When life brings you a blood-stained hurricane, what will you do?

The Count of Monte Cristo  has symbolized the path Fate sent me down. Dantes uttered these words after 13 years in France’s most notorious prison, the Chateau d’If. Listen to the meaning behind the words.

Life is like a storm. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout: “Do your worst! For I will do mine!!”

Many years ago, despite the wrongs done to me, I chose not to do my worst… but my best. Not because I’m noble but because I refused to reduce myself to the level of the liars, cowards, and traitors that meant to do me and my children harm. Acting without honor is conduct unbecoming. So I channeled all I’d lost into transforming my ignorance — to becoming an alchemist of sorts. Not in order to turn worthless metals into gold but to transform human ignorance into something robust — and thereby something of worth.

Fate is seldom perceived with her dual personality of Lady Luck. She’s generally hated because of the agony she inflicts, purportedly for no reason. Yet Diogenes was certain that we, alone, possess the power to harm ourselves. I surmise that Fate has many aliases that include Isis, Shakti, Athena, Frea, Shema — and possibly Allah or God. What if her counter-intuitive mission – all along – has just been to discover among the ranks of humanity those that perform better? Those that strive to be their very best.

Anyone can perform perfectly when the pains of duress are non-existent. The true test is what it takes to stop us. It’s who we become when all hope has been lost… when we know what it feels like to be abandoned by the Lord God himself.

It’s this baptism by fire, learning to survive the cauldron of hell, that measures our mettle. In this most sacred of places, the few perform the common under uncommon conditions. They realize the test is not how hard you can hit, but how hard you can get hit… and keep moving forward.

This distinction crafts mere mortals into something more. It may be what Da Vinci wrote often of as the key to success: sapere videre or “knowing how to see.” Only when we’ve endured Fate’s blood-stained hurricane can we begin to see clearly. We call it “getting crystal.” We gain perspective to interpret enigmas like Nietzsche’s amor fati or “love Fate.” What he meant was that Fate (or God… or whatever) should be loved because the hell she brings to our lives is our only opportunity to become our Best. To rise above. To be excellent.

Until we rendezvous Downrange…