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Before we start on the creative minority
Jan. 30th, 2019 04:57 am
I want to talk about channeling your inner Ahab.
Look, here in the good old USA we think that everything is for sale and everything is a service that can be purchased. Need to get in shape? Join a gym (for a fee), need to lose weight? Join one of the services that watch you and rag you (for a fee), need to improve yourself? Go to a class of some type (for a fee).
Yet all of those things will require, at the end of the day, simple self-discipline on your part. Nothing else.
The idea that everything requires a cheering section and a trophy is a recent occurrence here in the USA. I cannot remember anyone other than the occasional outlier bored suburban housewife thinking this way in the deep park past. Nope, this is a recent poison and it has flooded the system.
All that hoohooraw about the Gillette "Toxic Masculinity" commercial is a case of this kind of nonsense taken to the extreme. The replies are equally childish and in the other direction.
Nope, the reason that I am writing this is that I want to remind someone of a fictional character that has gotten a uniquely bad rap here in the land o' the free.
Captain Ahab.
Look, everyone who reads the book starts out thinking of Ahab as a caricature, all they see is the obsession. But as you get older, I really think that it becomes more complex than that. Yes, Ahab is obsessed. No getting around that. An oversized fish biting off your leg tends to do that to a man.
But he is a man about his profession. He is a whaler after a specific whale. He is focused on his task and he will do it. Granted, he did go a little bit overboard, but that is the nature of focus, it can get out of hand if you don't keep a weather eye on it.
Look, people don't need a cheering section. You don't need someone else to tell you what to do to get to your goal. You need to focus on the prize, you need to finish the task. Nothing else will work.
What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do!
