Loving the Worst that Can Happen

How we can make knuckle-dragger-wisdom bipedal

Photo by Linus Sandvide on Unsplash

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“You don’t have to like it - you just have to do it”

The first time I heard this phrase was in SEAL selection. By virtue of dealing with the real world in the most brutal and intense manner imaginable, combat units are a trove of wisdom. And theirs is not the wisdom obtained by reading books or enduring the years; it is knuckle-dragger, ancient, pressure-tested wisdom.

What lies beneath this anti-luxury, anti-21st century idea? 

It covers the Holy Trinity of ancient human hardship: this is the philosophy that allowed our pre-state ancestors to suffer more beautifully when they didn't want to, to be more useful to others when they felt like savoring the warm righteousness of self-pity, and to pay heed to reality whether it agreed with their preconceived notions or not. They did not get to choose when the next violent tremor of the earth collapsed the ceiling of their cave down on their heads. They just had to deal with it.

And then there is the First World, whose freedoms have given us the option of succumbing to what is perhaps the most insidious form of slavery - the addiction to voluntary atrophy. When we don't have to do a thing, it is all too easy to do nothing; to evade; to procrastinate; to make up legion excuses that are never forcefully and inevitably kneecapped by Nature. 

So Modern Freedom is the freedom to render oneself inert, while Ancient Freedom is the freedom to do what we have to do or die. 

I used to be a devout follower of the ancient meaning of this idea, enduring short term misery in the hope of some long term gain. 

But what happens now? As I learn how self-destructive an aberrant immune system can be and learn the limits (and often the idiocy) of sacrificing the present joy for some hoped for long term goal, I find that neither the modern nor ancient interpretations give me a glimpse of humanity that is stimulating or, I think, complete; they both deal with what is instead of with what can be; they both render humans as recipients of a mode of life that is not capable of unifying both (1) liking a thing and (2) having to do that same thing. 

If you have to do a thing, then it stands to reason you should like doing it. We see this with food. Eating is nice, but most people also enjoy eating knowing that if they don’t eat, they will starve and die a painful death. The ideal is a harmony of the two: loving the action just as much - if not more than - the end goal, for the process is where we live.  

Because what does it say about me as a man if I only do the things I like to do and none of the things that I must do? That I would be slovenly and weak and selfish, and ungrateful for the wholesomeness of the cold air in my lungs, and that I would be ungrateful for the time I have been given on this earth, and thus unworthy of this gift. And what if I only did the things that I had to do and none of the things that I wanted to do? This would render me a man on his way to becoming a corpse with nothing worthwhile happening on the way there. 

Now what if we go downstream? If I do unify liking and having, then it follows that I must be prepared not just for the best, but for the worst as well. 

What then is the worst thing that can happen? 

I will fail: blessed as I am with imperfections, I have known no better teacher.

My house will burn down: then I will remind myself of what is truly important over what is merely a luxury. 

I will lose my job: but will I lose my love of the morning nautical twilight when I’m rucking beneath the sky and the world is my own? 

So much for the future. What about what already plagues us? 

I have an immune system that wants to kill me: by all means, autoimmunity, do your worst, for I love having an enemy - a real, flesh and blood, death-dealing enemy. Nothing is simpler, nothing clearer, nothing more focusing.

In this situation, the only two choices I have left on earth are to fight or to give up, and there is nothing more innately human and likable than fighting. Why is this? I believe it is because we are neither submissive nor apathetic animals by nature, but the modern world makes it so. 

It is my duty while I am gifted life to handle these exact trials with as much brutal intensity and unrelenting gratitude as I can conjure, and if I fail, which I all too often have, to savor trying once more until my time is done.

What then? Does the same truth not apply to every other aspect of life that we will experience? For my part, I believe it does.

Maybe we can amend this bit of wisdom to the following: 

“You don't have to like it - you just have to do it - and you can learn to love it”

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