Life is a knife fight in the mud...

Logan Roy was right.

Improve your life is a weekly newsletter focused on self-improvement through self-understanding.

I write about looking inside instead of outside and doing your own work.

If this newsletter inspires you consider subscribing or sharing it with friend.

Also, many of these newsletters become videos right here.

Thanks for reading and enjoy. -Ian

The scene

The inspiration for this piece is the intense scene (you can watch until 50 seconds in and you’ll get it) above from the TV show Succession, in which Logan Roy, the self-made patriarch of an extremely wealthy media business family, comes to verbal blows again with his child of an adult son, Kendall.

The scene is so well written that I find a new powerful exchange every time I watch it.  It’s a multi-layered discussion between a father and a son, but it’s also about the truth of their completely different upbringings; the father, a self-made man from humble beginnings in the latter part of his life, and the son, a spoiled kid raised in extreme wealth who has never experienced actual consequences for his actions.  Much of the show's arc is the back-and-forth relationship between Kendall and Logan. This scene is a testament to the incredible power of excellent writing and a lesson in who we are up against.  

The line on which this piece centers is:

In response to Kendall’s request to be cashed out of the business and disappear after realizing that he

“thought he was a knight on horseback”, Logan replies with:

“Life's not knights on horseback.

It's a number on a piece of paper.

It's a fight for a knife in the mud.”

I was fascinated by this line the first time I heard it. I immediately imagine two people in the rain, hunched, gray skies overhead, muddy boots with dripping laces, and rain running down faces, some blood where blood always ends up in knife fights, dripping off blades, becoming diluted in the pools of muck on the ground.  These two raging individuals circling each other, waiting for the next swing.  

Now, the metaphor you have in your head is probably man vs. man; the truth is that it’s you against you. 

You are not up against the world…

Like Kendall, I also thought I was a knight on horseback for years.  I thought I knew something about who I was up against, everyone else. Everything I needed to accomplish was "out there."  I thought I knew where this all goes, where we are heading, and getting closer to the truth.  When it all filtered out, the only thing I knew was something we all know: that I am not up against the world, only myself, and the outcome of this understanding is to keep fighting and push harder.  This fight is against stagnation and decay and toward depth and growth.  

But we must remember that the fight is indeed a knife fight, which is no joke. Accepting this is to forget the rest of the world and challenge yourself first.

It is the challenge to not return to:

Absurd emotional vortices,

personal chaos cycles,

ingrained inherited negative patterns,

and irrational expectations.

Returning to old cycles is taking cuts from your foe.  

The challenge is to literally discover new countries, real and internal, to turn the page on past generations' old traumas.  To move forward. That's who you are facing off with- anything internal that holds you back. 

You think you are battling the world, but the battle is all internal, and it’s time to cut a deep gash into your old, decaying self. 

How can this improve your life?

Once you know your challenger, everything becomes more precise; the first wipe of the wipers during a downpour restores clarity. 

The solution is doing your own work. 

The work involves many things, but it is primarily about understanding the roots of why you think, react, and behave the way you do.  Why do the same patterns continue? What is the root of these pathways, and how do you break free of the unproductive ones.  You can only fight by going inside to see what you need to cut away. How do you hone in one dragon, slay it, and then live off it for years? You go inside and look around. I have learned that for many people, this is terrifying. Me, I'm not interested in much else.  

"The chief symptom of our culture is its banality.

The chief antidote to banality is the willingness to accept the transformative suffering of depth. " - James Hollis¹

As simple as it may seem, writing is one of the easiest ways to begin this work. No topic, no plan, no desired outcome—get a pen and paper (turn off your phone) and just let it rip. It will blow your mind and be frightening, but now you’re in the fight. This is the very beginning of the work. This is where the smallest revelations start, increasing if you stay in the fight. 

What will you gain if you choose to fight?

The benefit of this change of perspective is clarity. Now that you see exactly who you are facing, you can strategize the fight. You get fully into the fight by ignoring so much more than you currently do.  Ignore almost everything.  Say no to almost everything.

Don't do other shit. Do the work.

Of course, this is wildly easier said than done.  This means the knife fight will also include a battle against what everyone else expects of you.  Very often, the more we ignore, the more pressure there is from the outside. Let any unnecessary pressures breeze past you, and the lightness will remain.

The knife fight is you versus the person everyone else has in their mind and where you want to go.  

The knife fight is between where you have been and turning the corner towards where you actually want to go. 

The knife fight is between you and turning the page on all of your dysfunctional inherited traits, which you thought you had no control over. 

The knife fight is you chipping away day after day with the pickaxe on the wall of the goldmine, seeing slivers of gold every few hours, knowing that you are on the right line. You keep swinging the pickaxe onto the rock, seeing the sparks, and hearing the absurdly loud clanging and finally seeing glints of gold. It’s one of the last things we want to do because everything else is so much easier.

This is the fight, and I urge you to keep going. 

If you enjoyed this, give this a try: The joy of a chaos-free life

1. Creating a Life: Finding your individual path by James Hollis pg. 61