Of Gold, Gooses and Eggs

Late to the party as always, but I'm blogging today about the Yankees huge off-season coup in which they acquired the 3 best players that are going to be available in what might be the next half-decade. Matt Holliday is going to free agency next year and he can expect a true Boston-New York bidding war for his services while Albert Pujols would only leave St. Louis through the management's gross incompetency.

But I find that anyone who has whined about the Yankees using their financial might has also unquestionably demonstrated an immature understanding of the nature of the world. By this, I don't mean to say (in a thick Brooklyn brogue whilst chomping on a cigar and wearing a fedora and overcoat) "That's just the way the world is kid. Deal with it." No, I'm referring to the very nature of the world in which we live; a world that operates on the principle of "equivalent exchange."

I don't believe in accidents. I believe in intelligent design. Poorly designed teams do not win World Series. Teams aren't formed by random collisions of human beings, maple bats and buffalo hide. There's a grand architect who's paid up to $2m per annum to take an abyss of possibilities and speak into existence a team to play 162 games between April and September.

Winning teams don't appear by accident. They have to be designed.

Don't misunderstand the point though. Winning can happen on a budget. Florida in 2003, the Rays this past year or Oakland in every other year are excellent examples of winning poor. Then there are the teams who have won with enormous payrolls. The scrappy Boston Red Sox, the blue-collar champions of every downtrodden Sully, Smitty and Patty have the distinction of fielding the most expensive (2007) and second most expensive (2004) teams to ever win the World Series. Boston fans, however rarely remember this fact when they complain about the Yankees' spending habits.

At any rate, the principle of equivalent exchange applies. Florida built their teams through devastating fire sales that alienated the city they played in. They traded away popular players for talented prospects that would lead them to their next championship. Meanwhile, the Rays paid for their trip to the World Series by fielding fifth place teams for a decade. Being a terrible team for so long has allowed them to amass players with the dazzling upside of B.J. Upton, Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli and Evan Longoria. They also selected Delmon Young who was sent over to Minnesota in a trade for Matt Garza, a critical piece of the 2008 puzzle. The world operates on equivalent exchange, value for value.

Let's take a moment to understand how baseball operates. Most teams receive a welfare check from the Yankees as a result of MLB's luxury tax. This was instituted to make teams more competitive. Let me say it another way: the Yankees are paying other teams to be better. But the majority of these teams do not put the money back into their baseball product. That $40m the Yankees pay typically lines the owners pockets and fans see not a penny of it. Who is to blame there?

The Yankees do not operate on the same business model that other teams operate on. For perhaps most baseball teams, there's not a big difference between winning 70 games a year or winning 90 games a year if the miss the playoffs. The Yankees however only turn a profit once they make the post-season. Their business model requires winning.

This is why I love the Yankees. Their team is their integrity and value. I don't mean some idiotic amorphous idea like "steroids" or "the love of the game," but the hard fact and truth that the Yankees dedication to fielding the best team that they can is directly related to their survival as a business enterprise. The same holds true for the Boston Red Sox and a few other teams.

If you want to see a disingenuous team, look at Minnesota's Carl Pohlad whose net worth is estimated to be triple that of the Steinbrenner family. He doesn't invest in making a better product, and it doesn't stem from a lack of ability, but a deficiency in desire. Owners like that don't care about Joe SportsFan who watches every year hoping that Kansas City (owned by Walmart) or Seattle (Nintendo) can contend.

Baseball, like all of life, operates on the principle of equivalent exchange. Brian Cashman is the highest paid General Manager for a reason. He's expected to create the best team in the major leagues. He doesn't have the option of holding a fire sale (the contracts are largely immovable), or being the worst team in baseball for a decade, but he does have his owner's incredible wealth. More than that, he has the city of New York which subsidized their new Stadium which is an incredible headwater of revenue streams. He prepared his team and business for a recession. The Steinbrenners offered him opportunity and wealth in exchange for his skills. Isn't that a fair trade and the basis of all good?

I love the fact that the Steinbrenner family owns the Yankees. It's the same love I have for a favorite food vendor or clothing manufacturer. When you find someone who cares about their product and is consistently dedicated to putting the best that they have on the market, doesn't that merit, hasn't that earned the customer's appreciation and loyalty? Why should the fact that the Yankees consistently win be a mark of shame? Each team has their own path to fielding a winning team. There are costs involved with fielding a low-salaried team, whether it's being at the bottom for a decade or destroying your team every 5 years. Why shouldn't Yankee dollars be looked at as the best option? There is no fruit that grows apart from the root. Teams must be built and costs must be paid. The Yankees pay in dollars and other teams pay in loyalty. Choose your currency.

The Joy And Misery

"The higher we soar the smaller we seem to those that cannot fly."

-- Nietzsche

I wrote in a previous post that escaping boredom permanently required tremendous amounts of pain and sacrifice. Why, someone might ask, would I pay that cost to escape boredom?

It's because it's not painful and we don't see it as a sacrifice. Just a price.

It doesn't truly hurt when I squat 400 lbs. or when I spend my 5th hour writing. I have the strange sensation of burning in my thighs and soreness in my lower back and surely, I'll get light-headed when I write that much, but it doesn't hurt. It's not painful. It's just a bothersome sensation that happens to a weak body. All I need to do is become stronger so I can go further without being bothered by it. It's not a sacrifice anymore than it's a sacrifice when I purchase clothing or food. It's simply an exchange. My effort for my joy. Value for value.

I believe that my effort could procure many things. If it is procuring for me joy, then why should I begrudge it's payment? Hard work is the toll collected at the entrance to Atlantis, home of heroes.

My life finally has value because I have claimed its value. If all I did was see my life as a way to collect entertainment, sense perceptions, or endorphins, then I could not see the value in living. But when I acknowledged its value, then I began to live as if it held its own value. And that has made all the difference. Someone else's misery is my deepest joy.

On the other hand, could someone honestly describe 2 hours in front of a glowing box as "joy?" I cannot imagine that happening. More than that, I will do all that I can to keep such a thought far from my worldview.

Training Video

Always a sucker for a good training video.

I've decided to focus on training for the triathlon. No more screwing around trying to become the best home run hitter Flushing churches have ever seen. A straight line, a narrow way, that's all I ask for.

10,000

This is >>why you suck<< according to TC.

The most surprising thing was that they really couldn't find any "naturals." Nor could they find any grinders, people who just worked harder than everybody else but just didn't have the talent to become elite.

The thing that distinguished one from another was simply hard work, nothing else.

But the weird thing is that 10,000 hours — roughly the amount of practice a truly committed devotee could accrue over 10 year — keeps popping up in different fields. Whether you're a writer, a concert pianist, a basketball player, computer programmer, or chess master, true greatness seems to pivot on that magic number.

And later on,

There it was again, hours of practice accrued equates to success. Nothing magical. The more psychologists in Gladwell's book looked at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.

And finally,

One can't help but wonder how many Gretzkys, A-Rods, or Ronaldos got left behind because of the calendar. One wonders how many Einsteins, Steve Jobses, or Bill Gateses got lumped in with the "less mature" students because they had the bad luck to be Sagittarius instead of Aquarius.

Gladwell encapsulates the problem thusly:

"Because we so profoundly, personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement. We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those that succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail."

The answer might be that often, your perceived failures might not be so much genetic as they are sociological, might not be so physiological as the are psychological, and armed with that knowledge, maybe you're not necessarily destined to be the loser society thought you were.

How long would it take me to make my 10,000?

1 year = 27 hours a day of practice, a mathematical impossibility

3 years = 9 hours a day of practice, possible under unlikely circumstances

6 years = 4.5 hours a day of practice, now entering the outer limits of possibility

9 years = 3 hours a day of practice, frankly this is do-able

Mind you, this is every day. This is after 8 hours of work, I would come home and push relentlessly at bettering myself in a skill for 3 hours. It wouldn't be wise to say something absurd like "sleep less" because sleep is where all that training solidifies and grows. Never demean rest.

There should be micro-rest, like sleep, and then macro-rest, where for a week or so, the volume and intensity is severely cut back so that the body and mind can recuperate and adjust. That doesn't count towards the 10,000, which means I would have to work a lot more than 3 hours a day or that it will take me more than 10 years. Keep in mind also that there exists a limit to how much a person can practice. How many piano players suffer from tendinitis? There's a reason a certain elbow condition is called a "tennis elbow." Overtraining is no myth. How will you make up for lost time? How will I make up for lost time.

At 25, I feel like life has left me behind like a broken down car on the side of the highway. It was the same feeling I got when during the Brooklyn Half-Marathon, my legs broke down and refused to carry me. Slow runners, fat runners, children runners were passing me.

"I was thinking, damn, these niggas that much better than me?" -- Kanye, Touch the Sky

But at the Brooklyn, I refused to allow my legs to refuse me. If I had to crawl on my hands and knees, if my immaterial spirit had to burst from its earthly coil and drag what amounts to the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water and minerals across the finish line, it would have.

3 hours a day is a tremendous price-tag. You know what you can't do if you're spending 3 hours a day practicing. You can't go to parties, play video games, fantasy sports or go out for drinks with some buddies from work. It means going home to a cold bed, waking up to a cold morning to eat cold cereal and training in the cold.

But think about what you're buying with 3 hours a day. It means never being bored. Think about that for a moment. A bored person. Who talks in such terms? A person who believes their life is a pain and a bother. Entertainment for that person exists to distract from the painfulness of living. If you pay the cost, your life will be fundamentally different from a person who is capable of being bored. They will not understand you and soon you will not understand them. Think about your average high school or college student and how much of a waste their life is. They are less than dogs and rodents. They are worms, the sponges that live on the bottom of the sea. They go through life absent-mindedly running into barely enough processed, machine waste to fuel their rotting, barely erect corpses while accumulating a vast horde of useless cultural trivia. I ask you, if you knew that there was a way to escape that kind of life, would you pay the cost?

Your thirst for entertainment and distraction is only a band-aid. Your life is miserable and worthless. I offer you a cure. Hard work, pain, sacrifice in the beneficent, magnificent sense and you will escape that life.

Hear me, Christians. Do not reduce my words to allegory. Accepting Christ is not the way to spin it. Look around at the vast stretch of Christendom and acknowledge the truth. There are just as many Christians who live worthless lives as there are non-Christians. Do not have it mistaken. I REJECT the claims that so many preachers have made in my youth: "Accept Christ and you will live a passionate life." And if they fail to live a passionate life, then they must not have accepted Christ. This is the dirty deceit of a fortune-teller.

The hand has written on the wall and it has written

1 0 , 0 0 0

On Occasion Of A Celebration

Francisco's speech in AS is my favorite passage ever written on love. On occasion of Anna and James' wedding, I couldn't help but remember that love is a response to our highest values. And can be nothing else.

“Do you remember what I said about money and about the men who seek to reverse the law of cause and effect? The men who try to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind? Well, the man who despises himself tries to gain self- esteem from sexual adventures–which can’t be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man’s sense of his own value.”

“You’d better explain that.”

“Did it ever occur to you that it’s the same issue? The men who think that wealth comes from the material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think–for the same reason–that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of ones mind, choice or code of values. They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy on life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he’s taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment–just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity!–an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience–or to fake–a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer — because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut. He does not seek to . . . what’s the matter?” he asked, seeing the look on Rearden’s face, a look of intensity much beyond mere interest in an abstract discussion.

“Go on,” said Rearden tensely.

“He does not seek to gain his value, he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body. But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises–because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the morel code that damns him. Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives–and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One proceeds from the other. Love is our response to our highest values–and can be nothing else. Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws–and he will have cut himself in two. His body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws are values, he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attract him. He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure. Then he will scream that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of the spirit. And then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex–nothing but shame.”

Rearden said slowly, looking off, not realizing that he was thinking aloud, “At least . . . I’ve never accepted that other tenet . . . I’ve never felt guilty about making money.”

Francisco missed the significance of the first two words; he smiled and said eagerly, “You do see that it’s the same issue? No, you’d never accept any part of their vicious creed. You wouldn’t be able to force it upon yourself. If you tried to damn sex as evil, you’d still find yourself, against your will, acting on the proper moral premise. You’d be attracted to the highest woman you met. You’d always want a heroine. You’d be incapable of self-contempt. You’d be unable to believe that existence is evil and that you’re a helpless creature caught in an impossible universe. You’re the man who’s spent his life shaping matter to the purpose of his mind. You’re the man who would know that just as an idea unexpressed in physical action is contemptible hypocrisy, so is platonic love–and just as physical action unguided by an idea is a fool’s self-fraud, so is sex when cut off from one’s code of values. Its’ the same issue, and you would know it. Your inviolate sense of self-esteem would know it. You would be incapable of desire for a woman you despised. Only the man who extols the purity of a love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love. But observe that most people are creatures cut in half who keep swinging desperately to one side or to the other. One kind of half is the man who despises money, factories, skyscrapers and his own body. He holds undefined emotions about non-conceivable subjects as the meaning of life and his claim of virtue. And he cries with despair, because he can feel nothing for the woman he respects, but finds himself in bondage to an irresistible passion for a slut from the gutter. He is the man whom people call an idealist. The other kind of half is the man whom people call practical, the man who despises principles, abstractions, art, philosophy and his own mind. He regards the acquisition of material objects as the only goal of existence– and he laughs at the need to consider their purpose or their source. He expects them to give him pleasure– and he wonders why the more he gets, the less he feels. He is the man who spends his time chasing women. Observe the triple fraud which he perpetrates upon himself. He will not acknowledge his need of self-esteem, since he scoffs at such a concept as moral values; yet he feels the profound self-contempt which comes from believing that he is a piece of meat. He will not acknowledge, but he knows that sex is the physical expression of a tribute to personal values. So he tries, by going through the motions of the effect, to acquire that which should have been the cause. He tries to gain a sense of his own value from the women who surrender to him– and he forgets that the women he picks have neither character nor judgment nor standard of value. he tells himself that all he’s after is physical pleasure– but observe that he tires of his woman in a week or a night, that he despises professional whores and that he loves to imagine he is seducing virtuous girls who make a great exception for his sake. It is the feeling of achievement that he seeks and never finds. What glory can there be in the conquest of a mindless body? Now that is your woman chaser. Does the description fit me?

“God, no!”

“Then you can judge, without asking my word for it, how much chasing of women I’ve done in my life.”

426

My favorite character always:

Redux

I know I posted it before but I just can't stop thinking about it:

The year after Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile, TWELVE people did the same thing. TWELVE.

A feat that scientists had thought beyond the realm of human achievement, a feat whose attempt jeopardizes human life. The heart, these experts thought, would explode if anyone tried to break that record.

TWELVE people, the next year.

To date, the record has been lowered by 17 seconds, an enormous gulf in the world of professional athletes. That mark, once revered as the pinnacle of human achievement is now the standard for any Tom, Dick and Mikey who wants to run middle-distance. To go on further, that mark has been bested by a man in his 40's. It's been doubled-up by Daniel Komen of Kenya who ran 2 miles in under 8 minutes. No woman has done it yet. Someone will. And I'd like to buy her a drink in gratitude.

Impossible?

Bonhoeffer wrote about the hypocrisy that's possible with Catholic Sainthood in "The Cost of Discipleship." Sainthood, you see, allows rank and file Christians to believe that these people were a special breed; it creates a double-standard.

"Oh, I couldn't be like THAT."
"God just chooses SOME people to do great things."
"That's for a saint to do. I'm just a normal human being."

Screw. That.

I choose not to see the Augustines, Calvins, Luthers, Theresa's and who-have-you's as anything special. Roger Bannister was a man. Usain Bolt is a man. Michael Phelps is a man. Lance Armstrong, Neil Armstrong, Louie Armstrong, all just men. Stanley Lee is a man.

This is not to bring them down. By stating the facts of reality, I find that I've elevated myself up. I too, am a man. I breathe. I live. I can destroy my muscles like they did, and they will rebuild themselves just as theirs did. I can destroy my limiting beliefs like they did. And I will live within the framework of possibility, conquest and joy. Will I ever accomplish anything remotely comparable? Who knows? I don't even have a goal on that level yet. But that doesn't matter. I'll never stop pushing the envelope of my capacity. And I'll never stop being surprised at how much further this envelope goes.

To some, there may be such a heinous stench when a person raises himself up. I believe that we should never have considered ourselves so low. I hope that as I climb up, others might have a small spark of sentiment, a warming or thawing of spirit and realize that no... it's not impossible.

Impossible is nothing.

Zenith

Within 10 years...




And this story HERE makes me think that my goals need to be set even higher. Thank you, David for having already gone where I want to go. I know I can go further. I certainly know I cannot aim at anything less.

Ascent

I really wanted to, in what may be my last year in NY, see the Halloween parade in the West Village. But in retrospect, it's better that I didn't. I found something better, a challenge, a task beyond what I can handle right now: the 2009 NYC Triathlon.

Registration sold out in 22 minutes. I took 8 minutes to do it. Not much of a margin for error. I wonder at how much margin of error there exists in training. You see, I don't believe a person can accidentally finish a triathlon or a marathon. You don't wake up the morning of one of these challenges and luck your way into your goal.

It's exactly what draws me to these insane endurance challenges. No one lucks into them. It's highly unlikely but a person can be said to luck into winning a 100m race or throwing a shot put. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No. There the unseen power of the central-nervous-system coordinates a vast array of neurons and muscles to act in a fraction of a second. The training is demanding and the athletes are amazing. By no means am I belittling the great achievements that they've done.

But those goals belong to them. My pursuit has another target. No one can luck themselves into a marathon or triathlon. I would say it's impossible to be genetically made for one. No, these require training, constant, relentless pushing and perfecting of the human body to prepare itself for this test.

How long does an athlete run to finish a marathon? 26.2 miles? Absurd. An athlete has logged hundreds of miles for the purpose of finishing 26.2 miles. How many weeks of two-a-days will I have to put in to finish this triathlon? How much research will I have to do on my own time? How much dedication and heart will it take to push myself forward in spite of pain? How much can a man and his body endure?

More than we think possible.

I am certain that any athlete who loves himself and loves his sport knows what I am talking about. The true love is a love for self and for capability.

If someone could wave a magic wand and make me triathlon ready tomorrow morning, I would undoubtedly fall into a deep depression and listlessness. I've been working hard so that I can see my 6-pack for the first time in my life. Right now, I have a rough outline of 4 of them. If someone could use sorcery and make the body-fat vanish, I would be really disappointed.

The point was the difficulty, in the struggle and the overcoming.

I remember reading a devotional very early on in my Christian life that spoke on the beautiful deaths of

Ambition

Goal: 4 Deserts in 5 years.

"To build a city at the bottom of the sea... insanity. But where else could we be free from the clutching hands of the parasites? ... It was not impossible to build Rapture at the bottom of the sea. It was impossible to build it anywhere else." -- Andrew Ryan

Further Thoughts On Attraction

After speaking with Shanella for the past few days on the nature of attraction, I've come to realize something.

As humans, by and large, and by that I mean that this is a generalization about the population and that there are expected to be numerous deviations and exceptions, but by and large we are only attracted to what our egos allow for us.

We cannot be attracted by someone of too low a status. They would drag us down and dim our candle. Yet, they cannot be of a higher status for we would be outshone. No, they must be of a slightly lower status as much as possible for then we would have the perfect accessory.

There are a number of errors here in this line of thinking:
1- It's reductive. People are reduced to accessories of ego.
2- It stems from low self-esteem and a fragile psyche. The mark of a second-rater is someone who resents the accomplishments of others for fear that it would demean their own. People who have truly accomplished something by their own ability don't worry about the accomplishments of others. In fact, the achiever is often very lonely. How few people understand that capable people yearn for the companionship of other capable persons.
3- It assumes people are static elements never growing, incapable of regressing. What happens when a person grows old, the firm, soft skin sags and grows coarse? Abandonment? Or what happens if the inferior partner suddenly finds enough self-esteem to rise beyond?

Decisions made with this kind of ego are doomed to endless strife and probably failure. I'm not sure if I can come up with 10 pairings that I know where this is not the case. I can likely think of 6-8, but I doubt if I can think of 10.

The Kindest Cut

"People fail in direct proportion to their willingness to accept socially acceptable excuses for failure. Being a victim gives you a claim on the sympathy of others, and it means you're not responsible for what happens, and therefore escapes responsibility for your own failure. " -- 13 fatal errors managers make and how to avoid them

I remember years back a friend had told me that given the weight that I lost I was extremely good looking. She said that I should stop right there because at that point, I was perfect. That was 40 lbs. ago. A big reason why I was able to lose these last two bags of rice was that her comment meant nothing to me. She was a good friend, yes. It was ostensibly a compliment, yes. But I did not believe her. I look in the mirror and I see areas for improvement.

I suppose I was rather lucky. Back then, her comment meant nothing because I couldn't understand it. Now, I see differently. My current level of fitness carries with it a good amount of social currency. It opens doors, generates smiles and can get me a good way. A lot of my friends have no idea that I want to lose about 20 more lbs. Many women have recently remarked how "handsome," "strapping," and "gallant" I looked lately. To my shame, these comments are starting to get to me. Why shame? It is shameful because I am letting them slow down my progress. I have missed 3 workouts in the past 2 weeks. I've abbreviated God knows how many more of them. The weight is still dropping, but how long can that be sustained with a overdrawn diet? I've had 2 beers in the last 2 weeks.

Reader, do you understand what I'm saying? I've done this in the past. I bemoan my current failures because they are what many people would consider extraordinary success. What does it say when my shameful failure is something that you could not achieve at your best? I've done that in the past, but this is not what I am here to do. I am not here to inflate my ego.

This blog is for me. It's for my progress and growth in life. It's a record and testament to the world of who I am... no, not who I am; who I am going to be. I am going to be someone who is unaffected by compliments. I will not allow them to increase my self-esteem or influence my worldview. I must insulate my soul against the happiness that they bring.

Why?

Because they will slow me down.

How can I continue to push myself if I think I've already made it? What kind of runner keeps running at full bore past the finish line? How can I push the envelope when I believe I've already burst through it?

In the beginning, the difficulty lay in insulating my soul from the pain that the nay-sayers gave me. You can't do it. You're nobody. Diets never work. You're not seriously thinking of losing 100 lbs. Actually, I didn't have a plan for how many pounds I would lose. I just kept going because no one was strong enough to stop me. Now the difficulty lies in insulating my soul from pleasure that my friends want to give me. Stanley, you look so strapping. That suit fits you wonderfully! What got me here, will not get me there. I cannot allow the word "enough" to enter my vocabulary. I cannot allow myself to feel contentment. I can give myself a few moments to breathe before I get back to the grind, but never more than a few.

There is the poison of a scorpion whose mythology says that should the victim ever stop moving, that victim will die. We've all been stung. Contentment, pleasure, retirement is the poison. Keep your ass moving.

Gehenna

New workout: "Burn in Hell"

40x5 kneeling ab-wheel roll-outs

then

20 extended arm push-ups
20 crunches
20 bicycle crunches
for 5 rounds, 30 seconds rest between rounds

then

100 turkish get-ups

finish with

66 second plank hold

Total: 600 reps, 66 second plank

I have a couple of special workouts designed for nights like these. Internalize the pain, don't dull it. Don't do what others do, drinking away their pain, trying their best to forget. No, be awake. Feel it. Intensify it. Do what you can to make it hurt more. Use the special playlist you've saved for this occasion. Let the pressure build.

"Self-improvement is masturbation. Self-destruction on the other hand..." - Tyler Durden

Design

The parasite sees the product and divorces it from the means of production. It is not the inventor nor the work that brings forth a light bulb, a computer or a space ship, it is merely metal and minerals come together by chance.

The parasite sees a rich man in fine clothes driving around town in a foreign car with a beautiful woman. How rare it is to think that it was that man's mind which secured that life! No, the first inclination was that it was inherited, a gift, the next, that it was achieved through unscrupulous means, and the last begrudging one, he was just luckier than me.

Are there any who have seen past this illusion? Who? The truest, most honest of women, the gold-digger. She dispenses with the deception that other women foist upon the world. Her purpose is naked before the world: she is nature's way of dispensing righteous justice upon one-dimensional men. She divorces the man's wealth from the man who is incapable of controlling his emotions to defend it.

One must not only be smart enough to win his life. One need also use his mind to defend it.

Ghosts and Corpses

The religionists would have us believe that we are nothing but ghosts, spirits trapped in a delusion of physicality.

Their mechanism-worshipping counterparts would have you believe that we are nothing but corpses waiting to fall, bodies moving by nothing more than conditioning and instinct.

I believe I am neither. I am more. I am a man.

A Reformation of Choice

"Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice—and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man—by choice; he has to hold his life as a value—by choice: he has to learn to sustain it—by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues—by choice." -- excerpted from John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged

A Christian must be a Christian by choice. I have only now realized this fact. Be careful in reading these words and thinking that you know what I'm writing.

A Christian does not become a Christian by choice. It is not his decision making that produces conversion, a change in acknowledged beliefs and allegiances, it is merely one of the first signs of it. But a Christian must be a Christian by choice. It cannot be sustained by habit. Neither can it be sustained by fear of hell, of social shunning, of parental disapproval, of God knows what.

A Christian must be a Christian because he values his existence as a Christian, as someone who holds his allegiance to the God described in his Scriptures, as someone who understands and chooses to obey, as someone who understands what set of values he is acquiring.

I didn't understand this before now. As far back as I can remember, people have always called me "smart," "precocious," "intelligent," and a million other empty flattering phrases. But I never felt that they were accurate. It was a self-esteem issue, yes, but I believe there was more. It was an issue of the conscious ownership of my own mind.

Only in the last 2 years have I begun reclaiming my mind from the world. Before then I was only a curator of facts to which anyone with any illusion of competence or confidence could deposit their thoughts. But reader, do you know what you call a system with no standards? It is a sewer. And we should greet a sewer-like mind with the same convulsed face of disgust that we use for an open manhole cover. My mind was such a thing.

But now, I have acquired a powerful talisman to ward off the world and to protect value, the word 'No.' No, I think that is a stupid idea. No, I do not understand what you are saying. No, I will not for the sake of being polite, acquiesce to your irrational claims.

And most importantly: No, I will not keep quiet on questions I've long held to myself. I've shuttled all my concerns and worries to the basement of my mind. No one else would understand. No one else even thinks in the same categories that I do! I have to protect them from my own thoughts!

What was I wishing for? What was I waiting for? Was I hoping that someone more intelligent than me, someone whose reason was trustworthy could come along, wave their magic wand and banish these thoughts from my mind? What an infinitely depraved desire! It's the equivalent of wishing to win a mental-spiritual lottery! If I have incurred these debts with my extravagant thinking then why should I expect any way to pay them off except through my effort and my exercise of rationality? I despise compulsive lottery-players and gamblers as one of the lowest forms of existence. I have damned myself by my own values.

No gallant knight is going to gallop in on a white horse to save my mind. But that's OK. I am no damsel in distress.

This is MY mind. This is MY life. I must choose. What will my values be? What life will those values produce? I can hear the cries of some of my friends already.

"But man is so limited! He can only reason so much! God is bigger than man! You can't put God in a box! Stanley, you just have to stop thinking and believe!"

Then what is my alternative? It is my reason or it is the judgment of another, and how do I know what that person may have in his mind? I know what I have in my own.

There is a good reason I stopped listening to Christian music by and large. I will not go wherever someone tells me. I will not do whatever someone tells me. I will not speak another person's words in place of my own. I began, instinctively at first, consciously later, to realize that so much of what I saw in Christianity was a negation of identity. Not me, but God.

This is the exact disaster of thought that I escaped from in Buddhism. My ideological reason for leaving Buddhism was the fact that I wanted to live and exist, as Stanley, not as Brahman. As Atman approached Brahman, I would wake up from the illusion and realize that we were never separate entities at all. I began to sense a similar strain in Christianity, that my existence was evil and that it should be exterminated by God's grandeur.

The sloppy reader will think that I have thrown in the towel. I have not. Absence of proof is not proof of an absence. I do not have the answers, but what I do have is questions. These, I think, are worthwhile questions. They need to be answered.

What kind of integrity would I have if I did not endeavor to answer them. What kind of integrity would I have if I threw away God's gift of rationality and thought and instead plugged my ears and screamed "SATAN YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GET ME I BELIEVE IN GOD NYAHNYAHNYAH." If that is what it takes to continue in faith, I will not continue in faith. If what it takes to continue in faith is a moving set of songs in a dimly lit church, a preacher's fervent pleas to the congregation to come back to the Father who loves so much as the Spirit moves through the piano subtly playing in the background (it's hilarious how when this is done at church, it is the movement of the Spirit, the very Hand of God, and when it's done on a TV show, it's only emotional manipulation)... if that is what I need to continue in faith, then I will drop everything and not continue.

I value my mind. This is the battleground. I must choose. I must value. I.

My existence is an inarguable premise and I will not surrender it.

Roots and Seeds

Why is it that the love of money is the root of all evil?

Impossible

"Many experts thought it impossible for a man to run a mile in under four minutes. Many even thought it would cause instant death from over-exertion. Then, of course Roger Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes. In the next year, TWELVE more people broke the four-minute barrier." -- DD

Forget what you know.
Believe what you'll see.

"And to all the people who tell me I'll never make it, keep on talking. It only gives me more motivation." -- Dallas Robinson

A = A

"To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. Centuries ago, , the man who was - no matter what his errors - the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification."

This is the answer to all the years of soul-searching and asking "Who am I?" The answer is "I am the person asking that question." In quite a different way, I am who I am. I can be nothing else. Maybe I'll write a blog on the tetragrammaton one day and how it links to that specific part of the John Galt speech. It's fecundity intrigues me. But not enough and not today. Today I want to talk about me because I've come to realize my identity.

Or rather, I've realized it awhile ago but the thought needs to sublimate and become words.

A is A.

Stanley is Stanley.

Who I am is who I am. Who I will be is not necessarily who I am. Who I was is not necessarily who I am. Who I was is not necessarily who I will be. I exist, but only in the present. The past exists only in memory, the future does not exist until it comes to be. I exist, now and only ever now.

The linguistic turn "I existed." is a contradiction. Existence is only ever in the present. The past is not who I am. It's who I was. It is contributory not determinative. I exist and I choose to exist. I choose how I exist. I create the future.

And we all do. But how many people, how few people realize this truth. How many people see their lives as nothing but machinery set on course and forgotten. How many people are truly nothing more than animals trying to scratch various itches of food, sex, sleep, shelter? But that is not for me? I was not born to scratch itches. I was born with a mind and a mind that chooses.

But what are my choices?

"Saul, Saul! Why must you kick against the prick?"

Moose X-ing

Thanks for making this season watchable every 5 days, Moose.
Thanks for all the great pitching duels you had with Pedro back in the day.