Chapter 2- Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe

That’s right, tell no one.  Not your loved ones. Not your friends. Not your coworkers. Not that guy who stands on the corner of State and Jackson and shouts obscenities but gets angry if you make eye contact with him on accident while pondering his past and what led him to be at that corner on a near daily basis screaming obscenities at the passers-by.

It may seem to conflict with a natural instinct when I say that you need to tell no one what you are doing, but I assure you, this is for the best for a number of reasons.

One, because this book is telling you to in an effort to lead you to the enlightenment its author has unquestionably found.

During the years prior to gaining enlightenment when I would try to quit smoking--or for that matter try to do anything new and productive and potentially life-changing--my instinct would be to spread the good news.

"Friends!" I'd exclaim to my living room at three in the morning, "I'm finally going to do it!"

"What are going to do?" my Frodo bobble-head would reply.

"EVERYTHING!"

Frodo would just shake his head and shoot a worried look at the Gollum figurine beside him.  "Poor guy," he'd whisper.

In reality, it might have been quitting smoking.  It might have been quitting drinking.  It might have been quitting sniffing glue.  Whatever grand change I was endeavoring to enact in my life, I would want everyone to know.  I felt that this way I could build a system of support, friends and family rooting for me to achieve my goals, bolstering my motivation should I find it faltering.

Of course, people were always supportive.  "That's great," they'd reply, extending that last syllable just a bit too long as if they weren't fully convinced that it really was great, or fully convinced that what I was endeavoring in was at all feasible.  "That's greaaaaaat," they'd reply, but entwined with those two words was a very loud thought.

"Good fucking luck," it might have been.

"Really? Again?" perhaps.

"How long will this last?" maybe.

You don't have to be a mind reader to perceive those types of thoughts.

In a way, their support that I'll firmly avow was genuine at heart would become twisted and almost feel like an attack on my will, on my positive choice.  Sure, they would proclaim that it is an awesome decision, but then might ask how it might be different this time, how I'd be dealing with the cravings.  Little did they realize each time that this occurred that it would be for forever, that this time was the time, that I'd laugh in the face of any cravings until they cowered in fear before me and my wrath.  They didn't understand the height of my power in those moments, that I was capable of rising above this world and, with simply the power of my intentions, redirecting and purifying all the filth and waste and negativity entrenching man and earth.

"Bow down before me, puny mortals, and tremble!" I'd shout, the echoes of my voice simultaneously leveling mountains and bringing peace to warring nations.

This twisted non-supportive support will end up being detrimental to your choice.  You will begin to doubt the power of your intentions, which is limitless.  Your choice, fully chosen with all parts of you, and chosen over and over again, can yield results that would bewilder others, so long as you believe that you do have that power, and that power is simply making a choice, again and again.

But there are other reasons to keep your goal a secret.

Payoff.  Setting a positive goal, working toward it, and achieving your end result gives you a measurable payoff.  You achieved something.  You gained.  The true payoff of quitting smoking is that you are no longer smoking and maybe have gained some enlightenment along the way.  But you might get confused if you start telling everyone in your life what you're doing.  From some you may get the non-supportive support, but from others, you may get genuine happiness and praise.  "I'm so proud of you.  I'm so happy," they may beam, their smile and hug and heightened tone enough to elicit in you a chemical reaction resulting in the release of feel-good chemicals to the brain that might just make it seem like you're already accomplishing your goal.

First  you tell a close friend.  Then some coworkers.  Finally a parent in whose eyes and esteem you've always been ashamed to be a smoker.

A father.

He used to smoke, but back in those days, nearly everyone did.  That stigma wasn't there quite yet, and the medical impact of cigarettes, while beginning to be known, was nowhere near as widespread as today.  So he smoked as a teen, and into his twenties, like those around him.  He married mom, who also was a smoker, from a family of smokers, and who continues smoking to this day.  His parents smoked as well, and his sisters, so the shame I felt wasn't because he was pure of mind and body.

Though he came from a family of smokers, and married into one as well, after having his first child, and after seeing his two-year old daughter mimic the actions of smoking, putting her fingers to her lips, holding an imaginary cigarette, exhaling loudly as she saw her parents do, he made up his mind.  There were other motivations, I'm certain, as there need to be, but in my mind, this was his primary reason for making the decision to face and tackle his addiction: his children.  He wanted what was best for us.  He wanted us to be healthy.  He wanted us to be happy.

Suddenly it wasn't just about him anymore.  He wasn't endangering only himself.  He was setting an example for his kids he did not want to set, and thus endangering them as well.

And so he stopped.  There may have been false starts.  Multiple attempts.  But for all of my life, I knew of my dad as a nonsmoker, and when reaching that age when smoking suddenly started to seem like something that could improve my life, I knew my dad would not only disapprove, but would be disappointed as well.

And it was this disappointment that always made me feel the most guilty, filled me with the greatest shame.

It wasn't the first time these feelings were coupled together relative to my relationship with my dad.  There were many occurrences.  This is only natural when you stick a kid into situations that they just weren't born to be inclined to enjoy or excel at.  Sports, for instance.  Most boys love playing sports.  This boy?  Well if that sport involved a video game controller, absolutely.

I reached a certain age in grade school when I knew I didn't like playing baseball, knew I wasn't that great at it, and knew I wanted to stop, but just did not want to disappoint my dad.  He would coach either my team or one of my sisters' softball teams, and while he would never have pressured us to continue, never have forced us to do something that didn't make us happy, well, I still found it difficult as a boy to tell my dad it wasn't something I enjoyed.

I would get mad when I had to go to practice on a sweltering hot summer day while my sisters were at home with our neighbors playing house.  I would be sweating under the hot Chicago sun, breathing in the dirt from the field, but would rather be joining my sisters' picnic in the backyard, sitting beneath a patio umbrella turned on it's side and making up poems and stories.  I wanted to be with them, watching Disney movies and singing along to Ariel's plaintive pleas for freedom living under the sea.

Instead, I was in the outfield, praying the ball would never come to me, ever, please God.

The feelings of resentment toward my dad, despite never vocalizing my feelings to him, only grew and grew over the years, as did my feelings of being a disappointment.  Society has a real good way of ingraining what gender roles boys and girls are supposed to follow, and I knew I was no good at following them (see memory of Kindergarten and being told to play with the boys and the blocks rather than in the pretend kitchen with the girls; see also memory of fourth grade dramatic moment of being told to play football outside with the boys during recess rather than helping the teacher with the girls inside; see also etc., etc.).

During one game, these feelings had grown so overwhelming, I decided I would finally make a stand.  I would do bad.  I would perform so poorly, so devastatingly badly, my dad would have no choice but to tell me to stop playing.  

This is a course of action that made sense in my mind.

I stood to bat, and let an easy pitch sail right over the plate.  I took a wild swing at an obvious bad pitch.  I ignored dad as he called suggestions to me.

"Choke up on the bat, Danny!"

I choked down.

"Step into the plate, buddy, you got this!"

I stepped back and watched the ball sail directly into the catcher's mitt.

Later, playing third base or short stop, a ground ball was heading straight for me.  In my mind, getting the ball and throwing the batter out would have been the game-saving play, but this has probably been exaggerated in my mind over the years.  Whether a pivotal moment of the game or not, I acted like I was going for the ball, and let it continue rolling directly through my legs.

I can't remember the reaction of anyone on the team, or in the stands, so overwhelmed was I with a bitter anger, a pulsing panic, timed with my heartbeat, loudly clouding my mind and senses.

My dad had a quiet anger, usually.  He didn't often yell or scream.  He didn't make a scene.  Rather, you could sense his anger bubbling just beneath his skin.  You could sense it rising off him like heat from an oven.  And it induced in me and my sisters a fear so strong we later in life realized we all had recurring dreams of standing up to this anger in physical ways we never could as kids.

Walking back to the car after this game, my dad steps ahead of me carrying equipment, his footfalls so heavy and pace so rapid it almost seemed he was trying to outrun me.  I had to quicken my pace to keep up, and dodge the craters his angry steps were making.  He was muttering under his breath, angry, ashamed maybe, or just bewildered that I could do so well when practicing with him alone, and then perform so terribly when in games (whether purposefully done as in that occurrence or not).  

In an outburst of whatever emotion he was feeling, he called me a name as we got into his small, black Mazda, his words spat out with the violence of thrown punch.  I don't think I knew the meaning of the word then, but that wasn't important.  I understood the feeling behind the word, the emotion that fueled its utterance, the resulting pain it was meant to inflict on its recipient.

Things like this seem much more dramatic as a kid than they really are, but years later, I still struggled with not wanting to disappoint my dad.  I gradually learned that who I was as a person would never disappoint him, given time, so long as I was happy and doing good with my life, but I felt shame for allowing myself to fall victim to an addiction that I knew he would be disappointed to know I was indulging in.

When you tell a person like that that you're finally done smoking, and with genuine joy and pride they smile, and give you hug, and tell you, "Good for you, pal," and you couldn't feel happier to have made your dad proud--well, your brain may just interpret this as success.

And with that, the motivation to actually continue and reach your goal may start to dwindle.  After all, you've already received some payoff, the positive response, the feel-good chemicals that make your brain sing.

So, keep it secret.  Let that payoff come later when those close to you realize you are no longer smoking rather than seeking the payoff when you've only just put out that last cigarette and have so much nicotine flooding your brain your neurons are doing some sort of tango.  Let dad ask you some months down the line with sudden shocking realization, "Wait, did you stop smoking?" to which you can reply, "Yes, some time ago," and use this payoff to further solidify your motivation to continue not smoking.

There is a final reason why you should tell no one what you are doing: you have to do this for you, not for anyone else.  This may seem to contradict the nice little anecdote I shared above with how my dad quit, because didn't he himself quit smoking for his kids?

Well, the answer is yes, he did, and the answer is no, he did it for himself.

This depends on what your definition of self is. 

For most people, self equates to one’s body, one’s thoughts, one’s daily experience with a world, a galaxy, a universe of creation outside of themselves, vaguely orbiting around, forming and unforming itself depending on the level of one’s consciousness and perception at various points throughout time.

For others, self might equate to a limited number of very close people in one’s life—a spouse, a child, a parent, a life-long friend, a beloved pet.

Others yet may expand their sense of self further--their village, their community. 

A few further still. 

Few, to include all of humanity. To include all of creation. To include all there is, was, and may ever be.

I must admit that I have for years desired to be one of those very few who feels a constant connection to all of creation--to all created and to that which creates. I have striven with varying levels of success to escape from the inherent self-centered perspective in which I perceive myself to be at the absolute center of everything which exists for my benefit alone. Rather, to see subtle connections with all other people, with the world around us and the stars wielding above, to the unimagined worlds lying at the deepest part of the seas, to the unimagined worlds unfathomable distances in the heavens from us—this is what I’ve desired.

And not only to see these connections, but to feel them! To sense this great unity with all of life, this divine presence that flows through all things, through all beings, no matter the outward appearance, no matter how far it seems a particular person may have strayed from their best path, or their best self—this is the consciousness I’ve been after since I was a teenage boy stalking the philosophy and metaphysical sections of now extinct book stores. 

And I’ve attained it, now and then. It’s just unfortunate that it usually comes at the end of a bottle of wine, or a second, and most usually eludes me upon waking the next morning, only vaguely aware of the various planes of consciousness I’d transcended the previous evening and the odd part that Alanis Morissette’s second, late-90s album had to do with it.

Yes, my dad did quit smoking for his children, who I choose to believe at that time he viewed as an extension of himself.  My dad was and has been devoted to my mom and my sisters and me in a way that makes me feel that he must perceive of us as being so intimately connected that doing good for the rest, selflessly working and striving for better and better circumstances and experiences more times only for us than for himself, was actually doing good for himself--that his definition of self must be greater.  I don't think this is unique anymore than I think it is common.

But I do feel that were his perception of self more limited to his own life and experience that attempting to break an addiction for anyone else would have resulted in failure.

If in your mind there is even the tiniest part of you that is doing this for anyone outside of yourself, you will likely fail.  If someone gives you an ultimatum, if a person you like doesn't like that you smoke, and you use that as the motivation to quit, you will grow resentful of that person.  It won't be a matter of your choosing this path, it will become a matter of their forcing you down this path.  It won't be a struggle after which you grow stronger, it will become a struggle for which you blame the other person.

So do this for yourself, and if you are doing it for another, make sure that you see yourself and that other as one, as we all are in a grander perspective.  And doing it for yourself, keep it to yourself.  Let the payoff come when the payoff is due so that it further solidifies your will and continuing choice.  Don't let others' doubt over your choice, even if they are genuinely happy for your, creep into your mind.

You are making a choice, now and every day after, and that choice is creating your world.

Chapter 1 - Stop Smoking

The first step to quit smoking?

You’re going to kick yourself here for not realizing it first. You are really going to feel dumb. And you are dumb. Because the first step to quit smoking, in fact, the ONLY step to quit smoking, is to stop smoking.

Stop smoking.

Stop it.

Stop.

That’s all there is to it, folks. You probably thought it was going to be so much harder, didn't you? You probably thought this was going to be chapter after chapter of arduous steps to follow, exploratory journal entries to write, incense to burn, entities to invoke.

But no.

If you want to quit smoking and gain enlightenment like I did, you just have to stop smoking.

Now here’s where it gets a little tricky. You have to stop smoking now, like I said. But you also have to stop smoking every moment from this point forward.

Ah, the caveat appears. But just wait, there’s more.

Not only do you have to stop smoking now, in the present, and not only do you have to stop smoking in every successive present moment (or, the future), you also have to stop smoking in the past.

That’s right, you have to perform an act that heretofore you would never have thought yourself capable. You have to undo the past. Remake your decisions. Undo each choice to pick up and light a cigarette you ever made.

But, how, D.B.? How?

I’ll tell you how. There are going to be some arduous steps to follow, though. And some exploratory journal entries you’ll have to write. You’re going to have to burn some incense, and there most definitely will be some invocation of spiritual entities. No one ever said this wasn't the case.

First, I want to tell you about the first time I smoked a cigarette. And then about the first time I really smoked a cigarette.

It was 1995, far enough away from the 80s, and not close enough to the new millennium, to be very visibly the 90s. Bill Clinton might as well have been there with me getting inappropriate hugs from some intern after playing his sax, which is exactly what happened as far as I knew then.  The ghost of the newly deceased Kurt Cobain might as well have been there as well, high-fiving the President. It was that 90s.

My 12-year-old self stood in the bathroom of our split-level, suburban Chicago home, the door shut and locked, the window that faced the backyard wide open to a late-Spring afternoon. The Marlboro I took from the pack of my mom’s reds in hand, between my fingers. I brought it to my nose, smelling it as if I were appraising a fine cigar.

How could an unlit cigarette smell so sweet when the smoke from a lit one smelled so abhorrent, I wondered. How could a person smoke so many of these that they end up with cancer eating them alive from the inside? How could that person continue to smoke them while the cancer gnawed away at their lungs, and then, insatiable, moved on to the rest of their body? What made these damn things so good?

Grandma had died only weeks before. Viola.  A small purple flower. An instrument that produces heavenly music. My grandma evoked neither the delicate, colorful flower, nor the divine music of the instrument with which she shared a name. She was a tall, bony Italian woman whose voice was deep and husky from years of smoking, whose hands were calloused from always working and always cleaning and always cooking, and whose spirit was worn from the gruff, cigar-smoking, whiskey-swilling husband she took care of.

I could not overcome my curiosity. Grandma was dead because she couldn't stop smoking these, and they killed her. What about them was so great? What about smoking was so amazing that she accepted their killing her and continued to smoke them?

In the bathroom in our suburban home wearing what I can only assume were acid-washed jeans and a flannel shirt, I did not discover the answer to these questions. I lit that cigarette, the smell acrid, filling the small room so suddenly, filling my nose and lungs so fully that I panicked. I puffed on it a bit, but my fear of discovery grew too overwhelming. I dropped it into the pink porcelain toilet, the lit end sizzling a brief moment as it was snuffed out by the water. The black ash spread.

 I tried pushing the smoke out the window, having about as much luck with my hands as I would have if I had just politely asked the smoke to leave. In my adolescent mind, it seemed a good idea to mask the smell of cigarette smoke with the smell of a different kind of smoke. It really did seem logical. I lit a bit of toilet paper on fire, filling the bathroom with the much sweeter smell of burning paper rather than the horrid stench of burning tobacco.

Imagine me slowly opening the bathroom door. Imagine me peering back and forth through the slight gap to ensure no one is nearby. Imagine me strolling out and down the hallway, totally nonchalant, oozing calm, whistling some jaunty tune, and then locking myself in my bedroom for hours cringing as I listened to every slight sound that might possibly be a sign of my sin being uncovered. 

It never came. 

No one ever found out.

And now for the magic. I am going to undo that choice. Pay attention.

I see that kid. I understand his feelings, now. Confusion. Curiosity. And sadness. A sadness he didn't know how to communicate to anyone else. Sadness that he had been at his grandma’s house that last day before she died. The kid had been kept home from school by his mom. It was Grandparents Day, that one fun day toward the end of the school year when the school is filled with all these strange, old people who are just so delighted to be there, and kids jubilant to show them their desk, and their classroom, and their latest art project.

The kid entered his grandma’s bedroom that day with trepidation in his heart. A bedroom shouldn't have a hospital bed in it. A bedroom shouldn't have an IV. A bedroom shouldn't smell the way his grandma’s bedroom now smelled. 

The kid was afraid of his grandma, lying there in her bed, immobile, her eyes closed, sick, so sick, as they’d learned over the previous months.

“Give her a kiss,” his mom urged him. 

He moved toward her slowly, afraid to approach her, afraid to touch her.

The kid stayed in the TV room for most of the day. The young Father Rich came to give her the last rites, and that made everything all the more strange--the priest that he only saw once a week up on the altar, the aura of the sun-lit stained glass behind him, transforming blood into wine, flesh into bread, here in his grandparents’ house, in his grandma’s quiet, shadowy bedroom.

The kid didn't know she would die that night. Nor did his mom. They left and it was like any other Friday night in 1995. The kid played Mortal Combat, maybe, on his Sega. His mom had drinks with friends.

And then the phone pierced the silence of midnight.

I see that kid at the funeral with his sisters. Crying in the pew at the church while the priest he had last seen at Grandma’s house gave the mass. Understanding what death means, but not understanding why that death occurred. 

Feeling ashamed. Ashamed for the fear in his heart at the sight of his dying grandma. Ashamed for having to be pushed into giving her a kiss. Ashamed for not saying goodbye. And sad that he would never be able to. This kid felt sad, and felt sad for feeling sad, because maybe he wouldn't be so sad if he hadn't been so scared. 

I understand this kid, and I accept.  I forgive him, the little shit that he is. As I watch him in that bathroom, trying to grasp what could make someone do something they know is killing them, I see him change his mind. He flushes that cigarette, unlit, because that is not a choice he wants to make. He’s smarter than that. He’s stronger. He wasn't strong then in his grandma’s room, but he could be strong now, and from then on.

That’s the magic. That is rewriting the past. You thought this was going to involve a DeLorean or blue Police box, didn't you? Well, those come later. 

You see, we can re-choose the choosings we choiced because at this moment, the past no longer exists outside of our mind. It’s nowhere but in our mind, and we can choose the choices chose. We can alter how the past affects us by altering the past in the only place it is still real.

That was the first time I smoked a cigarette, but the first time I really smoked a cigarette? That came a few years later.

In the backyard of that same house, beneath that same bathroom window were concrete steps leading down into the laundry room that adjoined the basement. My 15-year-old self crouched at the bottom of those steps, leaning against the closed door, in the shadows of a summer evening. Crickets chirped in the rocks of the landscaping above either side of that stairwell, silenced momentarily if I made too loud a noise, silenced by the flick of the purple Bic I used to light the cigarette, another Marlboro, again pilfered from my mom’s shiny, red pack kept hidden in the messy kitchen drawer of envelopes, and bills, and other junk.

A tall, gangly teenager now, my hair parted in the middle, hanging long and messy, I donned a too-large Smashing Pumpkins shirt, maybe, or Radiohead. I crouched there alone on this summer evening, the cigarette between my fingers, and took a very purposeful drag, forcing myself to inhale the blue-grey smoke completely, hold it, then exhale.

On this cool, summer evening, I crouched at the foot of those concrete stairs in the shadows, alone, and taught myself how to smoke. Over the course of a few years, smoking had transitioned from being something incomprehensible that had killed my grandma, to something mysterious, something that I felt would inform the world of my new persona. I was someone who smoked not because my friends did, but because I wanted to, because I chose to. I smoked cigarettes because I just didn't care about anything at all in the world, not even myself. Strangers on the street would see me smoking a cigarette and think, “Wow, that kid is so grown up and intriguing and mysterious and even though he is super awkward and alone outside the library on a Saturday, I’m completely envious of his life and the extreme level of cool he so obviously possesses.”

This is an approximation of the reasons I sat there, inhaling drag after drag of the cigarette, forcing myself not to cough, forcing myself to continue until I reached the filter. As I progressed, I grew light-headed. It almost feels good, I told myself.

As I finished, and stood from my crouched position, I grew even dizzier, having to steady myself on the concrete walls on either side of the stairway. Taking a couple deep breaths, I gained control of myself, and after hiding the butt under the rocks of the landscaping where I decided no one would ever find it until uncovered by future archaeologists interested in my past, I went back inside, encountering my little sister in the kitchen. 

She is only 18 months my junior, but at that particular point in our lives, it was a long 18 months’ difference between us. She said something to me then about the fact that I had just smoked that cigarette. It was a sarcastic comment in response to the lyrics of an Oasis song I was singing that referenced drug use, because I was just that cool. 

"Where were you while we were getting high," I sang in what I'm sure was dead-on Gallagher vocalization.

"Inside, doing the right thing," little sis called after me with such piercing disappointment, the words thrown at me, shredding through my flesh. In that moment, it was as if everything that I might ever have stood for in her eyes had now been contradicted. Had I been a stalwart, angelic figure in her mind, after which she desired to model her life, as I then imagined, I had now become a cowering, demonic figure, all aspects of which she should strive against.

That buoyant feeling I had initially attained drained from me immediately. Whereas I had thought that what I was doing would make me feel so much better about myself, would make me an enviable person in others’ eyes, and so, make me feel less the peculiar freak I normally felt and more the confident, interesting, artistic guy people admired—now I felt worthless.

The buoyant feeling was replaced by guilt. By shame.  A strange sort of shame, really, in the pit of my stomach. The sort of shame that suddenly felt like it was coming up from my stomach, that felt like it needed immediate release, immediate, impending release from my mouth.

I was about to throw up, and so made my way to the bathroom upstairs to do so into that same pink porcelain toilet I had thrown that first cigarette, years earlier.

The boy who crouched in that stairwell was yearning for something that he thought that cigarette might fulfill. He was alone, on that summer night. Alone. Having finished his first year of high school, having made new friends with whom he was accepted and had fun, he found himself alone. No phone calls. No plans. He realized as a few weeks passed that those friends he had made over the course of the school year were school friends. Friends, thanks to the required attendance in the same classrooms, the same activities participated in. Sure, he would eventually end up making the friends that would stick with him for years, and some friendships forged that previous school year would become these, but then, that summer, he did not know this. And so he crouched in that stairwell, in the shadows, alone, yearning for something he thought that cigarette might fulfill.

Unfortunately, that cigarette did fulfill a yearning. The nicotine both created, and fulfilled a yearning in his brain that had not existed before. In the wiring of his brain, in the neural pathways formed with the introduction of this chemical, maybe the two yearnings intertwined: the yearning for friendship, for love, for not feeling so sad and so alone, with the yearning for the chemical, for the dopamine release upon introducing this drug into his body.

And so, I can forgive this poor dumb boy, because I can understand him now. Feeling so shamed by his little sister, being pushed from his short-lived, precarious perch atop the jubilant feeling attained from what he’d done, back to the seeming abyss he had been occupying, of course he would succumb in the days to follow to the chemical that had buoyed his spirits, however short-lived.

I understand him. I forgive him. And I help him to make a different decision. 

Rather than sneaking that cigarette from his mom’s pack and telling his little sister to stay inside, rather than doing this thing to feel better about himself, to try to alter how others perceived him, instead, he and his sister sit down in the basement for another Mario Kart 64 competition. He, as usual, is Yoshi, and his sister, as usual, is Princess Peach (or Princess "Bitch" as they laughingly call her, pronouncing it to rhyme with Peach).

They’ll play a couple circuits, sitting on the basement floor with each other, the two, enjoying something they can still enjoy together for just a little longer, and then maybe later that night their neighbors will come over for some good Battle Mode play, and they’ll all laugh together, and someone will probably get frustrated and angry when another gets the Triple Red Shells too many times but then will forget their anger when they finally get a good win or two.

And maybe his little sister will go to her best friend’s house and he’ll end up there in the basement, alone again, playing on into the night. And that will be all right.

Maybe he’ll tackle Rainbow Road, over and over, the toughest course of the toughest cup. He’ll fall, certainly, from the sides. He’ll aim for the shortcut and miss, over and over. But eventually, if he keeps at it, he’ll finish the course, maybe in 3^rd or 4^th.

And that will be all right.