If anyone needs a boost, it’s you and me.
The demands of fatherhood…
The ultimate stakes…
The bludgeoning we take… It’s downright chemical.
It’s only logical, then, to fight fire with fire: to fortify ourselves with countermeasures as powerful as the onslaught itself.
You won’t find my drug of choice among the usual suspects:
It’s not marijuana, or alcohol.
It’s not heroin, coke, mushrooms, or meth.
It’s not adderall or caffeine.
It’s not sleep, exercise, meditation, or gratitude, either.
This drug requires no prescription.
No clandestine, back-alley purchase.
There’s no mind-shredding addiction, no body-ravaging side-effects.
There’s no needle to insert, no tourniquet to tighten.
For it is the purest, cleanest high of all:
It’s workings are alchemical, ancient, and primeval:
It is, of course, RAW ACTION.
Nothing else compares.
No narcotic, no stimulant can match the bliss of the body in motion… of choice enfleshed.
Action’s ecstasy is instantaneous and compounding: even if for the millionth time, it works it’s magic.
It’s trigger is sure:
All you do is peel your ass off the bottom of whatever hole you’re in, and climb.
You pick up the phone, lift the box, send the email, have the conversation. You lift your head and claw your way back and beyond, one crumbling handhold at a time.
No matter the humiliation, no matter the long-numb, no matter the endless string of dead days…
No matter how heavy the curtain, no matter the mud in your mouth, remember: you can change it all:
Rise, and seize the better life.
You’re always but one thrash away.
…
Bryan Ward is the founder of Third Way Man and author of the LIT Black Paper
i love you in Brian Ward for caring so much and inspireing me
Man, I really needed to hear this. Had a rough week with a friends recent suicide weighing on me and I just found out I missed an important deadline for an internship pushing my graduation back a semester. Thanks for these words my man. March forth with relentless passion and purpose.
I remember reading LIT a couple of years back and I have to say as a now 42 year old man I really felt understood. Grateful for that.
Hey Bryan,
I’m new to it here, read LIT, FU, the articles on self inflicted dad stress and this one. I read this stuff today, here in the most spartan, Chinese countryside village you could image, penniless, seemingly hopeless and on the verge of homelessness, if it were not for these humble accomodations. In December of last year, I was going to stop the whole, twisted circus with some of China’s most famous narcotic; fortunately or not, I remain with a destroyed relationship with my parents and the love of my wife and daughter.
Thank goodness for my two girls, they’re my MANTLE.
The Warrior Poet has been dormant for decades
Thanks for laying it out like it is
I look towards the times after this one, where opulance of being returns
When I get my fucking balls back, or up my T levels naturally
Save this time, I am told myself that radical change was required in my life to affect the changes required
Now, it’ll be in a Third Way Man form
Unchained
EB
PS – Concept #4 – Einstein…EightH
there’s another one: Series #3 – extenT
So well said, and it applies to those of us who are the fairer sex as well;-) We all have the instincts and calling of an ancient warrior within us. Thank you for the reminder to just start clawing out from whatever hole we find ourselves in. Of course it’s easier said than done, but the only real option nonetheless. Warrior on brother!