Friday Warrior: the Mood of a Warrior
A story about panthers and ownership. And a couple of other Friday things.
Photo: Mateus Campos Felipe
The hardest thing in the world is to assume the mood of a warrior. It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing so, believing that someone is always doing something to us. Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.
— Don Juan, via Carlos Castaneda
Imagine you’re generally a good person, as I am sure you are. You do your best to treat others as you would like to be treated, you do right by everyone you come across, and you like to think you’re fair. Sure, sometimes you might get a little upset or angry but that’s only when things are stressful and you’re under pressure — it’s never without good reason. Besides, you’re only human, right?
Now, imagine you’re trekking through a jungle crawling with panthers. Even though you tried very hard to avoid them, one gets at you and chews your leg right off.
Who do you blame?
You can’t really be angry with the panther because that’s what panthers do: they chew bloody legs off. And you can’t really be upset with the jungle because, well, jungles have panthers.
But you can be upset in general. Legs are quite nice and losing one most definitely sucks.
Responsibility can’t be placed at the feet of panthers or jungles because panthers can only be panthers and jungles can only be jungles. They’re always going to have unknown variables. There is always going to be risk.
Now, imagine the world is a jungle and events are panthers. It doesn’t matter if that event is caused by someone or not. Or if it’s malicious or not. People are people and the world is the world. They’re always going to have unknown variables. There is always going to be risk.
The key is where you place the blame. You decided to go to the jungle. You forgot to bring pepper spray even though you knew there were panthers. You decided that panther-defeating-jujitsu was too expensive. You forgot that it’s a bad idea to run. You should take responsibility for everything that happens to you, no matter what.
But, even this is not the mood of a warrior. It is a start — this is the baseline — but it only begins with realising that you have no control over anything but yourself.
The mood of a warrior is, however, understanding that blame achieves nothing. Things are what they are, it is what it is. Make a note about jungles and panthers, and get on with it. Two legs or not.
A few radical things
Here are a few radical things I discovered this week:
When cooking chicken breast in a frying pan, add a couple of tables spoons of plain full cream yoghurt, some Worcestershire sauce, a splash of water, and a little garlic salt once the breasts are browned. Super healthy, low-calorie sauce. And it’s delicious.
The Ozone layer will be fully recovered in 50 years. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/06/health/ozone-healing-scli-intl/index.html
Sliding doors are not permeable.
This is a newsletter for the curious.
Subscribe. Or don’t.
“Legs are nice and losing one most definitely sucks” - agreed