People often joke that I have OCD because I follow certain patterns regardless of consequences. For example, I once made a New Year's resolution to exercise five days a week. My first day in the gym, a buddy of mine who was a gym rat laughed and said, "Yeah, I wonder how long that'll last." Seventeen years later I'm still at it and in great shape, though I'm pretty sure he is not. Neither rain, sleet, snow, nor fatigue after a long day's work have stopped me. Many times I have gone to the gym after attending a client meeting and having a few drinks, when working out was the last thing I felt like doing. Granted, there are occasions when I indeed have no choice but to miss a workout, but to the extent I have a choice I follow through.
I do this not because I will fall to pieces if I don't, and not even because I love to work out -- the truth is I often despise it. I do it because it is good for me and because I made a promise to do it. That's the part most people today fail to grasp, i.e., following through on a promise even when it becomes a pain in the ass. When I promise to do something, it gets done. That is a defining quality of being a man; the disappearance of that quality coincides with the degradation of many noble institutions America once had. Marriages, the rule of law, agreements made and kept on a handshake . . . take your pick. Pursuing an ideal no longer resonates with a people who worship at the altar of pleasure and ease. For them, the sight of honor evokes only laughter.
It wouldn't bother me so much except for the fact that these jackals have institutionalized their degradation to make war on people like me to extract our blood, sweat, and tears. We the thrifty and virtuous are now compelled to subsidize the profligate and vicious, an attack against honor if their ever was one.
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