Willing to Do More Than I

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In order to find me deficient by the metrics measured by men, you must consider the means taken by men in order to advance their lifestyles, and in that case you're comparing apples to oranges. Their mantra and dogma are incompatible with what I believe. Many people achieve more and have more than I because they are willing to do more than I am. Sometimes this is virtuous, because they are willing to work harder or longer or in a more disciplined manner in order to arrive somewhere where I'm unwilling to go. However, all too often, these are people who are willing to do whatever it takes because the means justify the ends. My ancestors in Nordic lands had a saying that "power is for those willing to stoop low enough to take it", and some of the things these people achieve they gained through illegal, unethical, or immoral means. You can't tell that, and you can't tell that I'm doing the right things unless you know me because it doesn't show. There are depths to which I will not stoop, lengths to which I will not resort, and things I will not attempt, not because I don't value the outcome but because how we win matters just as much as how we lose.

Men differ in the risks they willingly take. Although I live in Las Vegas, I don't gamble because I know the house always wins. However, that doesn't stop random chance from rewarding others. A woman I know recently reported going in, placing $100 on 00 on roulette, and winning $3500 despite 35:1 odds. I'm not a winner even when I have a 50/50 chance, but some people are willing to take risks. Politicians are adroid at this, because the money they risk is YOURS, but I digress. It amazes me what risk people are willing to tolerate. One former student told me that she was under duress because she had just kicked out her boyfriend who was also her son's father, but that she was happy she hadn't married him. Wait, what? This was precisely zero hedge against the risks of a failed relationship because now they have a child together, and she's robbing him of access to his father. Unprotected sex, sex outside of marriage, and all the inherent risks of promiscuity seem no profilactic against the risks of fornication and adultery, even though we probably all know someone whose life was damaged or diminished by divorce. Elsewhere in the workplace, some people embellish their resume, only to face the risk they get fired later when the lie is discovered. However, they feel it's better to ask forgiveness than permission and take the risk because the job comes with experience that they can use to legitimately get a similar job later, albeit earned under false pretenses. The college's legal counsel was someone who didn't have a law degree, and the city of Henderson hired a man who wasn't a resident to be city manager. However, the only people who face scrutiny are people like me, who have to prove their hours, whereabouts, etc. I have coworkers who probably don't work a single full day of the year, coworkers who violate other laws, but the prevailing attitude seems to be that it's only a crime if you get caught. We make all sorts of associations that are not worth the risk. I have cut off friends doing illegal or immoral things so as to not seem like I endorse or join them. However, more than a few friends have candidly admitted that they chose their mates despite the risks and got lucky that the people they chose were also great. My racquetball partner's wife told me a few weeks ago that she took a risk on a man with no job, no education, and no home, and it worked out for her, but that it could have gone a different way. Well, I've taken risks on women and none of those things have ever worked for me, and in my experience I learned that if it sounds too good to be true or seems like it might hurt me that I should shy away. Meanwhile others try to woo, and where they cannot outearn me, they work on their looks and turn to supplements, protein powders, and narcotics in order to achieve a physique. Some people are just willing to spend five hours per day at the gym in order to maintain their looks. I am not willing to work that hard to achieve a visual ideal, assuming it would work for me.

Men differ in the privations they willingly tolerate. My eldest female cousin thinks I would make a good doctor and tried to encourage me to attend medical school. Flattered though I might be, I am not willing to submit myself to the rigors of medical school and then the demands of a medical career in order to care for people who do not like me and do not appreciate what I do. I am not motivated by the money, and I do not find the intangible returns of medicine sufficient impetus to sacrifice. I laud those who do. I also laud firemen who risk their lives and subject themselves to chemical exposure; I like knowing what chemicals I handle and how to treat myself when exposed. For a long time, I resisted the encouragement to date women with kids, and when I did, I found that I was right so to do. I am not willing to come second place behind a woman's 10 year old son or let her ex husband dictate the terms of my life. It's not really my family; I become more of an accessory when I date her, and my time revolves around people I don't know or like who are probably doing this just for power over their ex. One girl insisted that unless I join her gym I obviously didn't care about her at all, and I'm not willing to be treated like that, to be manipulated like that, and to be subject to the reducto ad absurdium that people who are immature use in order to reassure themselves that they are loved. I know it's hard. I've been single for a long while. Years back, I had a student who refused to break up with his girlfriend even though she marginalized him because he didn't want the hassle of finding a new one. I totally get that, but I'm not willing to stay with someone like that just to not be alone. Nobody is better than the wrong person. My ex wife started using intimacy late in our marriage as a means to manipulate me into doing what she demanded because I "owed her". She would insist that I didn't love her at all unless I did whatever she demanded. That's a childish attitude, and I'm not going to put up with it again. More than a few people I know will do whatever it takes to please people they love even though those people do not love them back in truth.

Men turn out differently according to the lines they willingly cross. I'm not a perfect man, but I strive to be better than the rest of the kitten caboodle. I know myself and my standards, and I keep them because they keep me. However, many other people believe in expediency- that if it feels good or may help you then you should do it. You only live once, so live it up instead of you only live once so live well. Many people get ahead of me because they are willing to break the law. There's this secretary in social science who always passes me on the way home, and where once I thought maybe she just got lucky, I found out it's because she goes 60mph in a 45mph zone. I lost a course this fall to another professor, not because the chair hates me, but because he's friends with the other guy outside work. I have lost out "competing" for women to men who earn more and are willing to spend whatever it takes. Once you start paying bribes, how do you stop? If the woman picks a guy based on his willingness to buy things for her, she's not courting him; she's leasing herself to him with an option to buy. Far too many men around me take advantage of opportunities and people thinking that nobody gets hurt or that nobody besides them gets hurt. They tell themselves that the rich deserve it or can afford it. They think it's preferable to live with someone before marriage, to "find out if you're sexually compatible first", and to not "sign a stupid piece of paper to prove our love". They pass the buck to others for work and then file harassment claims against their coworkers to save their own skins. Stealing is easy, but earning money takes hard work. Blaming others is easy, but changing takes hard work. It's easier to complain than it is to fix it, and somehow there's always enough time to do it over but never enough time to do it right the first time. It's easier to hire "diversity" than good people, to hire more people than the right people, and to promote problems than to promote the people who take care of business. I get called chicken, coward, Puritan, and prude, accused of being too good for them, too arrogant, too "righteous" (as if) and then too butt-hurt when I call them to carpet. Somehow, I'm always the problem for being unwilling to go to those places, but it's because I know some places you can't come back from. How do you recover from HIV? From cancer? How do you become "unpregnant" or get off cigarettes? How do you purge a record, criminal or on Facebook, of mistakes you made or that people CLAIM you made? The accusations from my coworker are still on my employment record even though I was exonerated. I stay as far away from the edge as possible, knowing that sometimes you still slip and fall, and they follow other people because we watch villains collude in GOBNets and reward each other for their villainy. They criticize me for an inability to perfectly live a standard they won't even attempt. They are willing to do whatever it takes unless it asks them to be good people, all the while telling themselves that they are virtuous.

There is only one way for me to get the kind of life I desire, and so there are things I am unwilling to do even if they MIGHT get me to that end. When I bend my rules, I am miserable, and so I keep to them, knowing that we're supposed to reap what we sow. Since I don't have connections, I've had to compete for jobs on merit. Since I don't have a ripped physique, I've had to compete for women based on the quality of my company. Since I don't strive expressly for money and am not interested in plastic personae, I don't look competitive. Other people are willing to cross lines, tolerate conditions and take risks that I'm not willing to take, and then we reward the lucky among them. In truth I am not that lucky, and in truth, I have to live with myself. I don't think some of these people HAVE a conscience, because they seem to be willing to do whatever whenever without regard for how it looks. Far too many people are promoted for luck, because they hit the genetic lottery or were in the right place at the right time and said the right thing. There are things I am willing to do. They are different from yours. Please don't require me to accept you as you are and then demand that I become what you find acceptable "for fellowship". When Lord North comes to Sir Thomas More to persuade him to sign the edict permitting Henry VIII to divorce his wife "for fellowship", More says, "When we die and you are sent to heaven for abiding your principles but I am sent to hell for abandoning mine, will you come with me for fellowship?" I am what I am. I do not change to please the jury. I am honestly disappointed by and frustrated with many episodes of my life because other people move forward, move upward, and move onward while I stall in the mud. They get everything it seems while I barely squeak by. However, I was given advice from my organic chemistry professor to "Content yourself with an honest C over an A gained by fraud." They have their fraud. Eventually it will catch up with them. God is not fooled. The choices you make are visible in the behavior of cells, and the God of the Universe can read your actions and motivations without having to watch you make them.