#36

Generally, people have a paleolithic conception of strength; at best, a child's naive projection of parts of strength. The throwbacks to a time of rocks and bones and shitting at the base of a tree think of brawny men lifting heavy logs vertically, or machine-guns, or the unyielding tendencies of the ocean, or hatred. The more sophisticated might mention things like patience, integrity, self-sacrifice, or restraint. Athletes and other bloody-minded folk might mention the seven attributes of strength, or the difference between agile strength and explosive strength, though of course, we had as well simply measure maximum strength. Clever people might speak of the differences between tensile strength and yield strength, hardness, attribute and characteristic cross-assessments, whatever. Egghead shit, the stuff that gets boffins all in a lather, and dorks in a palaver.

Anyway, strength isn't any of that. Like everything else that is actually real, and possible to talk about in a human way, strength is spiritual, also an ur- symbol or hypersigil, just like fecundity, fear, courage, sterility, light, love, power, and some others. Strength contains, compasses, and transcends everything I talked about in the preceding paragraph, and then some. It, and the rest of these concepts, are interwoven into the warp and weft of the whole field and pattern of the physical universe.

When we talk about such things, we necessarily bind them, ensnare them, cut them down to size, reduce them, boiling away much that is unsayable and necessary, intrinsic, in order to give it communicability, and in order to make them into our tools, in order to mine from them some form of utility, and of course, some forms of power.

For all we make it complicated and perverse, though, there is a saving grace: we know it when we see it. All these things are very simple, in the end. All you have to do is pay attention.

Making yourself stronger is learning to be able to see your own weaknesses. Learning how to address these weaknesses in a way that suits your needs, abilities, and aims. Enduring pain, frustration, resistance, and handicaps. Seeking your limits, and forcing yourself past them. Admitting every slip and failure, reckoning with every shortcoming, coming to grips with the inevitable dead ends.

To be stronger is to live and breathe looking your weaknesses in the eye, as being more courageous is to live and breathe staring down your fear. Fear never fucking dies. Weakness will eventually overtake you, or death will take you and never mind if you are in your prime and joy or fallen to malingering in squalor. Nevertheless, you must always gather what strength you have, always summon what courage you possess, and be as strong and as brave as mind and spirit and body can stand, never giving yourself quarter, never surrendering.

Everything goes towards everything else, in life. Our deeds, our words, the deeds and words of the people around us, all currents and eddies in the water of a river running through the heart of our existence. The stuff we do to prove to others who we are, the stuff we do when no one is looking just to prove a little something to ourselves, any little something that we choose to do or not to do--all the little ways we attempt to prove that we are real, to taste something in life that makes us feel in that moment that our lives are truly real and rich and that they have a true and lasting, even eternal significance--all of that adds up into a story, and our stories are who we are. Every little step you take makes a difference in your story. How you walk around, and the reasons why, make you who you are.

I want to feel the earth with the soles of my feet as I walk up a mountain. I want to grip the rock with my toes as golden eagles wheel and plummet beneath me, stronger than I was--weak creature that I am--braver than I was--coward that I have been--with a world's worth of painful steps behind me, each step a difficult lesson and a bitter memory and each step a clarification and a gift and a cast-off burden.

Every step I take in this body is a step on the path to myself, to God, to being taken up into the universe. Each one ought to count, to bear a momentous weight. It is a matter of  perfect discipline, which I suspect is the only way to be free.

*

Well, that's that! Okay, this time I really won't write about walking for a while. I sure do love to walk though. However, I can see it is time to employ some gentlemanly restraint.

Perhaps tomorrow I will write about pirates, or perhaps I will decide to generate bizarre erotica. I have worked hard to become a versatile writer; I hope that one shall never know with total certainty what this blog may have in store.

Read my books lately? Or ever? They are quite reasonably priced. I think some sort of membership means you may already possess the right to read them. I don't know quite how it all works, but the books are real and eminently readable, an excellent value for money. Currently only digital, soon to be in paperback form! I tried to make them fun to read, but profitable for the mind.

Have fun being you today! You're the only one that gets to.


--JL