Went from being on top of the world and having a defined future back to being all alone and desolate in three days. I’m not a cry baby. Sometimes, I feel I deserve better, but I am humble to understand that it has
only been my own decisions that have put me in my current position and that have shaped my options and possibilities. It is daunting knowing my strengths and how to apply them, but currently lack the ablative of means to watch my strengths carry me. Ozzy Osbourne said, “Save your tears for when you really have to cry.” every person has their breaking point where they fall into a pile and lose their shit. That’s what they do to you in boot camp for the Marines. They break you down until you’re past the point you can handle- so that you have no more self confidence. Then, you learn to build it back up from nothing. If they don’t break you down completely, the drill instructors have failed. You and I have reached our own points where we can no longer handle it (which is laughable when compared to other peoples’ tribulations in this world.) Life is not about grinding, pounding it out every day so you can scratch and claw your way to the top. All that is a matter of perception. Survival on the animalistic level is a violent, darwinistic involvement. Hardships are a must in order to appreciate and achieve success. How a person handles all that mentally on a second to second basis affects the ebb and flow of their lives and opportunities on a day to day basis. To maintain a single focus is a matter of training and dedication. Always coming back to that focus means remaining humble; building a humble personality that cannot be broken. Though a person must bend a little by way of diplomacy, knowing what battles to pick, the key is not creating a battle within your own mind. Back to a single focus. With all the tedious technologies and inter-minglings of people (humans) as a whole, it is a constant struggle to retain that focus, but every struggle is an opportunity to overcome a weakness, or short coming, and is an opportunity to become stronger. A person cannot breakdown every day, every week, month or even year, like the private fresh to boot camp. Save your tears for when you really need to cry. Turn that noise off inside your head to regain focus, retain and protect what you define as “You”. When a man sees that he has nowhere to go and no money to get there, some would say he needs to stop and think. I say (at that point,) it is too late for that. We are always already at the point we have been striving to arrive at. We simply forget that, because we are always thinking about the future and allow our minds to tread in the stagnant, poisonous waters of the past. Maintaining focus is key, but it must be a positive focus focused on the moment we have arrived at. How we define this moment defines our strengths, and that definition could be clouded by our weaknesses. The hardest advice for a man to take is his own. The most correct and honourable action is the truth. In a world of people who allow their minds to enslave and lead them around like a hungry donkey, a man of truth feels lonely quite frequently, but a strong man accepts it and recites the Serenity Prayer (in some way) to remain humble. The toughest part of life is our denial of the truth. The most hated and feared men are those who live how they want and do not worry about others’ opinions. People are intimidated by and jealous of a confident person, but they do not realise it, because they lack the focus to be humble and look for the positive in every situation. Men like me remain torn by this dichotomy- having this knowledge, but having failed to apply it. What is my point? There is none, really. Like the act of peering through life through a microscope, the more powerful the microscope, the tinier the particles get until you can see the space between the particles- the path electrons take around a nucleus of an atom. Without that space, electrons would not spin and atoms would not exist. And on the flip-side, when you take a telescope and look into space, the more powerful the telescope, the more vast you realise space is- never ending, always expanding. Both through the microcosm and the macrocosm, we see endlessness. And we tend to forget about the bullshit in our heads for that moment. It is a humbling experience. Knowing all that, but knowing few people who understand that has made me feel alone in this world, even though I know it is my own neurosis that makes me feel these things. Staying humble has been a goal which I fail myself at time and time again, and might do until I die. The last thing everybody does before they die is an Out-breath. We cannot control that. But we can control our In-breaths. Morning air, damp smell of manure and horses’ hair. That is what life is about. Everything else is for the birds.
Chip Van Hassel