It was after a campaign.
Political campaigns are named for military campaigns.
This had been a political campaign.
Jack, a military man and an occasional member of our team, was outside the office in the ritzy SoHo neighborhood of New York City.
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In the days before dystopia struck, in that postcard perfect neighborhood, the narrow old sidewalks were packed in both directions with models, billionaires, musicians, actors, artists, hopefuls, hustlers, neighborhood fixtures, and European tourists. It was sometimes hard to distinguish members of one group from another.
Everyone just sort of blended in. If you were on those sidewalks you belonged there and were treated as such.
Jack had a heavy Chinese accent, having been born in China, and a particular staccato way of emphasizing words, that could make even the most gentle words come across as harsh.
While some members of our team were inside looking for new business, other guys from the team were outside our classic downtown Manhattan, low-rise brick building, making fun of Jack. Egging him on. Jack talked a tough game about what a ladies’ man he was. So why hadn’t anyone ever seen him even speak to a lady during all the time we had spent together?
Honest question. The haranguing on that topic had been going on for weeks, and that afternoon, alongside our stoop, standing atop the neighbor’s rusty cellar doors, alongside that SoHo sidewalk, enough was enough.
Jack had enough of this talk from cowards. He reached out his hand toward the crowded sidewalk, touching the hand of the first model passing by, guiding her toward him by her hand and looked her in the eyes.
As if entranced, or maybe just on autopilot, the model was very willingly led by Jack off the bustling sidewalk, a few steps toward Jack onto the easement.
He drew her close, looked into her eyes and said in his heavy accented staccato speech “Why you so shy?”
At a moment of daring like this, you are rewarded for your bravery or fall flat on your face. Every person of courage knows the number of strikeouts a Babe Ruth has when he swings for the fences.
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This boy ran from the Chinese Communist Party to the US military. He fled everything he knew to come to a new land where he barely knew the language. He had more guts in his clumsy fingertips that held the model’s hand in his, than most American men have in their entire body.
Terrified, she took her hand back and continued on her way posthaste.
Everyone outside had a good laugh at Jack’s expense and returned inside to retell the story in detail, adding a bit of legend to that storied place, and eventually getting back to the search for new business to bring in the door, and new battles for this team to fight in the name of freedom.
I have no doubt about who the bravest person alongside the sidewalk was that afternoon. It wasn’t the chattering class. It wasn’t the peanut gallery. It was the man of action, even though he lost his cool and got goaded by the jackanapes.
As we pass into this dystopian moment in time and sit upon a cusp of a new dystopian era, or retake the freedoms we once knew so intimately, no one need do anything as daring as grab a model’s hand.
No one need do anything as daring as look her in the eyes.
No one need do anything as daring as speak your fourth or fifth language to her as you say “Why you so shy?”
No. Nothing like that. It begins with a simple resolution to live life by a higher standard.
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All you really need to do is speak to a person who works in customer service. All you need to do is tell them what you want. They are likely predisposed to want to accommodate your wants and are also trained to accommodate your wants. Then you just go about your day according to their answer: pushing back a little if you want, refining your request, perhaps asking a different way, or alternately complying if you want.
There’s nothing involved as daring as grabbing a model’s hand out of nowhere.
Nothing involved as daring as learning a new language.
Nothing involved as daring as leaving your homeland for the unknown.
Nothing involved as daring as preparing for battle.
Nothing like that.
Nearly every person reading this, somewhere in their family tree, had ancestors that lived daring lives like that. 14-year-olds crossing the Atlantic. 41-year-olds learning new languages. 82-year-olds stepping into the unknown, into a promised land, paved with gold or not paved at all, flowing with milk and honey or flowing with the effluent and offal of the Lower East Side. That’s the chance they took.
Whether it be rafts taken across the Caribbean seeking political freedom, an ice bridge taken across the Bering Strait seeking resources, or 17th century barks taken across the Atlantic for religious freedom — someone took a chance.
We live different lives than they lived.
A fraction of that courage is needed.
Take that fraction of courage and the mask need not ever be a part of your life again. The vaccine need not ever be a thing you need worry about. Far worse need not ever be a thing you’ll find yourself wound up in.
A legacy of freedom that you can leave to the next generation, a legacy far greater than the inheritance left to you by a previous generation is within easy grasp.
So little is needed of you.
Minor steps toward courage are all that is needed.
Even though minor steps are very threatening to the insecure establishment and the fragile status quo, even the minor steps open the door to such great personal freedom for yourself and perhaps even for others.
The real contagion they don’t want to have you spread, and which face masks are effective against is courage. Namely your courage. Because that little step of courageous behavior will make the next step all the more attainable, all the more simple, will give birth to even more courage within you. Before you know it, those watching you, those hungry for the slightest true leadership, those who deep down know that something isn’t right, they too are taking those first steps courageously.
And what I get in response from so many formerly brave freedom fighters is utter compliance: a disinterest in rocking the boat, a preference to wear the evil mask, a sudden interest in supporting junk science and the bigger government it helps bolster, an eagerness to excuse bad behavior in others and especially themselves as “no big deal.”
Such ugly, low standards thinking will reliably give birth to low standards.
Dear freedom fighter. What happened? How did you become so hesitant? How did you become a shell of your former self? Was this always you? Why you so shy?
On the cusp of dystopia, this era needs better of you.
So much depends on you being the brave warrior that you can be at exactly this moment in history.
This moment will be lost in your own life or this moment will be won like a champion in your own life, based precisely on how brave of a warrior you can be.
Never wear that face mask again. If you don’t know how, read the bestselling “Face Masks in One Lesson” by Allan Stevo, read his LewRockwell.com column, signup at RealStevo.com, or email him to inquire, but really, it just comes down to bravely setting high standards in your life and bravely making those standards a reality.
