Purpose of Life is to Win, Not to Survive

Attention all you mediocre males (for I will not call you MEN). You like to spew all sorts of speeches, essays, and words over anyone that will hear you. You smoke your words in a pretty pipe to null yourself to girlish comfort and gooishness. You, who say, life is to be survived not to be won. You, who cower in the corners saving and scavenging for the pennies and are to take afraid to risks. In fact, you view risk as an enemy to your comfort. “Survive Pook! We are meant to survive!” You passion-less slugs! Not even a child would be as guilty as you are. Even a CHILD knows there are WINNERS and LOSERS in life.

As is my habit, I will give an excellent analogy. Through my periodic workouts (of which the ladies time their workouts at the same time to be in the presence of my Pookness), I tend to swim afterward. It is nice to cool down in the pool. But I noticed something particular. Why was swimming in the pool draining my battery more than lifting hundreds of weights? Why could little women, who were I admit were very muscular with their strong legs and tight rear, able to easy out swim me? Maybe swimming wasn’t in my genetics? But that, I knew, was poppycock.

“Poppycock!?” cries a reader. Yes, poppycock. I swam harder but that just drained my energy further. What was I doing wrong?

I realized in swimming (just as with everything in life), we are taught to survive, not how to win. In swimming, you are taught how to stay above the water, how to use your arms to propel yourself from one side to another, and let us not forget to follow the black line. We end up flat on our face slapping the water endlessly as we struggle to go back and forth, back and forth.

No other creature on Earth swims that way. Fish do not swim flat, and they do not use their fins to propel them. “But fish were made to be in the water, Pook,” you might say. “Man was made to be on the ground. Of course we cannot swim like a fish.”

We were told we could not fly like a bird until Man’s MIND came up with an answer. Instead trying to swim to survive, let us try swimming to win. “And how might you win, Pook?” Why, by imitating the master swimmer: the fish. Instead of swimming flat, swim at an angle like the fishes do (water has 1000 times more resistance than air. Think of all the air resistance that cyclers and joggers attempt to combat and wonder why swimmers don’t do it for water.) The way that we swim is that we go against the water most of the time. Chop! Chop! Goes our arms in the water. The engine to the fish is not its fins but its thrust with its body. The fins only guide. After all, golfers and baseball players don’t swing with their arms, they swing with their thighs. With Olympic swimmers, the faster swimmers are those who use their arms the least.

Nevertheless, I began swimming like a fish. Took a while to learn and required me to untrain my old habits to really use my brain to learn to swim again. I must certainly look funny being underwater, on my side. But what is funny is that I only have to rotate my arms a few times to go from one side of the pool to another. Those who swim to survive become annoyed as I keep up with them. “You are barely working at it!” they growl. “I know,” I reply. “That is the point.”

With Don Juan, you realized it was better to win than to survive. Nice Guys live to survive; Don Juans live to win. You understand the natural process so you do not ‘work.’ Nice Guys think of getting girls as working uphill- hard, frustrating, and taxing. Don Juans think of getting girls as sliding downhill- exhilarating, fun, a roller coaster. This same difference animates all of life: love, finance, sports, sex, learning, playing, and everything else.

“Live for what you NEED!” says the voice of security. “Live for what you WANT!” says the voice of freedom.

“That is selfishness!” damns a reader.

No. Selfishness is not doing what you want. Selfishness is demanding others do what you want as a form of entitlement.

So sit softly, you mediocre men who sit in the soft glow of your computer monitors. Live your life to survive. I intend to win.

“But you might lose, Pook!” Yes, but at least I can say my life was an adventure. Can you say the same for yours?