best friends is a sure way to die.
But half of those Legionnaires did live. And they lived a life of glory – they ran at the guns and lived. They didn’t shy away from destiny – and an entire nation – not their nation – reveres them to this day.
I often make this point, and during future posts will probably make it again: We are all living on borrowed time. Each second on this planet is one less second we’ll have in the future. Don’t wish your life away. Don’t settle for spending time with your nose in an iPhone® MyFace© feed. When we amuse ourselves with our media, we are using time we could have been achieving . . . amusing ourselves.
Thankfully, we all have kitties so we don’t have to worry about our impending doom or the lack of achievement in our lives (warning – has one use of the “f” word):
