Don’t waste time with New Year’s resolutions. Over 50% fail in the first six months and it’s mentally defeating to set such a high bar at the beginning of the year only to abandon it when the long, cold and dark days of January and February become the grind they inevitably will be (You hearty people of the North feel this- you private equity firm serfs know it as well).

Write your resolutions and implement them now or whenever change is needed. Short, medium, long term plans, design, write and act. If you stumble at them during different points throughout the year, dust yourself off, evaluate and keep going. There is no magic to the calendar turning over.

We will soon enter the season when ‘influencers’ feel the need to tell us their high success rate on last year’s resolutions and then roll out 2027’s list (spoiler alert: their lists will make you question if everyone has the same 24/7 amounts of time). It’s ok to read them, I do, and sometimes I even find inspiration in what they express, but don’t let their grift become your plan. It’s easier said than done, and getting easier for this older man, but don’t be distracted by the nonsense of social media.

One way that I found works for me is to avoid New Year’s resolutions all together and have my ‘betterment plan’ executing well before. Most year’s I roll mine out on Veteran’s Day, but this year I needed to make some course corrections and began a new plan on Labor Day. Veterans Day is early enough where I have a clear picture of the past and a grounded view of the future, before the craziness of Thanksgiving-New Year’s engulfs me. In order to hit Veteran’s Day I usually start in my journal in October. What works for me is to use business travel days on airplanes to savage myself in words before arriving at what I would like to change. With the needed change settled upon, a plan for how I will accomplish it is written, not so proscriptive that I require spreadsheets and detailed lists, but a framework for improvement that gives me flexibility as well. It really doesn’t matter what I do (or what some influencer does), you need something that works for you.

I will stumble, of this I am sure. I stumbled in July and August when the weight of heavy work travel and the pressure of summer’s obligations cracked my routine. I refocused, was honest with myself through my journal where I spared no blood or bruised pride dismantling myself, and what came of that cathartic exercise became my new anchor point.

I will stumble between 19 December and 3 January. I already know this. I will pick up the pieces on January 4, review my Labor Day commitments and resume. At some point in 2027 I will reevaluate and publish a new plan and new resolutions. Some years the stumble is just a stumble, some years it’s a full face plant. Don’t beat yourself up, just fix it. Be your own best friend, and your best friend needs to be both uplifting but also tell you when you made a mess of things.

What have I learned in my 60 years? Evolve, correct, adapt and evolve some more.

Honing oneself into the sharpest blade possible is the greatest art project we commission in this life, make it count, make it cut smooth.

Why I Ride.

At the age of 60, I’m old enough to have seen classmates who I knew from early childhood die suddenly or after disease ravaged them. I’m old enough to have lost cousins and very immediate family to health impacts, acute and chronic. I’m old enough to realize that my Satori, my mortality, is not promised to be suspended until I accomplish some list of tasks, goals or achievements.

I like to think I have 22 healthy years left. When my father was 60 he had 22 years remaining, and sadly his were not fully healthy. I exercise, I maintain my weight, I’m not on prescription drugs, I keep my stress low(lower) and I get plenty of sleep. Will all those things help me? No guarantees, no promises, as I’ve lost two very healthy lifestyle people in my life the past few years.

Live. I ride because it’s something I want to do and I’m living. I know the dangers, I see the people in their cars paying more attention to the phone than the traffic, I see it first hand and on almost every ride. I choose living, dangers and all. The sound of the bike, the blur of countryside zipping by, the adventure and thrill of it all.

Jesus tells Matthew who told us that no one ”…knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” referring to the end of times. The message was simple, be ready. It doesn’t have to be as dramatic as the end of days, our own lives will end at an hour we can’t predict, be ready.

I’m about to retire, very soon. A large part of my identify for the past 42 years has been my work. I joined the military right out of High School. I felt an unspoken stigma that I was a failure for not going to college right away. That fueled my career. A chip on the shoulder. I stopped living for long stretches of life. I gave up riding after the military. I wrapped myself in shrink wrap because I had to provide for my family, for others. I felt the weight of many that I cared for, and I couldn’t take risks, couldn’t get hurt, or I’d risk impacting more than just me. I lived, but not fully.

I’m past all that. I’m living and I’m going to continue to live until my last breath. If I die on my motorcycle, or I die in my sleep, death will have come for me at an appointed hour and I will be entering a heaven I’ve tried to live my life to enter. These next ten summers are going to be ones that I will carve out travel adventures on from the seat of this motorcycle. Every year, a ten day to two week adventure ride out from my home, in all directions on the compass. Not fancy, not Instagram envy worthy, just me, living and filled with gratitude.

I ride, and that’s something I can live with.

Satori!

Precepts. A word rooted in ancient times, but a timeless concept nonetheless.

Precept: a rule or principle that guides conduct or action.

More than advice, it carries the weight of obligation.

A precept is something you live by, not just agree with.

Etymology:

From Latin praeceptum — “a maxim, rule, order,” derived from praecipere, meaning “to instruct beforehand” or “to take in advance.”

Broken down: prae (before) + capere (to take, to seize).

The root capere is deeply alive in English; capture, concept, perceive, and receive all share it. To precept someone is, at its root, to seize their understanding before they need it, or to hand them a rule that will hold when the moment of decision arrives.

A precept isn’t reactive; it’s preemptive.

My thesis: In my derivative (i.e. blender) philosophical approach that draws into it components of Roman Stoic dogmata, my father’s street savvy, common sense wisdom, the writings of Japanese sword master Musashi as well as my military and civilian career lessons, I have taken all of this collective wisdom to decide in advance how I’ll meet the world and its challenges so I don’t have to reason it out under pressure.

It’s said that a man who has precepts doesn’t deliberate in the moment; he already knows.

A code to live by made up of precepts, Ancient, Modern, Eastern, and Western, taken from their schools of thought and stitched together.

As I approach 60, I wish I had full command of my code when I was younger, but life doesn’t work like that. You live, you learn, you make mistakes, and if you are learning from all of these experiences, you develop wisdom. I’ve benefited from having very good role models in my life, older gentlemen who, wittingly or unwittingly, shared their life lessons with me. I’m willing to share 40 years of my adult life lessons with anyone, especially young men, who would like to accelerate and put into action parts of their personal code they may not have considered yet. I try to be humble, but I’ve done something right in my life: Of living Americans, only 0.2% can say they have reached the CEO level, and only 0.05% can say they served on an American Submarine. Not bragging, just the bona fides.

When my son was growing up, he loved to watch NCIS. On the television show, the lead Agent, Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, had a set of rules, precepts, and a code that his agents had to know.

This was the first time, in the early 2000’s, around or just before my 40th birthday, that I considered the concept of an actual code that wasn’t just figurative but real and actionable.

Ryan Holiday, who arguably has done more than anyone over the past two decades to revive the words of ancient philosophers, brought the concept of stoic philosophy to Boardrooms, Locker rooms, and to average, unassuming people looking back to make sense of their lives. Ryan has sold over 10 million copies of his books across more than 40 languages worldwide.

Holiday’s books are built around principles, maxims, and meditation, but they are primarily presented as insights to absorb and ponder, not as precepts to live by. The structure is: here’s a Stoic idea, here’s a historical example, here’s what it means for you. It’s illuminating, but it’s fundamentally descriptive.

A precept is different. It’s prescriptive and personal, a rule you’ve adopted as binding on yourself. “Do not act on what you cannot control.” “Never mistake motion for progress.” “Hold the line when no one is watching.” Those aren’t observations. They’re commitments.

Precepts come close to formal laws, ethical categorical imperatives. The Ten Commandments from Judeo-Christian writings or the Surah Al-An’am, and the slightly longer and more encompassing Surah Al-Isra, from the Koran, with both Abrahamic religions citing the words of God given to Moses in stone.

Holiday gives you the raw material. He hands you Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca, distilled and made readable. But he stops short of saying how to apply them; he leaves the actionable part up to the reader.

Musashi understood this distinction instinctively. The Dokkōdō (The Way of Walking Alone) isn’t a meditation but rather 21 blunt, actionable precepts, each an insightful imperative, presented without explanation or anecdotes.

With those inspirations, I present what I’ve entitled “20 Precepts for Walking in Harmony.” I strive to walk in harmony with the world, not stand out, not aggrandize myself, not take more than I give, but to be in harmony. Like Musashi, with as few anecdotes as possible.

1. Be your own best friend. No one is coming to do that work for you, and no one should have to.

2. Loyalty matters. If someone is in your small circle, friend, family, or teammate, they deserve your loyalty and the benefit of the doubt when an explanation is required.

3. Keep your word. If no one can treat your word as absolute, you have nothing.

4. Don’t be a hypocrite. Better to suffer reputational damage than to lie to yourself or others about your shortcomings. Work at them!

5. Never initiate violence. De-escalate when possible. React violently and overwhelmingly if left with no choice.

6. Show respect to everyone, regardless of anything. When unsure, address as Sir or Ma’am, move to one side of the sidewalk as people pass by, hold doors open, say please and thank you, and make no scenes or commotions.

7. Dress in clean, well-maintained clothes and maintain high standards for hygiene and grooming.

8. Never interrupt while another is talking. Conversely, listen well, not just politely.

9. Apologize fully, or not at all. Don’t explain away or justify; context is required unless asked for.

10. Carry your cross in silence. Everyone has problems; no one needs to hear about yours.

11. Protect your own dignity, and that of others around you.

12. Demand more from yourself than you would ever demand from another man.

13. Cut ties immediately with anyone who mistreats animals or dislikes pets (absent cultural/religious context).

14. Don’t evangelize your religious or political doctrine. Don’t suppress who you are, but equally, don’t assume others care, endorse, agree, or want to hear your views.

15. Your children come first. Not the softball team, not the pickup hockey league, not the motorcycle club runs, not drinks with the fellas. Don’t have children if you aren’t prepared to be the father they deserve.

16. Simple wisdom is still wise. Listen to advice from whoever offers it. "When you're in a hole, stop digging.” Rank or status doesn’t add merit to the advice.

17. Stay Authentic. Comport yourself honestly, always, in every situation. You’re not an influencer, you’re not peddling illusions.

18. Only mix business and personal relationships with extreme caution. It becomes harder to make dispassionate decisions in business when your family members develop friendships.

19. Mind your Resources. 1/3 of your income is saved. 1/3 of your income is for living expenses. 1/3 of your income is for pleasure. Change the ratios, not the intention.

20. Journal bravely. Humble your ego and speak the truth to yourself, as painful as it might be. Never lie to your journal.

Are these the only precepts I live by? No. Categorical imperatives, such as thou shalt not kill, I’ve left off as obvious and not required. Will they change over time? If I wanted to expand the list to 21, I would have added to “…Plot endlessly. Review your plans, edit, modify, execute, and assess. If something’s not working, change.” I don’t believe in doing the same things over and over again because that’s “…just how I’ve always done it.” I actively try to always be evolving because I equate the end of evolution as the end of active living, and the moment we wait for our time to end. I’m too young and too dialed in for that.

I am not widely read. If this resonates with you, share it. If you abhor it, say so. My sincere desire is to reach one young person and make a positive influence on their thinking.

If you're curious about the Latin quote in my graphic with Seneca and Musashi, it reads: “Seek not external things, but internal ones, and you will find peace.” The precepts sometimes write themselves.

What part of you floats above the sealine for everyone to see? It is a conscious choice. Some, proud as peacocks, rise high like floating Everest, a shining city on a hill for all to see. Others show nothing, a blank slate conforming to a blank stare. Words pulled from mouths, eyes to the floor, lost inside shadowselves.

Extremes, each impenetrable. A maze inside a void wrapped inside of isolation, but in the middle of life, a murky grey people float about. Signals and noise, morse code to The Carpathia, a speeding ship comes in the night. Seen.

The iceberg.

The part below the water attracts the mind.

The part above the water attracts the eye.

The part below the water is the intersection of heart and soul.

The part above the water is the vanity and the pride.

Symbiotic. You cannot have the iceberg above the water without the iceberg below. You cannot have an iceberg below the water without a peak above.

Seen. To be seen. How were you seen? You showed nothing yet the ship knew the ice mass below. Radar scans above, sonar pings below, but that was not it. Eyes found you. Eyes, see you.

What do you seek, what have you found? If not love, if not romance, what? If not depth, if not purity, what?

“Seen. To see and be seen.” That is all I hear. “To see me, to see you.”

I see what you show the world. Everything. Nothing.

I seek what you only show me. What only my eyes and ears will know.

Infinity. Madness. Umami, the fifth taste.

Exotic.

Authentic. Organic. Erotic

Moving in silence. Will you signal or will we pass in the night?

Cathartic, regardless.

“Passerby…Go, tell the Spartans, that here, obedient to their law, we lie.”

The fact that an epitaph, written over 2,500 years ago can still hold sway over certain modern men is remarkable on its own.

Certain, meaning exclusive and not all.  For in that simple remembrance, written by Greek poet Simonides to commemorate the self sacrifice of 300 Spartans defending a strategic choke point against a numerically superior opponent, it invokes honor, culture and servitude.

I plan to make statements, points of view that are anecdotal, but based on observation and study. Decrying modern man in broad sweeping generalizations is both foolish and narrative serving, but ignoring it helps no one either. It’s far easier to offer problems but not problems and solutions. This post is problems, I will offer possible solutions in the next.

The United States military has about 1.3 Million active duty troops. That is roughly .4% of the population of the Country. There are 15.7 Million veterans living within the US currently,about 5% of the population.

Sparta on the other hand, unified their society around its military fighting unit, creating a culture that from an earliest age in a citizens life, provided the moral, ethical and physical code that was to be followed and defended.

While I’m not advocating the creation of a martial society, or the expansion of the US military, or even to a conscription draft, I do believe the lack of a unified set of principals and ideals is at the heart of societal decay.

Honor. Culture. Servitude. You’d be hard pressed to find this but in pockets of our current union. They have been replaced by polarized political positions, untenable devalued currency, making the creation of the family unit out of reach for many, and the blurred lines of gender and gender identity, where our boys are discouraged from being hellraising war fighters and our girls are encouraged that they don’t need men and can all just be girl bosses.

We worry about the wrong things. There are people all around us ready to kill over differing views on the causes and possible interventions to climate change. They would, with little proof, and with full hubris, bankrupt the world to lower temperatures by 1.5 degrees C above pre-Industrial levels.

We are lectured about this threat  by billionaires. The same billionaires who would also save us from global pandemics, who also found time to “participate” in one of the greatest honeypot schemes of all time, but I digress.

We worry about the wrong things while we ignore the reality that both political parties deported millions of illegal aliens, that both political parties engage in market manipulation and insider trading, that both indiscriminately bomb other countries. The only brand differentiating is along the edges of society, the 1% of transgenders for example, that dominate so many discussions, primarily when UFO admittance or Kennedy Assassination record releases aren’t enough to distract the masses.

We devalued organized religion. We devalued the family unit. We devalued the sanctity of life, and while we devalued these core unifying concepts, we didn’t replace them, we allowed cancers to grow.

Honor. Culture. Servitude. The willingness of men to die to defend their society is within the DNA of us, but they have to be willing to die because the thought of losing what we have is so much more abhorrent.

What about modern society is too abhorrent to imagine its loss?

What is our modern culture? Who is defining it? The popular mainstream music of today is not original, lacks soul and reduced to single tracks versus albums to match the low attention spans. Modern art? Who are the great artists of today? Name them, name one?

Architecture? We build precast concrete boxes and find them empty and vacant in decades or less.

Who is willing to serve? Who would answer the call to defend a narrow pass knowing that death would surely come? Would the call go out via text? Would the lookmaxxers even care to defend the pass, because why, their Instagram or TikTok feeds may be interrupted? Would the so called Incels defend the pass, only to know that they won’t be able to marry and have kids because that dream died with half million dollar starter homes and income buying power that’s stuck in 1995? Or even find a girl who still believes in the value of motherhood without cosplaying trad values and just being authentic?

To certain men, the ones I choose to celebrate and where I started this post, nothing has changed in 2,500 years; they train their bodies, they train their minds, the hold and honor a higher power of their choosing, they still believe in marriage and children and the defense of it all. They are primarily vilified and they don’t care. They find women who are equally vilified, unwilling to act like men, unwilling to abandon men.

It is this class of society I value, the ones that would answer the call. We must find a way to depolarize everything into binary political positions so these men and women can return to the middle and lead us out of societal decay.

Perhaps it can be done bloodlessly, perhaps not, but a reckoning is coming. Dropping Birthrates, broken American melting pot, unaffordable housing and cost of living, violence and stagnation, this is the broth our youth marinate in, do you really just expect them to boil to death in it?

Passerby, Let’s talk about possible solutions next.

“…Passerby…Go, tell the Spartans, that here, obedient to their law, we lie.”

The fact that an epitaph, written over 2,500 years ago can still hold sway over certain modern men is remarkable on its own.

Certain, meaning exclusive and not all.  For in that simple remembrance, written by Greek poet Simonides to commemorate the self sacrifice of 300 Spartans defending a strategic choke point against a numerically superior opponent, it invokes honor, culture and servitude.

I plan to make statements, points of view that are anecdotal, but based on observation and study. Decrying modern man in broad sweeping generalizations is both foolish and narrative serving, but ignoring it helps no one either. It’s far easier to offer problems but not problems and solutions. This post is problems, I will offer possible solutions in the next.

The United States military has about 1.3 Million active duty troops. That is roughly .4% of the population of the Country. There are 15.7 Million veterans living within the US currently,about 5% of the population.

Sparta on the other hand, unified their society around its military fighting unit, creating a culture that from an earliest age in a citizens life, provided the moral, ethical and physical code that was to be followed and defended.

While I’m not advocating the creation of a martial society, or the expansion of the US military, or even to a conscription draft, I do believe the lack of a unified set of principals and ideals is at the heart of societal decay.

Honor. Culture. Servitude. You’d be hard pressed to find this but in pockets of our current union. They have been replaced by polarized political positions, untenable devalued currency, making the creation of the family unit out of reach for many, and the blurred lines of gender and gender identity, where our boys are discouraged from being hellraising war fighters and our girls are encouraged that they don’t need men and can all just be girl bosses.

We worry about the wrong things. There are people all around us ready to kill over differing views on the causes and possible interventions to climate change. They would, with little proof, and with full hubris, bankrupt the world to lower temperatures by 1.5 degrees C above pre-Industrial levels.

We are lectured about this threat  by billionaires. The same billionaires who would also save us from global pandemics, who also found time to “participate” in one of the greatest honeypot schemes of all time, but I digress.

We worry about the wrong things while we ignore the reality that both political parties deported millions of illegal aliens, that both political parties engage in market manipulation and insider trading, that both indiscriminately bomb other countries. The only brand differentiating is along the edges of society, the 1% of transgenders for example, that dominate so many discussions, primarily when UFO admittance or Kennedy Assassination record releases aren’t enough to distract the masses.

We devalued organized religion. We devalued the family unit. We devalued the sanctity of life, and while we devalued these core unifying concepts, we didn’t replace them, we allowed cancers to grow.

Honor. Culture. Servitude. The willingness of men to die to defend their society is within the DNA of us, but they have to be willing to die because the thought of losing what we have is so much more abhorrent.

What about modern society is too abhorrent to imagine its loss?

What is our modern culture? Who is defining it? The popular mainstream music of today is not original, lacks soul and reduced to single tracks versus albums to match the low attention spans. Modern art? Who are the great artists of today? Name them, name one?

Architecture? We build precast concrete boxes and find them empty and vacant in decades or less.

Who is willing to serve? Who would answer the call to defend a narrow pass knowing that death would surely come? Would the call go out via text? Would the lookmaxxers even care to defend the pass, because why, their Instagram or TikTok feeds may be interrupted? Would the so called Incels defend the pass, only to know that they won’t be able to marry and have kids because that dream died with half million dollar starter homes and income buying power that’s stuck in 1995? Or even find a girl who still believes in the value of motherhood without cosplaying trad values and just being authentic?

To certain men, the ones I choose to celebrate and where I started this post, nothing has changed in 2,500 years; they train their bodies, they train their minds, the hold and honor a higher power of their choosing, they still believe in marriage and children and the defense of it all. They are primarily vilified and they don’t care. They find women who are equally vilified, unwilling to act like men, unwilling to abandon men.

It is this class of society I value, the ones that would answer the call. We must find a way to depolarize everything into binary political positions so these men and women can return to the middle and lead us out of societal decay.

Perhaps it can be done bloodlessly, perhaps not, but a reckoning is coming. Dropping Birthrates, broken American melting pot, unaffordable housing and cost of living, violence and stagnation, this is the broth our youth marinate in, do you really just expect them to boil to death in it?

Passerby, Let’s talk about possible solutions next.

It’s been a road: 42 years since I left home for the US military, a month or so past my 18th birthday, all while the rest of my friends finished high school, the first of many sacrifices. 42 years of tireless travel, uncomfortable situations that I had to learn from, challenges and obstacles too many to name. From all that? Work became my Affiliation. Identity.

I started to deprogram myself from all of that when I left my former company after 30 years in mid 2024. It was one of the hardest decisions I ever made, but necessary, as necessary as leaving the pure pleasure of my senior year of high school to start adult life. I had to tear down that self image of the long time company man, willing to do anything and everything in the name of EBITDA, and recenter myself on my human side: empathy for people, employee needs, work-life balance, decency (news flash: avoid NYC private equity if you value these things.)

I had to rediscover what interests me because with the pending mortality of my work life comes the realization that I have a lot of hours to fill. Going from 60+ hour work weeks to forgetting what a Teams Call is overnight is a jarring juxtaposition.

Yes, I’m sure this sounds like a first world problem, but it’s my problem and that’s why I use my therapy sessions (aka Substack writing) to work out how to proceed.

With the time God leaves me I have no bucket list to draw on, no mountain to climb or sea to cross. I’ve settled on cultivating the part of my identity I was somehow able to maintain all those work years, that of a quiet man.

In my mental model, the Quiet Man is the dangerous one. Thinking endlessly, learning incessantly, a small circle of family and friends that he values indescribably. A Quiet Man is physically fit, morally sound, obsessively curious.

I have already narrowed my interests and pursuits. The time for expansion, my first faced mortality, has already come. The time now is for a mastery of a narrow set of skills.

We all have to face, or not for that matter, the road ahead, as the years pile on. Amazingly, at 60 I’m on now prescription drugs. I’m in the best shape of my life physically, I’m mentally sharper than I’ve ever been and emotionally I’m the calm pool of water I’ve been blessed with always being. Decline will come, but not today. Death will come, but not today.

I’m going to write my own precepts, like the famous ronin Samurai Musashi did, and that I spoke of in a recent post. Like scraps of paper notes and post-its, I have them written already in my head, but it’s time to lay out the blueprint from now till death, the way of life to strive for.

I’ve also lit a beacon. I’m looking to add to my tribe. Kindred souls. Complementary pieces. Women, Men, no age, no location, no language barriers to entry, just vibes and a willingness to vibe. If the idea of a secret tribe interests you, send me a message. The best recruitment is the one where you just turn on the lighthouse and let the ships find you.

My Satori? Mortality.

(Wings of Desire- iykyk)

What’s important for you to achieve  and what are your motivations for realizing the achievement?

It’s a simple question but can you answer it with conviction?

Clarity. The two questions require clarity. I meet many younger people who struggle with those questions because they struggle to find clarity in their thinking. I see it in their work and from what they tell me, it affects their overall life as well.

Long before I became a CEO I worked for brilliant, but highly egotistical engineer named Roger. Roger liked to hold court, and while it could get annoying, many of the tangents he went off on became highly influential to me.

Roger once told me he was paid to make decisions. Roger was fond of saying most people just guess at a path forward, but he makes decisions. He analyzed, he asked insightful questions, he challenged the assumptions. He was a human computer, AI before the agents arrived. Underneath all the hubris I watched and realized the method to how he approached his decision making and saw the brilliance in it. He studied the inputs, modeled the outputs and found clarity. He understood theoretical from practical and applied a probability for success.

Not everything requires Roger’s level of analysis, but making good decisions is a skill and skills have to be practiced.

What Roger could do just in his head, I needed to take to paper and pen to analyze and map out the decisions. Clarity for me comes through words, mind maps with feedback loops, and lots of lists.

I’ve recommended Peter Senge’s ‘The Fifth Discipline” to many a new senior manager over the past 15 years. Senge teaches how to look at the micro and macro problem as a system, a system that can be manipulated once you understand how it works. There are so many business books out there that give nothing but platitudes, but Senge provides a system that you can apply to anything, including those two questions that started this article.

Journaling is my secret sauce. It’s where I take the complex and break it down to develop the decisions that drive my work and life. I practice a form of savage honesty within my journals ( plural- my first journal started in 1985) and they are not meant for anyone else’s eyes but mine. I rip life bare inside my journal, tearing myself down as needed to get to the truth, the right answer.

As experienced as I am, I still find myself getting sloppy in my goal execution. When that happens I increase my journaling, give myself feedback as to what’s working and what’s not, and I narrow my focus to get my most important goal accomplished. You don’t have to slay every giant simultaneously!

It doesn’t matter what Roger, Senge or this author does, the point is you need to develop a system that works for you. Yes, you might have a “a good gut” a  “fifth sense” and “intuition” but you’re really just guessing without some way to distill the inputs and outputs to bring clarity.

You don’t need anything fancy. I write my journals using a Travelers Notebook with refillable inserts, but look at St Paul, a man who accomplished so much in his life. With bare basics, sometimes from prison cells, he crafted some of the most concise and direct action plans in the form of letters to specific cities and church communities in known history.

Paul didn’t need an app, or a MacBook, and neither do we. Pen, paper, and the one ingredient we didn’t discuss yet: critical thinking.  Taking the time within our writing to  question the  assumptions, the evidence and to spot the biases from others and within ourselves.

So back to this: What’s important for you to achieve  and what are your motivations for realizing the achievement?

Don’t just answer it, attack it, systematically, like a surgeon with a scalpel.

Practice makes perfect. Learn from your decisions, what went wrong, what went right, and adjust. It’s that simple.

Anton.

Image from Miike’s ‘13 Assassins’ (2010)

“…you must understand, there is more than one path to the top of the mountain…”

It doesn’t seem fair that maturity alludes most men in their most dangerous and feral years. Perhaps it’s just not the nature of things or it is required to maintain the classical balance between the feminine and the masculine (to many a woman’s chagrin.)

Anchoring to philosophical principles today has become harder for young men too, as their role models, and the institutions that form a young man’s spirit, have deteriorated. Gone are the YMCA, with older role models interacting in a safe space. Gone is the hyper competitive, non participation trophy, youth sports. Gone are fathers, with 40% of first marriages ending in divorce and 35% of children growing up in single parent households. Gone are role models who legitimately walked a path that men could anchor to, replaced by influencers selling fake lifestyles online, weak men dressed up like cosplay.

The quote above was from Miyamoto Musashi.  Born 442 years ago, this Eastern warrior poet  had a profound influence on me as a young man and father, much more than the Roman stoics or the school of Plato Greeks.

Simple axioms from Musashi’s 21 Precepts, completed just days before he died, formed the nucleus of the code I assembled for living my own life, personal and professional.

“Do not regret what you have done”

“Accept everything just the way it is”

So often, the ancients provide us with all the wisdom we could possible need or want to live a good, just life.

Perhaps that is where it should start, a visualization of what you want your life to be. If that vision starts with fancy cars, expensive watches, and sexual conquest, Musashi has a precepts for that to educate you of the folly.

“Never be jealous”

“Do not seek pleasure for its own sake”

“Do not let yourself be guided by the feelings of Love or Lust”

“Be detached from desire your who life long”

We live in challenging times that I believe will get worse before better. Global inflation has devalued currency, a mega-rich class has formed world wide, and conversely, their fief is now filled with us serfs. The dream of marriage, a  wife at woman raising children while the man works a noble job for more than a living wage, with their needs attainable, and a few wants still possible, is fading.

A reckoning will come. Chaos. It makes Musashi’s teachings harder to accept, but quite frankly, more indispensable than ever.

Live your life by a code. Write it yourself, borrow from others, inspire yourself to live within it and within your means. Reject the imagery on Instagram and TikTok of what success is (spoiler alert: it’s a lie.)

Be the man you need to be sooner. We need our youth being more mature each successive generation if we wish to pull out of this death cycle before blood is spilled.

It’s always the same. I read Isaiah 53 and I can’t get it out of my head.

“…(1) Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

(2) He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

(3) He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

(4) Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.

(5) But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

(6) We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

(7) He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

(8) By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished.

(9) He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

(10) Yet it was the LORD ’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

(11) After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied ; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.

(12) Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors….”

Clarity.

Conciseness.

Lost in the signal to noise ratio of his day, like most of the prophets, ignored.

I’m left wondering, if the Lord sent voices to us now, with a message we don’t want to hear, would be listen?

Would we even recognize the next prophet sent by the Lord? We don’t think like God, He’s not bound to follow what human’s interpret was laid out in the Revelation given on Patmos.

Is it inconceivable that another lone voice calling out from a modern wilderness could be sent, at anytime, to herald anything? Would we hear? Has he already?

All around us is noise. “Influencers” intrude into our lives, hawking a lifestyle, a thematically dazzling but spiritually dead, vapid existence.

Others promote products they (schelp) use, our phones spying and listening to us talk, filling our feeds with targeted inducements while we give mega corporations the right to do this through “Terms of Service” agreements no one reads.

We’re told what beautiful is. (Spoiler alert: it’s seldom beautiful). Reels roll with manufactured moments, where the camera just happens to be on, filming fake emotions, passion, learning. Self Aggrandizement.

Like a cancer, it spread across cultures, countries, politics, demographics. Left and Right, don’t be fooled, the illness and rot has infested it all. Unirot.

Verse 2: “…He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him…”

Could our modern society get past the outward physical appearance of the next prophet? If like in Verse 3, he arrives despised and in low esteem, If unwashed, undocumented, if he eschews the trappings of our modern digital cages, would he get even the time of day from us?

The money shot: “…We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way…”

My thesis is simple: Collectively, we would not accept a prophet who came today, we would not recognize him, there would be no consensus, his message would not be amplified by media or people holding the megaphones of our world.

What am I proposing? Live in a theocracy, where false prophets claim to know the path ahead, force us to walk it as they design? No thanks.

If we have all turned our own way, we have to take responsibility therefore for ourselves. We were given free will, we all have ears and eyes. We all have the ability to reason and think critically. Some will hear the message and some will not. Some will comport themselves in alignment with a moral compass and others will be hypocrites.

For me, for what I choose to do, is to consume wisely. The people I read, listen to, watch, they wield far more influence than I am often willing to admit. My follows, my subscriptions, my likes, my smiley emojis, they are my alignment.

“If today you hear his voice, harden not your heart…”

We’ve been given divine guidance, we’ve been given the gift of Easter, the sacrifice of the Lamb for our sins. We’ve been told how it ends.

In the middle of the book of life is a bunch of blank pages. Take up your pen. Write out how you plan to navigate a course to your own salvation.

For all of us, good luck. I guess we will know on the other side how we did.

When I was younger, a similar sentiment lived in my mind, “steel boats and iron men” was a phrase used to describe the men that served on submarines. It was hard duty, and it took young hard men, singular in purpose, to push that boat through the water and complete the mission.

In both iron metaphors, men became iron through hard work and accountability to each other and a vision.

Both phrases play into my ongoing internal monologue that I have an obligation to be like sharp iron in order to live up to the mental image I hold for myself. Standards.

Somewhere in my middle decades, the sharpened iron I worked with my hands became my work skills, my abilities to lead men, to make prudent financial decisions, to return value to shareholders. My body became softer but my ability to lead an organization became the razor’s point.

When I was younger, the focus was internal, sharpening myself to what and who I was. Then it became, for lack of a better term, performative iron, sharpening which served nearly everyone except me, sans my income, and did nothing for me physically, mentally or emotionally.

As you get older to start to develop perspective that is impossible to have when you are younger. What that perspective gives me is the ability to see the symmetry that has formed on my own personal life’s arc. 41 years since I left home to join the US Navy, I’m rapidly turning toward within again, making myself the focus of the iron sharpening.

Kettlebells have given me an anchor to tie myself too. Day after day, week after week, I progress through a program that sharpens me like nothing has since the submarine. I watch my body composition change, I watch my strength rise, I see the change in mindset, bringing true balance to the needs of the company shareholders as well as my life and what I want to accomplish in my last active decades.

While I lift iron to sharpen iron, the thinking i do while exerting myself compounds the benefits.

Of late, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the first and second readings from the fourth week of Lent. In the first reading, God has sent Samuel to Bethlehem to look at Jesse’s sons and find the next King of Israel, ultimately choosing David. Rejecting the first group of sons, the Lord said to Samuel “…Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they Look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart."

That really sat with me about how we should strive to see each other as God sees us, from the heart out. A personal rejection of what the modern world considers attractive (mental, physical, moral) is something I truly believe in and which led me to stop watching and consuming film, television, print media. It’s not that you can’t find beauty and truth in the modern world, I just have chosen to stop looking while I detox.

The second reading that same Sunday felt like a divine wake-up call:

“…For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light— for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light.

Therefore it says,

"Sleeper, awake!

Rise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you."”

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians spit hard truths then, as it does now. “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness…everything exposed by the light becomes visible…sleeper awake!”

To the religious thinker, this one letter from Paul more or less sums up how we are taught to live our lives as Christians.

To the secular readers of this, how do you read and not accept as insightful philosophical thinking at worst, and truly the enlightened words of our creator at best (you might flip flop best and worst depending on your POV but you get the idea.)

Iron sharpens iron. The kettlebells are absolutely sharpening my body, sharpening my personal discipline, but that iron sharpening provides me a mental clarity to open my sinful mind to these thoughts about how God sees us (our heart) and what we should value (the light).

I begrudge no one their need to provide for their families. Judge me if you must about allowing myself and my life to be co-opted by a corporation for their enrichment, but I did what I felt I needed to do to provide for my family the best standard of living I could provide. I choose to celebrate that I knew when it was time to leave a toxic environment, and now I know it’s time to prepare for life after work.

Sharpen yourself, find accountability through brotherhood. Do your best and don’t be afraid to change directions as the seasons of your life change.

Transfigured. Altered. In a flash, the blink of an eye, I saw a new world: Undiscovered continents. Navigable rivers. Jungle canopies and sky rise towers in concrete deserts. Sunburst daylight and cool blues by moonlight. Where am I and where are you?

Stretch out wide, grasp the stars. What was once, no more. What is to be, waiting patiently. What never was, a waking dream, reminding me of choices, regrets and failures. Love and love lost. Vows and promises kept.

Transfigured. I’m left to dream reality while living in visions. Lightning strikes, bang of thunder, the voice of angels, the cries of time.

Intertwined, our lives but a wrinkle in time. Born. We interact, We die. We touch each other, on our hearts, in our souls. We affect one another. We make ourselves essential to one another. We war and bleed for one another. We find peace and joy with, and because of, one another. We leave marks on each other, demarcations.

Transfigured. Different. Oh, not the boy pretending to be a man during the school daze. Not the man, foolish like a boy on the open ocean. Grown. Evolved, but 41 years of flowing water has not eroded the foundation. Recognizable to those with eyes that see, ears that hear.

A death bell rung. A soul from the past, your past, gone. Each death leaves us a little bit more alone. An echo across the wide valley. Death reminds you what you have and what you lost. Death comes for all. Our lives, mile markers on the highway. The rear view mirror, the last exit.

Love the ones you love today. The highway stretches out with no end in sight, and the only thing for certain is the road will imprint on us, leave us, transfigured.

Our world has become harder. You would think with all the modern twists in life that didn’t exist when I came of age, email, texting, cell phones, social media, that we would be more connected, more in touch with each other’s needs and feelings, but in many ways the opposite is true. All of this modernity has allowed us to offend each other more efficiently, created more exacting ways to polarize and oppose each other’s thinking.

When I was younger there was a self defense mechanism: you disappeared. You went home, listened to records in your room. No one could reach you if you didn’t want to be reached. You left the chat.

Today, the chat doesn’t end. Even when you are not present, talk of, complete with pictures too, flow through the connections you have in life, for better or worse, some of the audience with good intentions towards you, and others wanting to tear you down. There is no reset button to just escape over the weekend or over a holiday break.

With the hardness now just a part of everyday life, do we harden our hearts to each other more easily?

My discussions of God and faith clearly upset some of my small audience. I’ve been “defriended” because I had the audacity to say that you cannot be simultaneously be both Catholic and Pro Choice. That’s not a condemnation towards women who made a terribly difficult decision, it’s just a fact that to be a Catholic you should be against the practice of abortion or medically assisted suicide. I’m not the Catholic police, I’m not here to judge you or scorn you if you choose differently, I was just stating the church doctrine.

Defriended. Someone’s heart was hardened to both me and Christ. Luckily, I sincerely don’t care about being defriended because the reality is that if we cannot have differing opinions and remain civil, were we ever really friends to begin with? Martyrs gave their lives for their faith, I lost a few people from high school that I haven’t interacted with in person in 41 years. I think I’ll survive.

But seriously, I don’t think my family or my extended family is that unique in America, yet I have had Uncles die and never reconcile their differences with their brothers, I have had cousins become estranged from their parents, their siblings, never to reconcile. Their hearts hardened and they were unable to find the words or the willingness to say I’m sorry, even if the fault didn’t lie with them.

Maybe you hold a legitimate issue with the Catholic Church. My father did but he would never discuss why. My Diocese is bankrupt and the parishes will give tremendous amounts of assets to settle lawsuits for past actions of clergy and religious lay people. It’s ok and natural to have a beef with the fragile humans that run our Churches, they are not infallible and clearly the make mistakes, ask them and they will tell you. What’s not ok is hardening your heart to Christ.

If you say you don’t believe, you’ve hardened your heart to the preponderance of real evidence to the contrary that’s all around us. It’s ok to be Thomas, to seek proof, but like Thomas, when you clear your mind of doubt, know that Jesus died for our sins, forgives us when we don’t deserve it, and will be the one who greets us on the other side.

Harden not your heart, not to each other and not to God.

“Go in Peace, your Sins are Forgiven….”

The sacrament of reconciliation is one that I didn’t always value. Between Catholic grade school until last year, I’m sure my participation in it numbered less than five times.

Realizing my mortality doesn’t come with a date certain inspired me to ask God to forgive my sins. I also ask at the same time to help me avoid sin and the near occurrence of future sin.

There is a beauty and power to saying your sin out loud and receiving absolution. I think it’s akin to writing your sins down on paper, folding them up and burning them, but with the Priest providing the flames. Cathartic.

Some of what I’m about to say next doesn’t fully vibe with Catholic teachings. I’m a good Catholic, not a great one, but I understand where my ideas veer off the hardline. I’ve watched, and been obsessed with, videos of near death experiences. I’ve also listened to mediums. I know the arguments that mediums could be the devil or evil spirits who are just listening and parroting things back to us, but why would they do that if it gives comfort? Near death experiences very often include a life review. Paul’s second letter to Corinth talks about the judgement seat of Christ, which is for believers and to determine if our actions, works and faith are worthy of reward. I believe, with no proof, that this is the life review.

I didn’t care when I was younger if I was worthy to enter heaven or not. Foolish, ignorant, risky. My satori, my mortality, compels me to consider my actions, works and faith and funnel them through the calculus of “is it enough?”

We’ve been given this gift of reconciliation, who am I to not take advantage of that now?

Rebuild.

Renew.

Restore.

To restore is to return something (someone) to its original and authentic condition after damage or decay.

To renew is to make something (someone) “like new,” through parts replacement or process restarting.

To rebuild is to repair physical damage to something (someone) using existing, foundational, or new materials. What did I need? Restoring to a past state? Renewing for future use? Rebuilding a perfect state of being?

My satori, my sudden awakening, the aha-ha moment as we might say in the West, is that I am dying and the time to bring something (someone), myself, to a final condition that matches perception to reality, is fading. Not gone, fading.

My satori, my mortality, was staring at me, which didn’t invoke fear, but instead gave me an unshakable belief that the end could come at any time, and that I was incomplete, imperfect, and not the man I wanted to be. At the time I write this, the anniversary of losing my brother in law at way too early an age, looms. Perspective.

Life teaches you lessons: Some people are blessed to have mentors, guides and teachers around them that they learn important truths from. Even if they don’t realize they are imparting their experiences onto you, with eyes and ears, you can see and understand. Life also doesn’t ask if the mentor or guide or teacher is the one you want, or the one you need, that’s open to you to pick through the best, and to leave behind the rest. To understand what lead up to my Satori, it’s impossible to not look backwards. Indulge me while I discuss these mentors.

The first was my father, Carmen. The son of Italian immigrants, he was the fifth of five children, the only boy, and his mother died when he was four years old. His father, a sanitation worker, held the family together as best as he could, and his older sisters, especially his beloved Eva, did the rest. A very intelligent man, logical, common sense, street smart and fists that he knew when to use or just intimidate with. My dad never had academic opportunities, he joined the Army before returning home to marry and start his own family. Later in life, he became both a president of a Labor Union and a Credit Union. He believed in service to others, even if he wouldn’t/couldn’t articulate that sentiment, but he was gregarious and warm once you got past the menacing scowl.

Flawed like us all, but he taught me to value family above all, to work hard, and to own your mistakes and move on. Simple lessons given not so much with words, but with actions; you could set your watch to him, if he said he’d do something, he’d do it, if you needed the shirt off his back, he’d give it.

While my father was a role model for many things, education was not one of them. He did however send me to Catholic grade school where I received an above average education, but his advice was always to join the military after school, forget college, learn a skill.

I joined the Navy (of course) where I met my second mentor, Leading Machinery Division First Class MM1(SS) Phil Richardson. Phil was a hard man, like my father except I wasn’t his son and he didn’t put up with immature nonsense. Perpetual bags under his eyes, perpetual coffee cup in his hand, Phil was all about the mission, and our mission was to keep the submarine moving through the water. I learned from Phil that the job wasn’t done until it was cleaned up and the paperwork done. He demonstrated in his own personal conduct a dedication to personal excellence and conduct, leadership by example, a way of conduct that that resonated with me as correct. I was only 22 when Phil came onboard, and I had been a bit adrift, good at my job but restless and tired by the nonstop trips to sea and a feeling that life was passing me by as my high school friends graduated college. Phil instilled work ethic, even if it was dark and caffeinated instead of some uplifting and inspiring nonsense. The quote from Ben Hur was my life then, “…row well, and live.” Phil taught me that it didn’t have to be glamorous, it didn’t have to be visible, but you had to have a standard of conduct if you wanted to be respected as a man among men.

After the Navy, business awaited, but not at first. For 13 years it was just more work, not that dissimilar to the Navy. In fact, the job running an electrical power generation facility was exactly like the Navy, including my ex-Navy coworkers. A more mature me navigated life and did my job, until the door of opportunity swung and a chance to lead not just one facility, but dozens all over the country, appeared. Business mentors came into my life, and not just one, but a hearty beef stew of Chuck, Roger, Tom and Mark (full names withheld to protect their privacy) a cadre of voices that shaped me further.

Chuck, the former submarine Captain, taught me quiet professionalism and provided me a more educated and stoic version of Phil. I would have never gotten the opportunities I had if Chuck hadn’t gotten pancreatic cancer and died. I would have gladly traded my future job for his life, but it doesn’t work like that.

Roger taught me that intelligence and decision making mattered, and that a career awaited me if I make sound decisions (much harder than you think!).

Tom taught me to have balance in life, that family and work had to be in balance and that if I didn’t bring balance to those things, no one would, and in fact, the business would be happiest if I worked myself into death if I found a way to drive up profit. Tom also taught me a common sense approach to business practices that was deeply influential, and he was a very human leader.

Finally Mark, the owner, CEO, President, Chairman of the Board and the most intense man I’ve ever met in my life. 24/7 focused on business, laser-like focus, ruthless pursuit of goals and objectives. He could be the most callous man while at the same time, having a sensitive side that came out privately and only when really needed. He worked harder at 82 than most men 2/3s his age. Mark was a hard taskmaster, but you knew where you stood with him and there was never any ambiguity about his intentions or what mattered to him (mostly money).

Collectively, Chuck, Roger, Tom and Mark were incredibly impactful on my life, and it was the homogenization of their four voices that changed me from mid-level manager into a senior leader. With such great mentors, I should have been all set, yes? But no, I reached my early 50’s lost. Work dominated my life (ignoring Tom’s influence even though I knew he was right), my health was always an afterthought, and worse, I let my identity get altered and my values compromised by tolerating poor workplace behavior because of the golden handcuffs of dollar bills they fed me.

Satori! It’s not just a word to me, an emotion, a feeling. An awakening. Like so many, the COVID years changed my life. I became isolated, as I was the only one in the office every day. My father, and father-in-law, died within weeks of each other and we weren’t able to properly say goodbye to either. I started to see life differently; life became my mentor, teaching me cruelty and unfairness and above all else, shining a mirror on my own mortality.

Rebuild.

Renew.

Restore.

It took time, but those lessons took hold. I finally got brave enough to leave the job. It was terribly difficult to leave Mark, in many ways a father figure (albeit a cold and demanding one) but I reached a point, I’m sure too late, where I couldn’t accept the lack of personal agency anymore.

I embraced my health, mental and physical. I moved to a small, walkable village that I walk endlessly, and heavy kettlebells, iron shaping fat into iron, did the rest. Healthy eating, good sleep, protecting my mind and soul, simple lessons, simple truths.

I rebuilt the foundations of who I was. My mind and mood improved and my body followed.

I renewed my faith in Jesus and in turn, renewed my Christian worldview. I recentered my life around my wife and son, family and friends.

I restored purpose, written out in my journals, a roadmap to what time, God willing, I have left. An ideal to strive towards: a gentleman, a life long learner, a religious scholar, a set of skills and competencies that give me pleasure and purpose, and a healthy body and mind to accomplish all these things.

Rebuild.

Renew.

Restore.

For me, I needed all three, but I also learned and want to share that it’s never too late to make adjustments in your life. Ultimately, that was the true Satori in my life.

The clouds bunched up across the sky like an angry sea.

The sun, more white than yellow, tried to push through, but the soup is thick.

I felt my heavenly God while walking today. A most gracious advocate all around me. I feel the ones I’ve lost watching me.

I feel connected to God, to my ancestors and lost friends and family, but I feel increasingly estranged from the now. Present, but divorcing from most of what life tells me is of most importance.

Politics: Eight years of my life I served a government that I see as corrupt to its core. Both side, both parties, all of it. Absolute power corrupted, absolutely. Blessed be the ones who are not corrupt and trying to bring about change. Never has a job been more futile.

Super Bowl: gambling and advertisement dollars, self important talking heads telling me how lucky I should feel for the honor of watching a game I don’t even like. Bad Bunny? Kid Rock? Childish nonsense from a nuclear power. Everything wrong with America in a three hour window.

Popular Culture: apparently dead, and if not dead, on life support. Maybe not for everyone, but for me, dead. Where have you gone Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Charleston Heston, Milan Kundera, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Mark Hollis, Paul Kantner and Levon Helm. Men in suits with hats. Elegant women. Authors that fed the soul. Musicians that oozed authentic. Dead.

Nihilistic? Far from it. I pray for the world as I’m sure millions of others do.

Resigned. As I approach the final act in my life I feel a sense of hopelessness for humanity. What have we learned since the the Middle Ages? Sure there have been advances, but are we enlightened?

Do you feel enlightened?

Does the polarization of our politics, our media, our inability to agree on gender, climate changes or the rule of law portend to deeper divisions?

When in doubt, remember this is transitory. An illusion of what matters.

From the sky, returning as he left. The fault line below the mount of olives splits open. The clouds part. The alpha and the omega.

O’ come, O’ come Emmanuel.

Outside my window is deep snow and temperatures well below freezing. It’s been a desert of snow and cold for almost the entirety of young 2026.

I visited the desert on the outskirts of Palm Springs, California in December 2025.

I walked in the cool morning air and felt the heat build toward noon. I walked the Rodeo Drive of the Desert, Paseo, and sat at a cafe.

I knew when I returned to the American Siberia what I would find, and I returned anyways.

Metaphors surround us. Dichotomy defines us.

Endure. Persevere. The night comes and we know dawn will come at the appointed hour. In the darkness have faith. Plot a path back to the sun. Walk east, it will rise sooner for you. Take shelter if you must. Never lose hope.

“…we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen, eternal.”

Paul, when writing to the Corinthians for the second time understood that you have to have faith that winter will end, that the sun will rise, that the Son of Man will return.

Bread. four simple ingredients: Yeast, Salt, Flour and Water. 14,000 years ago man made bread. A 2,000 year old loaf was preserved in Pompeii, teaching us what true Roman bread was like. Why do I make bread?

UNBLEACHED ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, MALTED BARLEY FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMIN MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID), WATER, SUGAR, YEAST, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF EACH OF THE FOLLOWING: CALCIUM CARBONATE, WHEAT GLUTEN, SOYBEAN OIL, SALT, DOUGH CONDITIONERS (CONTAINS ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING: SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, CALCIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, MONOGLYCERIDES, MONO-AND DIGLYCERIDES, DISTILLED MONOGLYCERIDES, CALCIUM PEROXIDE, CALCIUM IODATE, DATEM, ETHOXYLATED MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, ENZYMES, ASCORBIC ACID), VINEGAR, MONOCALCIUM PHOSPHATE, CITRIC ACID, CHOLECALCIFEROL (VITAMIN D3), SOY LECITHIN, CALCIUM PROPIONATE (TO RETARD SPOILAGE).

That’s what is in Wonder Bread, admittedly a low bar, but you get the point. We all have a choice. To embrace a lead role in your health is to embrace the food we eat. I like bread (don’t tell my accountability trainer). If I’m going to eat bread, it’s going to have four ingredients.

It’s not really about the bread. Life means living. Living means loving. ‘Find joy in your toils’ to paraphrase James. Comfort is the slow death. Taking the time to bake your own bread, while less convenient, is akin to the now overused parable of making your bed each morning to train your mind to get things done. Making my own bread, showing up for workouts when you lack motivation, turning in a solid performance when you’re not at your best. This is all done to avoid the slow death, comfort.

Enjoy the bread. For you myfitness pal folks like me: 8 slices per loaf, each slice: 230 Calories 1% fat (.7g), 17% Carb (48g), 14% Protein (7g).

I go heavy protein all day and save myself for two slices.

Enjoy!

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” Dickens, 1859.

I live in a winter purgatory, a place where it is dark from 4:30 PM until 8 AM everyday. From about 7 January, after the three kings leave us, until the first Saturday in May, when the sport of kings and the Kentucky Derby signals for me spring, I hibernate and work on me. Not every year, that would be too efficient, but in those best of years, I go into this time period with purpose, with intentionality, of a goal and an objective.

This year is one of those years. My own personal jubilee season. After finding my way out of grief late in 2025, I turned my attention to making 2026 a year of personal growth. I’ll be 60 years old by the end of 2026, but I feel great, I’m generally in good health, my mind is clear, I’m at the top of my game in my career, my family life is bedrock, growth is still not out of the question, and in fact, I’m running towards it.

Comfort is the slow death. That’s my mantra for 2026. Who doesn’t like a bit of comfort, yes? I do, be it an extra hour in the warm bed or the cocoon of my house and fireplace versus the cold frigid air. Comfort must come in moderation. I’m walking 5+ miles a day, I’m lifting heavy kettlebells four days a week, I’m eating right, I’m reading, I’m tending to the vehicle, my body, that will drive that planned growth.

My spiritual growth is not forgotten. My mind is fully engaged in the travels of Paul and the early church. While slow and tedious, I’m keeping a compendium book and taking notes and going off on intellectual tangents about Paul’s confrontations with Jerusalem, his time in Antioch, his travel companions, the sheer volume of travel he put himself through, all of it from the road to Damascus to the prison of Rome, inspired.

I was walking and thinking about Paul as an influencer of his day, but the contrast between what we call an influencer now, and Paul, is so stark. Paul embraced the ‘comfort is the slow death’ mindset. Shipwrecks, beatings, the loss of friends who didn’t conform to his vision, the direct conflict and toe to toe entanglements with Peter and James, men who actually knew the human and risen Jesus. Paul did all of this not for self aggrandizement, not for wealth or status, but because of what happened to him on that road and in that house on Straight Steet. I’ve read for years about Paul but until I started to write it down, looking at maps, and really studying the timeline and the travels, I couldn’t put it all together. Growth.

These are the worst of times, to live in the cold, to live in a divided society, polarized by hateful rhetoric from all ends of the spectrum. These are the best of times, as there is nothing stopping us from trying to make our lives better, and when is a better time, then in the cold and the dark and away from the eyes of everyone around you? Growth.

I write these notes and posts for me. I hope other kindred souls find them, but if not, I will continue to toil, like Paul and Peter and James and so many other of my role models before me.

Dear Blessed Mother, be my guide and my companion as I walk the path to improving as a husband, father and man. Dear Lord Jesus, forgive my sins and forgive my occasional lack of faith.

I recently flew to Hong Kong for annual meetings. I used the opportunity of solitude and unfettered time on the airplane to take a real inventory of my life, where I came from and where I was headed.

My last entry on Substack was in February of this year. Did I get lazy, no. On March 1st, my brother-in-law, Joe, passed away suddenly. He was one of the healthiest people I knew, fastidious in his eating habits and disciplined in his exercise. His life was destressing, as he was slowly retiring from the business he helped create. It sent my world in a spiral. The shattered life Joe shared with his wife and son, the unfinished living with his brother, cousin and close friends, and the special bond between Joe and my wife, all in turmoil. My own grief seemed to have no outlet except to stop caring about the things on my periphery and only do what I had to do to get from point A to point Z, wherever that was. Grief is a circle.

And then one day, the sky grew brighter again. I don’t know why, sometime in October, 7 months and change since his death, and while not forgotten, a weight felt lifted from me. Perhaps I had sunk too low, hitting my own bottom. I was gaining weight and losing fitness during this extended grief limbo, something had to change. I started fasting again, long and intense like I do when I’m really feeling it. Fifteen pounds came off my large frame over the past 8 weeks. I threw myself back into reading, deeply diving St. Paul and the people he encountered in the early days of The Way, to be called Christianity. Focus and clarity returned to my personal life after chewing through energy doing everything possible to not lose it in my professional life too.

I’m back with renewed focus, for myself and my own growth. So many stories to tell from the pages of my compendium journal where I write about all the context and background I research as I read the primary source information (like, who were Polycarp, Ignatius and Clement, or what does Contumacious mean?)

My horse racing blog, The Turk, is alive and well and I really poured myself into it this year as I struggled under grief on the weekends. My personal blog, Satori!, was recently rebooted where I talk books and music and my personal pet projects. And finally, this Substack, where I unabashedly discuss my faith in the risen Jesus and my search for faith and sinless living.

Thanks for reading.

Anthony