Why Henry VIII Would’ve Killed for Your Tuesday

“Dying in our sleep is a luxury that our kind is rarely afforded.  My gift to you.” – Kill Bill:  Volume 1

I guess he had a bad heir day.

Henry VIII could have anyone killed in England killed, whenever.

That’s a historical level of flex, right?

“Off with his/her/their/xir head!” and boom, problem solved.  The only way he could have had a more complete solution is if he had ye olde Hellfyre Missyll that he could have obliterated the parts with.  Hank had more wives than most guys have pairs of underwear, threw parties that made Vegas look like a church potluck, and ate so much roasted swan he probably needed a crane to get out of bed.

Yet the poor bastard was miserable.  Hank’s leg was a festering horror show of oozing sores that never healed. Doctors, if you could call them that, mashed it with hot pokers and prayed to Saints who were clearly not looking out for Henry.

Summers?  Hank oozed sweat in every royal crevice like a Somalian in a daycare because air conditioning hadn’t been invented yet.  Winters?  Drafty castles that made your average Motel 6® feel like the Ritz™.

Fresh vegetables in January?  Forget it, unless you counted the mold on last year’s turnips.  Antibiotics?  Nope.  He died at 55 looking like a bloated, angry grape because a simple infection laughed at him.

Bill Gates claimed that it was hard to give away $100 billion.  Then he discovered divorce.

Meanwhile, the poorest person reading this right now has:

  • Climate-controlled comfort (except when the power goes out and we all act like it’s the apocalypse)
  • Aspirin that kills headaches faster than Henry could yell “treason”
  • Strawberries in February flown in from well, wherever, for $2.99 a pint
  • A phone in their pocket with more computing power than NASA used to put men on the Moon, back when they still did that sort of thing

And we complain the Wi-Fi is slow.

As a society, we’ve lost the plot.  We chase the next luxury like it’s the last helicopter out of Saigon, never noticing we’re already living better than every king who ever lived.

Marie Antoinnette didn’t like the chopper that took her out of France.

That’s where fasting, prayer, and meditation come in.

They don’t add luxury.  And they’re not anti-luxury, either.  Instead, they intensify life real life by pulling away things that dull it.  They rip the blindfold off so you can finally see the ridiculous abundance that’s been hiding in plain sight.

Take camping, which is another life-intensifier.  Or better yet, backpacking, because backpacking is camping for people who like suffering without a car nearby.  You hike ten miles with everything you own on your back.  Hot shower?  Nah.  Cold beer?  Dream on, pal.

Clean socks after three days?  Suddenly they feel like silk sheets at the Four Seasons®.  That lukewarm instant coffee at sunrise after a 14,000-foot summit?  Nectar of the gods.  And that single cigar you packed for the top?

It tastes better than the $80 Cuban some hedge-fund guy is smoking in his climate-controlled man cave.  The Luxury Meter resets.  Hard.  The stuff I took for granted becomes decadent again.

I felt motion sickness on the airplane yesterday.  It didn’t help having all of those people screaming for lifejackets and rafts.

That’s exactly what fasting, prayer, and meditation do as I get older, except I don’t have to carry a 40-pound pack or sleep on rocks.

Let’s start with fasting, because I actually do this every week and some of my happiest days are while I’m doing it.

Yes, I’m the weirdo who smiles while hungry.  Judge away.  After 72 hours without food, that first bite of whatever I eat next hits different.  It’s not “dinner.”  It’s a religious experience.

Last week I broke a fast with a salad of lettuce, and my own dressing (olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and Frank’s Hot Sauce™.

I swear the lettuce tasted like it was grown by angels on Mount Olympus. I actually said “thank you” out loud to vinegar.  The Mrs. asked me, “Are you planning on starting a cult?”

“No, it’s too hard to find enough people who are willing to shave off all the hair on their bodies.  Just no commitment nowadays.”

Fasting reminds me that food isn’t a background app:  it’s a miracle, a gift.  My ancestors fought wolves for scraps, and won.  That’s why I’m here.

Right now I’m so hungry I could eat my watch, but that would be time consuming.

Henry VIII had entire forests of deer murdered for his gouty pleasure and still died angry.  Me? I can open the fridge and there sits last night’s leftover steak and a bag of midget tomatoes.

Fasting turns the volume down on “I want more” and turns it up on “Holy crap, this is amazing,” when one of those ripe tomatoes explodes flavor in my mouth as I bite into it.  Prayer does the same thing, but with gratitude instead of hunger and with fewer seeds.

I’m not talking about the fancy stained-glass, organ-music version.  I’m talking about the five-minute reciting the “Lord’s Prayer” or just sitting there praying “thanks” for all the little miracles in my life, like cigars.  Thanks for the roof that doesn’t leak. Thanks for the truck that started this morning.  Thanks for antibiotics that would’ve saved Henry’s leg and probably at least one of his marriages if the Habsburgs weren’t trying to kill him.  Thanks for the fact that I can complain about gas prices while eating pineapple from Costa Rica on a pizza in February.

I think that if I do this regularly my brain chemistry changes.  I cease envying the guy with the bigger bank account and start noticing that I’ve never missed a meal, except on purpose.

And then there’s meditation, which I used to think was for hippies in hemp pants smoking hemp and praying to a bong with hi-fi playing sitar music in the background.

Turns out it’s just shutting up for five minutes.  Sit.  Breathe.  Notice the thoughts racing around like caffeinated squirrels.

After a few minutes the squirrels calm down.  And suddenly I notice things. The warmth of the coffee mug.  The feeling of my head against the back of my chair that just happens to adjust six ways.  The ridiculous luxury of quiet.

Only self-aware people will understand this joke.  You know who you are.

Henry VIII never had five minutes of peace:  someone was always trying to poison him or marry him or overthrow him or he had another wife to kill.

I can have it peace and quiet whenever I want, and it costs exactly nothing.

When I do all three together it’s like a factory reset on my soul.  The constant “I need more” noise fades.

I’m not saying sell everything and move to a cave and become a monk.  I like my truck, my cigars, and my central heat as much as the next guy.  But I’m not going to let “luxury” make me the modern version of Henry VIII:  rich in stuff, poor in joy, angry at the world because the sores never heal and the wives won’t die.  These things remind me that the real luxury isn’t the next thing, it’s realizing the things I already have would’ve made kings weep with envy.

Though say what you want about Henry, he did have a cure for wives who had headaches.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

38 thoughts on “Why Henry VIII Would’ve Killed for Your Tuesday”

  1. I was 100% with you, until:

    “…pineapple from Costa Rica on a pizza in February.”

    Pineapple should not be in the same room as a pizza. It’s like vermouth in a martini. Eeeewwww!

    All joking aside, a great essay, and something everyone should read. Gratitude is one of the greatest things we can feel, and we can all find something–many things!–to be grateful for in this country.

    Thanks, man.
    Bob

    1. Pineapple on pizza is awesome. I also used to think it was a disgusting concept until a friend made me try it. One slice and I was hooked. It is better than having sex while on crack cocaine while also sleeping on a Sleep Number bed in a Holiday Inn Express.

      The traditional Hawaiian pizza with ham and pineapple also doesn’t do it justice. Need to have pepperoni and jalapenos to get the full flavor.

        2. Yes the pineapple + jalapeño is essential. Tacos al pastor. Char grill the jalapeños first for even better flavor.

          Sweet heat is the only sweet anywhere near meat. Buncha pineapple pizza hating BBQ bois pushing on a rope when it comes to pretty much every regional variant of bbq rub/sauce if same was applied. Well except for those strange vinegar mustard guys. Which I love too. Especially now that I’m off sugar entirely.

          Pizza without meat is for children. Who will grow up to vote Democrat and asexually reproduce in one of elons designer baby chambers if they don’t graduate to meat right quick.

    2. Longtime backpacker here. I can reassure you, after ONLY 4 days on the trail a pineapple pizza would taste like a culinary delight that would be food of the gods! a hot shower becomes insane luxury! Instant coffee suddenly tastes better than any Starbucks concoction.
      everyone should experience a multi-day backpacking trip once in their lives, over some piles of rock exceeding at least 4000 feet in elevation, an experience that never lets you forget how close we actually live from the fringes!

    3. It had been years since I had a Hawaiian pizza, but I had one the other night and it was okay. Pugsley also pronounced it good.

  2. ” Fresh vegetables in January? Forget it, unless you counted the mold on last year’s turnips. Antibiotics? Nope”

    I saw this on an old episode of Space 1999……if the mold is penicillum, then you have the antibiotics covered…

  3. It is joyful, paradoxical, contradictory, complete.
    An unabated, self-aware, universal grow/flow.
    Wild John questing and resting unto eternity.

  6. “Bill Gates claimed that it was hard to give away $100 billion. Then he discovered divorce.”

    I laughed out loud.

    We do indeed live in an age of wonders that Henry never had. Pez and Snickers first and foremost among them.

    Speaking of meditation, my wife gave me a Christmas gift card to Float Huntsville. (Turns out this is eligible for Health Savings Account (HSA) and Flexible Savings Accounts (FSA) funding, too…)

    https://www.floathuntsville.com/float-benefits

    So I’ve been there twice now. This is a local spa that has big bathtubs with lids that are full of warm magnesium sulfate / Epson salt water. You totally relax and effortlessly float without touching anything for 40 minutes. Soft music and low LED colored lights if you want them; I prefer to close my eyes in silence. There’s a lot of mumbo-jumbo in their descriptions about detox and healing, but their claim about inducing a theta wave state in the brain is something I actually believe based on my experience. In the beginning my normal thought processes begin to seem so erratic and jumbled, with poor ability to focus or concentrate and stay on one topic….and slowly my mind just seems…different. By the time the intercom calls to end your session, it seems like you’ve been in there for a long, long time.

    I recommend this as an interesting life experience if you can find it. I’ve been interested in float and sensory deprivation tanks early on for decades after watching Hawaii Five O episodes back in the ’60s featuring the ongoing villain Wo Fat using them as torture devices and also William Hurt in the 1980 movie Altered States, a take-off on John Lilly’s LSD research. I didn’t undergo a Marvel superhero transformation like Hurt in my trips to Float; maybe next time.

    Here’s this Friday’s tip-o-the-hat to the Movies that we all love to dissect…

    1. Wasn’t Wo Fat Charlie Chan’s No. 1 son? Hard to believe that Huntsville is the largest city in AL. Drove through it this year after my older grandson graduated from Florence State.

      Nearest float tank is almost 2 hrs. south in Hinesville GA. I’d think it’d be good for sweeties mobility.

    2. I think I was a bit too young when I saw Altered States, and I was also looking for something that was closer to a horror movie.

  8. John that might have been your best post ever! “As a society, we’ve lost the plot” I think that should have been pilot.

  9. A decade in a ‘third world’ jungle will bring reality right to your door, frequently. No need looking.

    Per capita income is good here for lat.am., but there are a LOT of people who have almost nothing. I won’t depress you with photos of their housing and interiors. Makes it pretty easy to sing praises of gratitude for my life, simple though it is.

    Fasting much recommended, especially for the young. Takes your noggin two or three days to clear up. After the first time, many people integrate it regularly.

    For more serious (spiritual) matters, a very great deal more ‘fasting’ is required to do the job. Christ Himself recommended fasting and prayer. You will of course suffer, as patient or aide. We are not Christ, kaboom you’re cured.

    They’ll leave, eventually, when things get grim enough. The real thing doesn’t really fit into a film. Or even a series!

    Once I ate nothing but a couple soda crackers and a spoon or two of genuine maple syrup (good stuff) for a bit over a year. Only one hospital visit, there towads the end, for fluid nutrition.

  11. “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” – Epictetus

    Speaking as someone who occasionally does carry his world on his back and sleep on rocks, there is nothing like a clean pair of anything a few days in. Or that beloved, delicious milkshake at the end of the hike.

  12. The main point here is one that more people should be aware of, especially the commies like Mamdani in NYFC who attack anyone they consider “privileged, rich, fat cats.” If you’re living in a first world country, you’re more privileged than any king living in even the early 20th century.

    As Churchill said, “socialism is the gospel of envy.” If someone has more of anything than you, you’re taught to get the state to take their wealth away.

    I’ll add myself to the crowd who fasts regularly, usually only one day a time though, around 40 hours from last bite to next bite. After feeling unusually cold and getting concerned I was damaging my metabolism, this month I’ve been doing two single day fasts per week. Fasting and prayer are a remarkably strong medication, they’re just not a substitute for good antibiotics.

    1. Agreed! And I still need Neosporin. Wealth is not produced by Mamdani and his ilk, only consumed. Bad times ahead for them.

  13. One of the greatest benefits of military service is recognizing – eyewitnessed, and first-hand – what an unmitigated dumpster-fire sh*thole the rest of the world is, economically, politically, socially, and civilizationally, to the point that when you return to this republic, alone among the nations of the world, you want to get on your knees and thank God for it, and choke the living sh*t out of anyone jackassical enough who wants to gleefully burn it all down.

    The rest of your life is meeting the very @$$holes domestically who lack any appreciation of that fact, and realizing that the biggest enemies of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness here are largely your own neighbors, and the Turd World allies they’ve imported here to help them in their planned arson. Like Eurostan now or Venezuela in the last two decades don’t point out how that approach works out.

    We’re entering End Game, inevitably. And afterwards, there won’t be two sides any more. There can be only one. Wiping out the half of this country that doesn’t want it would only take us to the population of this country circa 1950.

    I’m good with that.

    1. And if you think wiping out half of the population just sounds like too much work to be bothered with, just wait until the next Carrington like Event (look it up – we’re overdue), or for that matter if China thinks it’s too much work to try a nationwide invasion and just EMP’s us into the late 1800’s. Current projection is a die-off of approximately 90% of our current population within a year – due to the collapse of civilization that would occur – along with its attendant easy access to things like food, water, and modern medicine. The only fly in that ointment (besides an eventual attempt at invading us), is that the ‘die off’ won’t be just one side or another (although I can make a fairly safe bet it won’t be an ‘even’ die-off by both of the existing ‘sides’ here), the problem is that there won’t be any clean ‘wiping’ of the population done – I mean, look how bad it was with COVID being the only thing keeping us from toilet paper. No, killing off 90% of the population just resets the clock a few decades. There’ll still be a requisite reconning with the biggest enemies of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (be they foreign, or domestic). At least, eventually.

      1. Yep. Waiting for “nature” to do the heavy lifting for us prolly isn’t gonna work out well.

        I’ve been building my own EMP in the garage with help from Grok. The problem is I can’t find an extension cord long enough to connect the 240v outlet to the machine since the effective range range of the pulse is 800 km according to Grok. I suspect Grok is not being forthright. But these are the paradox of our time.

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