ran 4.2 miles
It seemed things used to make so much more sense when Jonas was younger and more confused. As a child, Jonas remembered his house being an entire universe. His backyard was a neighboring galaxy. To ride in the car with his mother to go to MacDonalds for french fries or to pick out a candy bar at a gas station seemed far more exciting to him at four than traveling to the moon would have been when he was forty. Now that Jonas was well-invested into his thirties, MacDonalds menus were written primarily in Spanish and the moon, often shadowed into a mysterious crescent like a sharp edge in the hand of a madman, mocked everyone in its path with a cold, mercurial gleam. The shine of its reaper’s edge was a glowing reminder hanging in a vast sky devoid of what was once hope and imagination that everything was what it was and that there only just so happened to be a huge, majestic jewel in the sky that refused to stop watching us.
Jonas exhaled. He thought about the decisions and steps in his life that had brought him to where he was. He was both selfless and proud, yet disparaged, and constantly looked for courage. He thought about his country and what it once was and where it once started. Things were not always like this. His country was gone. It was now a continent. It was augmented with the same superficial and silicone motives that enlarged breasts. Things were not always like this. The rest of the world laughed at us. It had been determined by our own leaders that when their country was too hard working, too economically incomparable per capita, and too driven to succeed at all costs, that their own people should have been tempered into a less resourceful and more docile population of equal rights regardless of ability. Things were not always like this. It had somehow become America’s responsibility to level a proverbial playing field of opportunity for anybody of any age, gender, or ethnicity. In doing so America lit a fire under its own ladder and prioritized an agenda of appeasing everybody and every country it was better than. Things were not always like this.
Professional football players made ridiculous amounts of money for being the best they could be and not one of them would ever ease up on their competition because ability or race was questionable. Lawyers have one of the most respectable titles in the world, doctors and architects demand distinction, and not one of them would ever compromise litigation, a triple bypass, or a set of World Trade Center Towers because other methods or designs were weak, inexperienced, or had said, “It’s not fair.”
“It’s not fair” was the weakest and most supple condition used. It’s based on sympathy and charity. Charity was the worst thing to give anybody and sympathy was the water that extinguished the American fire to succeed. Things were not always like this. America had churned like butter into a fluffy froth mutilating its original design and intention of rigid perseverance and stout will to succeed.
Things were not always like this.
1,291.4 miles to go.
Chapter 9
It seemed things used to make so much more sense when Jonas was younger and more confused. As a child, Jonas remembered his house being an entire universe. His backyard was a neighboring galaxy. To ride in the car with his mother to go to MacDonalds for french fries or to pick out a candy bar at a gas station seemed far more exciting to him at four than traveling to the moon would have been when he was forty. Now that Jonas was well-invested into his thirties, MacDonalds menus were written primarily in Spanish and the moon, often shadowed into a mysterious crescent like a sharp edge in the hand of a madman, mocked everyone in its path with a cold, mercurial gleam. The shine of its reaper’s edge was a glowing reminder hanging in a vast sky devoid of what was once hope and imagination that everything was what it was and that there only just so happened to be a huge, majestic jewel in the sky that refused to stop watching us.
Jonas exhaled. He thought about the decisions and steps in his life that had brought him to where he was. He was both selfless and proud, yet disparaged, and constantly looked for courage. He thought about his country and what it once was and where it once started. Things were not always like this. His country was gone. It was now a continent. It was augmented with the same superficial and silicone motives that enlarged breasts. Things were not always like this. The rest of the world laughed at us. It had been determined by our own leaders that when their country was too hard working, too economically incomparable per capita, and too driven to succeed at all costs, that their own people should have been tempered into a less resourceful and more docile population of equal rights regardless of ability. Things were not always like this. It had somehow become America’s responsibility to level a proverbial playing field of opportunity for anybody of any age, gender, or ethnicity. In doing so America lit a fire under its own ladder and prioritized an agenda of appeasing everybody and every country it was better than. Things were not always like this.
Professional football players made ridiculous amounts of money for being the best they could be and not one of them would ever ease up on their competition because ability or race was questionable. Lawyers have one of the most respectable titles in the world, doctors and architects demand distinction, and not one of them would ever compromise litigation, a triple bypass, or a set of World Trade Center Towers because other methods or designs were weak, inexperienced, or had said, “It’s not fair.”
“It’s not fair” was the weakest and most supple condition used. It’s based on sympathy and charity. Charity was the worst thing to give anybody and sympathy was the water that extinguished the American fire to succeed. Things were not always like this. America had churned like butter into a fluffy froth mutilating its original design and intention of rigid perseverance and stout will to succeed.
Things were not always like this.
1,291.4 miles to go.
