Freedom.

Freedom.

We’ve all got struggles, demons, lurking in the backgrounds of our lives.

Some are constant impulses and anxieties, and others emerge randomly, with a sinister unraveling of your outlook, your posture, your cadence.

And those struggles have prepared for a long fucking time for a shot at you.

No matter the depth of your roots into the soil of this warrior creed, no matter how deep Never Fucking Quit runs in your veins, you will be assaulted and harassed by struggles and demons that choose you.

You don’t have a choice.

Because you are alive, you are a target.

They’re here, and more are always coming.

And those impulses and anxieties are not frail things easily knocked back with motivational quotes and the popular feel-good tips of modern society.

They’re hard-to-grasp shadows, wisping in and out of your mind like fucking ghosts, haunting your every decision and ambition.

Others are immense caves, threatening always to pull you in, to chain you to a cold stone floor and leave you for dead.

Then there’re the giant, hulking, gruesome addictions and regrets that pile onto your shoulders, always driving you deeper into the mud of negative perception.

They’re here, and more are always coming.

Because you are alive, you are a target.

You don’t have a choice.

But if these struggles and demons meant death to men and women under their malevolent stare, you and I wouldn’t be where we are today. So we know there is some solution, some freedom from the despair of this mortal affliction.

Perhaps you’ve found it.

Perhaps, like me, you’re studying it, collecting data, analyzing the patterns and banking repetitions.

But I think I’ve found it.

It’s been here all along.

I think it is this: freedom from the many anxieties and despairs—some big and others quite small—you and I contend with, we must truly, utterly, uncaring for discomfort Never Fucking Quit.

Never decide that you are finished, even atop a podium or pulling more weight off the floor than you thought possible. Never cease to climb this fucking mountain we’re all on, development of your mind and body always driving your battered feet another step. Never admit surrender in the face of hardship, even as your fortress crumbles and the enemy puts a knife to your throat.

That’s where freedom lives: in the spirit of every bad motherfucker who knows victory, and sees only the next challenge; in the eye of anyone fighting wind and rain on the endless climb, confident in the purpose of suffering and discomfort; in the blood of anyone with a knife to their throat who says “I will Never Fucking Quit.”

That’s the solution.

And that’s not exactly easy or obvious.

It’s a medicine you must taste to know its effectiveness.

But we’re all given the opportunity to taste it.

There’s a struggle, a demon, who knows your fucking name.

It’s preparing right now, harder than any of us can imagine.

Though it might know your name, it doesn’t know your creed.

It doesn’t know how immortal this creed is.

It doesn’t know how far mortal men and women can take this creed.

This is the creed, the solution, the freedom: Never Fucking Quit.


1 comment

  • Shannon briggs

    I love it! Thanks!


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