The most essential ingredient of a lame-ass life is comfort. It’s the God of this nation. You worship what you most fear living without. The thirst for it is insatiable, its power domineering, its devastation perfect… and its carnage utterly indiscernible. It will kill who you most deeply long to be and you won’t even know it happened. And you never will. Because… its comfortable. It’s its own poison.
Hungry. That’s what “slender” feels like.
Exhausted. That’s what “proud parents” feels like.
Painful. That’s what “awesome” feels like.
There’s some damn fool notion that if you’re really doing really well, you’re comfortable. Complete bullshit. When you get to the base of the mountain. The one that’s really worth climbing. And you’re looking up at its peak. You’re going to realize something: you aren’t strong enough to make it to the top. And you’ll be right. But you who will start to climb in spite of it… you will soon discover the secret: the only way that you can ever become strong enough to climb to the top of the mountain is by climbing to the top of the mountain. You will be strong enough to make it to the top in the instant you arrive there.
It’s called “becoming”. And becoming just sucks. It is supposed to. If it doesn’t, you aren’t. And the more it does, the more you are… but only if you get to the end. Because if you stop in the middle of it… you will die there.
It’s a good thing we don’t remember our own birth. We were supremely comfortable in the womb. Then without warning we were plunged into the most horrifying and painful experience of our lives. And at the end of it we took our first breath of life. We would have preferred to stay in the womb. Had we done so, we would have died. And had we not undergone the entirety of birth’s anguish, we would have died. Our only chance at any of life was all of the angst of becoming alive. Nothing has changed.
More should be written about becoming. In fact an article should be dedicated to that very first step to becoming and an even more critical step. . That first step is terrifying yet exhilarating. That step gets a person moving into the unknown. On the path to becoming is another step that is terrifying – it’s the left/right step of abandonment and commitment. In those steps on the journey to becoming a person faces the inflection point that to succeed they can’t go back and must abandon their previous self; and to not fail they must embrace a new self and be immovably committed.
Nice article Jason. You are capturing truths that people in our fast causal society need to hear.
Thanks for your thoughts, brother. What you are describing is indeed the critical beginning. It is clear that you know it from experience, because if you’ve never done it, you don’t know about it. And if you have ever done it, you know how painful it is. Because those who think you’re leaving them behind will think very ill of you. And those who are closest will likely think it most.
This experience for me elicited the following… yes, Jason, I am foisting a poem on you.
The Heavy Kind of Pain
-Jason Lee Morrison
It is a heavy kind of Pain.
That look of doubt
from a good friend.
To bear the ire
of the good men.
Kindly pitied
as if a fool
by those who once
believed in you.
And note the dis-
appointment from
Your last and great-
est champions.
To see those plead-
ing eyes that say:
“Oh, please don’t throw
your life away.
Be strong and brave
to what is true.
Be what you’d want
your children to.”
Conceding to
your errant way,
As long as you
return one day.
It is a heavy kind of Pain.
For when at last
I chased my dream,
They said I’d run
from everything.
I left the lie
for truth, in trade.
They said I’d thrown
my life away.
The bravest deed
in life I’ve done,
They say it was
a cowardly one.
For my children
I became a man.
They’re told that I’ve
abandoned them.
When Nineveh
I finally found,
they said that I
was Joppa bound.
When I my great-
est calling win,
They’ll say it is
my greatest sin.
It is a heavy kind of Pain.
I carry it
with no offense,
with love’s sole
indifference.
For they are most,
dearest of friends,
And wish for me
the best of ends.
To do great things
they know I can
And be sought out
from other men.
Just as those who know
the gods’ true voice
seek men to build
their dreams of choice.
They seek only
the best of men.
And I will not
be one of them.
For theirs I’ll not
put mine a-shelf,
For I can hear
the gods myself.
Thanks again for your comments, Jason. All the best to you, my friend. -JLM
So very proud of a Recon Brother doing this. Telling the truths of life. Someone needs to. I’m glad it is you.
S/F
Tadpole
Thanks brother. I would not have learned it but in the fires of our violent ilk.
A Recon Marine can speak without saying a word and can do what others can only imagine.
Never above you, Never below you, Always beside you.
-JLM
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