One of the most memorable quotes I have encountered in my life came from John Steinbeck, "Travels With Charley". I was reminded of it when I read, in the Smithsonian, about the salvage and restoration of the boat he used, with John Ricketts, in 1951, to travel to the Sea of Cortez to collect marine samples. We live in an age where the positive aspects of maleness are conflated with the admittedly negative consequences of assertive and aggressive behavior. Human survival has depended upon such behavior for millennia, however, and it is past time that we stopped demonizing it.
“A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby.”
John Steinbeck.
Get into the arena. Live your passions. Accept consequences; but, live.
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