This old guy once said to me when I asked him how he was doing, “Why complain, who would listen?” I used to think he was saying, nobody would listen because nobody cares but I’ve just had a ah,ha moment, after recently reading “Atlas Shrugged”… I now think he was saying, the quality and type of people that would listen (aka moochers/victims), the sort that would sympathise with you are not the sort of people he’d want to surround himself with.

I think the producers would say, “all that might be true, but now what? What are you going to do about it? What action will you take to change your self-created circumstances that you now, no longer desire?”

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

It's maybe reflective of the culture that he grew up in.

In his time, people probably didn't pay much attention to complaining.

These were the hard men that created good times.

Thank god for those men. My grandad was one of them and my stepdad another. Both war veterans. Not saying I aspire to war but if definitely makes warriors of the men that survive and reinvent themselves. Both were successful business men and gentle giants post war.

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

This is going to sound wildly inappropriate… but I liked the hard men. They were amazing humans and brilliant role models.

Yes. Their values & standards shaped the world into something beautiful - the good times.

It's interesting to look at our young sons with the knowledge that they might become the hard men. Hard men weren't born hard but were hardened by the circumstances of their environment. They became hard because being weak & soft was not a viable option for survival. Their hardness comes at a cost.

You are correct, their hardness does come at a cost but it is at a lesser cost than softness. Self respect is priceless. Knowing you are capable of doing what needs to be done is what self respect is made of.

It come back to that old Japanese belief/saying that I can’t find but goes something like this.

The fiercest warrior rarely needs to un-sheath his sword.

Doing the work to become the best and the knowledge you have done the work carries its own energy.

My stepdad, post Nam was the gentlest of giants but anyone who crossed him (usually by demonstrating a lack of integrity) walked away literally shaking with fear.

He was special forces a specialist Snipper and in hand to hand combat… the two most intimate ways to kill another human. Snippers often study their targets for days and hand to hand for obvious reasons.