Add, not atrophy

Friday 7/31/26

People would rather do less than anything else. Doing less is more important to them than being happy, healthy, loved, intelligent, and fulfilled. Given a choice, almost everyone will elect to do less rather than more or just the same. No matter what that costs them and how much it lessens the quality of their quality of life.

This is one of the innumerable things I'm up against. Because I need people to want to do more. To want to be better. To be more fulfilled. To put in the effort and time. To concentrate rather than to just let go and slide. To be present rather than to be, in effect, nowhere at all.

There's a man and he gets up each day and he commits to trying in the various facets of his life. For example, he makes sure to be physically active. He engages his mind. Applies himself to thinking. He runs in the morning. Goes to work. At night he attends a play. He comes home and reads before bed. Add, not atrophy, might as well be his motto.

There's another man who "rots" on the couch, as we now put it. He doom scrolls. Watches standard Netflix fare, not out of interest, but just...because that's what you do, right? This experience and others like it aggregate and become the authors of his standards. He takes no exercise. He doesn't engage his mind. He kills hours, rather than fills them up.

Do you know which of these two people will feel less tired and have more energy?

It's the man who did more. Who thought more. Who applied himself more. Who moved more.

I haven't done any push-ups over the last two days. I'll have to get back up on the ball--or the palms of my hands--starting early tomorrow. I walked six miles yesterday and three today. On each of these last two days I've run five circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument.

Random or not so random Monument fact: it's twenty stories high.

The days remain humid. Today the dew point was 65 degrees as I ran. Similar yesterday. Very few people were at the Monument yesterday. Would've been a great day to stick around in there for a long time, but I didn't feel like going in the first place. I forced myself to. And, as I said, it was humid. The rain seemed to keep people away.

My mother had the older kids the other day, as I mentioned. She told them about the Reddit thing with me and the stairs. Lilah's response was to ask her, "Why would someone do that to Colin?" because she thinks of her uncle as this super kind person, which he is. I see no reason to pretend otherwise.

She told them that I'd written something here, and asked the kids if they could imagine going up against me and with words at that, and Charlie's instant response was one of, "Good God, no."

That speaks to why no one does, of course. That and because I'm on the side of the right and just. Whether it's with this or publishing people. I'm not the one in the wrong, and let's be honest, we're not talking merely being in the wrong, we're talking evil.

If you are smarter than everyone and correct, no one is going to do anything. They're not going to directly take you on. On top of that, such people are almost always cowards. There are very few brave people in our society. Being brave is different than not being a coward. You can not be a coward and not be brave.

No, true bravery is very rare. I daresay it's far rarer than it's ever been.

Charlie and Lilah are kind. That's their nature. I hope they'll always be like this. And become ever more like that, if you will. You don't want kindness to plateau. We should always be seeking to add to the kindness we put out into the world.

I think Lilah struggles some with the idea of cruelty. That is, she has a hard time understanding why someone would choose to be cruel or attempt to hurt someone. The people who do this without provocation or reason are damaged people. It's about them.

But that can be a hard concept for a sweet-hearted child to understand.

I've learned over time, and in the doing, the creating, that kindness is akin to a cornerstone of great art, because that art is meant to add to lives. To bring clarity, joys, truths, companionship, light. Great art can be many things, but it can't be great art without coming from a place of kindness and more. The going up and not the going down.