Live and Die for It!

Road-blocks. Dead-ends. False starts. Stones in my Passway. Cross-roads. A bump in the road. A hiccup. A blow-up. A crash. A total fuck-up.

How to deal with that shit?! My usual mode: "damn the torpedoes." Full speed ahead. Try to make lemonade out of lemons. You know, all that positive thinking hurly-burly. Takes a lot of energy. And bravado. False bravado.

Sometimes I know I'm bluffing. And sometimes I just fall into bluff mode without even realizing I'm doing it. And it's only later I realize, I bluffed my way forward. I even bluffed myself.

I always fall back to one of my father's favorite sayings, via Vince Lombardi: "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." 

And yesterday, trying to rally myself, I thought: "They didn't just give Frodo the ring, did they? He had to earn it, to journey for it, to fight for it, to live and die for it. Didn't he?"

And then I remembered. No, they did give Frodo the ring. He was the ring-bearer. He carried it, it was his, and then he lost it, and had to recover it. Oh yeah. Different story. But still, right, the ring. You have to journey and risk and be brave and go forward. And get tough when it gets tough. But maybe not too tough.