Boys, have you ever had one of those weeks where literally everything seems to fall onto your shoulders all at once, and the world sort of stops making sense? The older we get, the more often this seems to happen. Speaking from LONG and PAINFUL years of experience with this sort of thing, the only advice I can give to people going through anything like that, is simply to put your shoulder to the wheel, grit your teeth, and get on with making the best out of a bad situation.
Because, as with all such craziness, it never actually lasts very long.
Eventually, the world straightens out and starts making sense again. As Captain Blackstone said in STARSHIP TROOPERS – which is basically an extremely powerful civics lesson disguised as the greatest military sci-fi novel ever written – “you have to keep a sense of proportion”.
Focus on what matters, what is actually relevant to the situation at hand. Everything else can wait. The world will not stop turning just because you are swamped and buried under a lot of nonsense that other people want.
Ultimately, one must remember: we are all dead men. Sadly, we cannot choose when, but we can choose how we meet that end, so that we may be remembered, very simply, as men.
To quote another line straight from STARSHIP TROOPERS:
The words are not mine, of course as you will recognise. Basic truths cannot change and once a man of insight [not me, obviously] expresses one of them it is never necessary, no matter how much the world changes, to reformulate them.
— LTC Jean V. Dubois, STARSHIP TROOPERS, Robert A. Heinlein, 1957
Speaking of which… I do believe I am long overdue to re-read that book. I try to read through it at least once every three to six months. It is one of those very rare, very unusual books, where you get something new from it every single time. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.
There are only maybe three books that I think deserve to be re-read like that. The first is, of course, the Bible, because, well, DUH. The second is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. And the third is the greatest sci-fi novel, of any subgenre, ever written – Dune, by Frank Herbert.
Of course, that is just my opinion. And you know what they say about opinions.
Anyway, that is quite enough rambling for one day. Seeing as it is Friday, we all know why you are here.
This week’s lovely lady is Ekaterina Maksimova (Екатерина Максимова), age and origin unknown, though I think she is from Moscow, Mordor. That is of course TBD. Unfortunately, she is tattooed, and probably plastic, but the rest of her ain’t bad.
Happy Friday, lads.
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