Seek to discipline your life – AUDIO NSFW
My dearest son,
This is a love letter from your Appa, from your dad, from your father, to you.
This is more than a love letter. This is a hope, a desire, something so important to me that it must not wait. It cannot wait. I cannot wait any longer in telling you this. It has to be put down on the record before I go.
I’ve been thinking about this idea, son, this idea of self-preservation. Now, this is not something that you will fully understand just yet but it has been understood as pretty much the strongest instinct of the human character, the human being, the human soul.
Self-preservation: the desire; the intrinsic instinct; the strongest instinct possible; to survive.
Self-preservation is the fear of death. It could also be the fear of killing. But mostly it’s the fear of death. It’s the imperative to survive. Most flee from danger because of this mere instinct, my son. They flee from danger.
From a worldly sense, self-preservation, we often see self-preservation as wrong, as cowardly, as evil, as selfish, as depraved, as weak, someone who only looks out for themselves, someone who is only interested in their survival.
This is so easily seen in movies that you’ve seen in the past. It’s often the bad guy who in the moment of greatest distress the bad guy chooses to preserve himself over all of the other things that he proclaimed during the movie that he was gonna do to the world and he was gonna do to the good guys and how he was gonna destroy and how he was gonna do all of this.
You know this son, in the moment where his character, the content of his character, the real showing of his person in that moment, the bad guys always show us their truest colors. They are cowardly. They are selfish and weak. This is how self-preservation is looked at and often regarded.
I thought of this. I was thinking about this. It’s because of the current experiences in our lives today that this is on my mind. I thought of self-preservation. Well, this is often looked at is so wrong, so cowardly, so weak, so selfish, so evil.
What is the solution? The solution came simply. It came easily. The solution was courage. Courage is the answer to all of this. Courage to stand up for the wrong. Courage when it’s easier to be cowardly. Courage amongst the depraved. Courage amongst evil. Courage when it’s easier to be selfish. Courage when you are weak. Courage is the answer to all of this, my son. Especially in the face of death. It could be considered the highest virtue of a warrior. The highest virtue of a warrior is that they have courage in the face of impending death.
In movies, it’s made clear, the music rises, the drums increase their pounding boom! Boom! It gets the heart and blood moving. Sensing this culmination to a moment when the main character, the protagonist has to choose life-death, life-death decision versus the riskiest risk of all time. I mean that is the moment of courage.
Courage can only be modelled. Courage cannot be taught. Courage cannot be taught, my son. I can never teach you to be brave. I can’t tell you. I can tell you to have courage. I can tell you to be brave in the midst of the unknown and in the midst of trying something new. I can tell you to be brave. I can tell you to have courage, but I can’t teach you that. It’s impossible son for me to teach you courage.
Courage and bravery, my son, can only be modelled, can only be grown in you through models. Models of discipline, of training, of work ethic. I could never teach you what I know in its fullness but I can model for you what work ethic looks like, what training looks like, what discipline of mind and discipline of body looks like.
I can model that for you. I can model for you courage and I can discuss with you openly and honestly the moments in which I have succeeded with courage and made the hard decisions. I can also tell you when I have failed, when I have made poor decisions, when I should have been braver, when I should have had more assertiveness, when I should have spoken up, when I should have been true to myself.
You see? It is only in those moments that courage is revealed. This is why courage, my son, can never be taught to you. Courage can only be revealed in you through the ordeal of initiation, through the ordeal of experience, through the ordeal of having to make the choice, having to do and go into the grey and try when you don’t know.
That’s when courage is revealed. That’s the moment did you’ve been preparing for in your training, in your discipline, in your work ethic. You see your work ethic, your discipline, your training, what I aspire to model for you my son is a work ethic, a discipline, and a training that prepares me for the tough decisions. And I want you to see that. I want you to listen to what I’m saying. So that you know why I do what I do and why I act and behave the way I do. Son, you may never be with me during those ordeals, during those moments when courage is necessary. You may never be in the room with me ever, but my desire is that you know the outcome.
You see, in today’s world, there is not enough sharing of these ordeals, these moments of courage, these moments of bravery. Maybe that’s just because we no longer have moments of bravery required in today’s world. Maybe that’s why we no longer know how to deal with things. There’s no practice encouraged in today’s world. There’s no experience of pain in today’s world. Maybe that’s why. In many ways, not that I know the truth or anything. But I think a lot of parents in the past have gone through extraordinary pains so much so that they have chosen to shield their children from pain.
This is not how I have chosen life for you my son. Now this might seem deterministic, but you are still young and you will always be my son but you are still young. Someday you will be older and you’ll be able to make your own decisions, but for now I get to choose the model in which you experience life and I have chosen mostly due to the extraordinary amount of pain that I have suffered in this world I have chosen to not shield you from that.
This is why when you hurt yourself are you skin your knee or you fall off your bike, this is why I do not run to you in the moments in which I want to most, in the moments in which you have fallen. It is clearly painful. And you look up and I am stone.
It breaks my heart to be that way. It does. But I am never far away. I am always close. Always close. And you and I my son, you and I have talked about this. You are me and I am you. We share the exact same genetic code but more importantly in this life now, we share the exact same energy. We vibrate at the exact same level. You and I.
So when you fall and I do not come running, it is because I want you to deal with it. And don’t think I don’t love you when I am stone. It is because I love you that I am stone because you can handle it. You are strong. You are brave. You are courageous. You already know this.
Now does this mean that I am NOT making risk assessments every dadgum split-second as I’m watching you race or do new things in life? You better believe it, brother! I am calculating risk assessments at speeds unimaginable. I am playing. I am trying to be 10, 15, a minute ahead of you. But guess what? I don’t know what’s gonna happen in the moment.
I want you to experience life at its harshest. I also want you to experience life at its most beautiful. I found interestingly enough my son that the most beautiful moments in life only come through the ordeal of pain, the ordeal of initiation, the ordeal of the opportunity to show yourself, fuck the world! But to show to yourself what you are made of.
Courage is what I want a model for you. In today’s world, courage is not the courage of being the warrior having the big axe, the big sword, the big shield. In today’s world my son, what courage looks like is the ability to tread your own path, to not follow the models of the world, to do exactly what your heart desires you to do and execute upon it with absolute certainty that you will never know what the outcome will be. But you have disciplined, trained your mind and body to have the courage to withstand it. And that you will find success.
In that you will find what you’re looking for. Only those who have the courage to fight for it will reap the desires of their heart. That’s what I want for you. My son, I want for you the ability to seek the desires of your heart to have the courage to persevere and to fight till the end for it because it’s worth it.
Train yourself now. Discipline yourself now. Have the work ethic now. So that in that moment that you have prepared for, it will come, I promise you, it always comes, that your courage will be revealed through that ordeal, through that experience, through that tough decision. And in that moment the warrior receives his due. The warrior receives his shield.
My son, do not seek to preserve your life. Seek to discipline your life, to train your life so that you can have courage in life’s most trying moments. Do not seek to preserve your life, but go out and fight for what your heart desires.
I love you. I always love you, my son.