We Become Who We Are

# Judgement

You can't judge a book by its cover but you can by its first few chapters and most certainly by it's last.

Revenge is too easy and over so quickly.

It’s an easy phrase to toss around until life strips away the scaffolding of time, sweat, & investment of building around another human being.

They tell you never to judge a book by its cover. Fair enough. But you can judge it by its opening chapters, and you can most certainly judge it by how it ends. Promises, words, actions... that seem to mean nothing. That last chapter reveals everything the prologue tried to promise and everything the middle pages tried to hide. Sitting here in the immediate fallout of a goodbye, looking at the spine of a story that is officially closed, I’m not interested in tearing out the pages. I’m just taking an honest inventory of how it concluded.

It ended. That is a fact. But it doesn't mean the reading wasn't worth the hours.

## The Trap of Getting Even

When a heart breaks in real time, the initial instinct is small. The nervous system wants an eye for an eye; the ego demands a score settled. But revenge is far too easy, and worse, it’s over in an instant. It burns bright, leaves ash in your mouth, and does nothing to repair the structural damage inside your chest.

I hope for more than that. I hold myself to a higher standard than bitter retaliation.

To walk away clean is harder than lashing out. It takes discipline to look at the wreckage, recognize where it hurts, and choose grace over spite. You don't build a future by trying to set someone else's house on fire.

## The Hunger Left Behind

If the grief has done anything useful in these raw hours, it hasn't killed my desire to live—it has sharpened it. Pain has a way of cutting through the trivial noise and showing you the sheer scale of the world waiting on the other side of your sorrow.

Have you ever sailed across an ocean? Out there on open water, surrounded by endless blue with no land in sight, and without even the possibility of sighting shore for days? That is what I want. To stand at the helm of destiny, feeling the complete isolation and the absolute freedom of navigating through the deep. Just one time.

I want to stand in the Piazza del Campo in Siena, feeling the ground shake as ten race horses thunder past the stone. I want to sit down to dinner in Paris at L’Ambroisie in the Place des Vosges, finish one bottle of wine, and order another without looking at the clock. I want one late, smoke-filled night listening to jazz at the Village Vanguard.

I want to stand on mountain summits, clear-headed like the king I know I am, smoking a Cuban cigar with the warmth of the sun full on my face. I want to walk the stones of the Great Wall, climb the towers, ride the rivers, lose an afternoon staring up at ancient frescoes, and sit quiet in a garden just to finish one more good book.

And yes... I still want love. I want the honest warmth of a good woman, the actual love of my life, waking up together between cool sheets on an ordinary morning.

## The Boy Who Slept

There is gratitude here, even through the ache. I got to feel something deeply enough for its loss to leave a mark. If you never love completely, you never break completely, and I will always take the full measure of life over half-hearted safety.

The longing isn't just for distant cities or grand vistas. Stripped down to the bare core of it, what I want most is simple:

I want to sleep.

I want to close my eyes and sleep the way I did when I was a boy in an unburdened house, resting deep without a single care in the world. No replay of yesterday's arguments. No anticipation of tomorrow's quiet rooms. Just the heavy, peaceful rest of a man whose conscience is clean.

Give me that just one time, and let the rest of the voyage begin.