Weights of Wisdom - The Storm
N.B. This was written with two columns that best shows up on a desktop or laptop. It still follows the correct order on mobile, but is spaced differently from the merging of the two columns.
Henry Rollins in his essay entitled The Iron said: "Friends may come and go. But 200 pounds is always 200 pounds." The Stoic steadfastness of The Iron can teach us much about life and how to face the challenges of each day.
Life is like a rock to be chiselled and carved into something more. Something only you can give definition to.
Each day The Iron remains the same - weighs the same and is always there to wait. To wait for you to come and move it, give it challenge, and impose your will.
But what is fear to 200 pounds? What is pain to The Iron? Nothing. The Iron never changes through the rollercoaster that is life. The Iron never lies. The Iron remains calm.
Some days we enter the gym and that 200 pounds feel effortless to us; ready to float skywards at our slightest offer of power. Other days The Iron humbles. That same 200 pounds won't budge without the mightiest of effort. It grounds you.
What's different here? The Iron stays the same, but we change.
Each day brings new opportunities to improve and to change; to face hardships and challenges whether we are prepared to accept them or not. Like a ship on the sea, we must be ready for The Storm.
Hopelessness. Despair. The fuels of grief pull from an endless pool. All your failures. All your fears realized. The struggle is real. We all go through it at some point. Everyone has their fuck.
The Storm comes in waves.
Keep on fighting.
We see success and we see failure. We take our licks and keep on battling. We get knocked down, the weight of the world on our shoulders.
But always get back up.
We can take a lesson out of The Iron's book, steadfast through it all. Good and bad both come. Keep an even keel and weather The Storm. Experiences come and go, but The Iron stays the same. Take it all in and grow from each experience but still stand tall with The Iron.
Fortissimus