I have three cats. Two of them are still young enough to remember nursing at their mother’s breast. Kittens knead to call down milk. Bakers knead to call forth gluten. Both are small, ancient gestures — pressure, warmth, patience — the kind of motions that make life possible.
Who cares, right? What does nursing kittens or bread dough have to do with our present existential threat. The world is screaming. Every feed is a siren. Trump hasn’t resumed room temperature. People are convinced that radicals — pick your flavor — are stealing elections in California, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia. Everything is burning and here I am talking about kittens. Idiot.
Heard.
I’m one old man who used to be a legendary cab driver. I’m past the finish line on raising kids, building a career, earning a reputation. How’d I do? Not great. I’m even MAGA‑adjacent.
So I need an answer. Maybe you do too.
Needing Answers
Can we do something? For me? For my sanity? Can we stop deifying our leadership? Trump isn’t the devil and he isn’t our savior. History is littered with the corpses of conquering heroes who promised perfect leisure, easy wealth, and punishment for the awful, terrible, baddy “others.” We built a constitutional republic to restrain the imperial impulse. Two hundred fifty years later and we’ve drifted into a pseudo‑religious imperialism that feels like a broken Roman Empire instance, patched with whatever ism is fashionable this week.
And into that noise, I keep thinking about kittens kneading. Ridiculous. The world is on fire!
Is it? I’m not so sure. I left my day job at Altria six years ago. Since then I’ve been an Uber driver, a Lyft driver, a Roadie driver. I started a business. I scrambled. Every couple of years I’d be back in court facing another eviction. Whether my lights stay on has never been a settled question. Thank God Richmond is forgiving about water and trash. Internet and phone service come and go. Food has been a non‑essential expense.
So the storms blowing through D.C. feel distant. The evils of Cheetoh Satan are background noise when my last meal was yesterday. Forgive me if I’m not electrified by the news that members of Congress got their freak on while junketing on Little St. James. I’ve got one more serving of red beans in the fridge and the next FeedMore distro is a week away. The answers I knead aren’t coming from social media.
Some Nobodies
So the claim goes: we need the elites to fix things for us. Within this way — this 道 — sits the belief that the bougie owe us, that they must bend to our desires, that God Himself exists to make the world pleasing to us. My story has to be a lie, because nobody with my adjectives and ancestry should struggle this much or be this successful. Some existential absurdity must explain why I’m not in prison, or a mental institution, or living at 6th & Green.
History is inconvenient here. Stories of nobodies who left outsized marks go back thousands of years. Some of the most influential people in human history were also some of the lowliest.
Five Guys
Socrates was a barefoot stonemason‑turned‑questioner whose relentless search for truth reshaped Western thought. He annoyed powerful men by asking why they believed what they believed. He didn’t know he’d become the father of Western philosophy.
Hillel the Elder was a poor immigrant woodcutter in the first century BCE whose gentle wisdom shaped the moral spine of Judaism and the world Jesus stepped into. He studied Torah through a window because he couldn’t afford the fee. He didn’t know he’d influence the ethics of an entire civilization. “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and learn it.”
Cincinnatus was dragged from his farm by Rome, made dictator to save the Republic, won a war in sixteen days, and then resigned and went back to his plow. He didn’t know he’d become the model of civic virtue for two millennia.
Jesus of Nazareth was a no‑account stonemason‑turned‑rabbi who angered his religious leadership enough that they demanded his crucifixion. His followers scattered. He left no writings. He didn’t know billions would one day speak his name in worship and prayer. Luke 6:31, “And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.“
Epictetus was born a slave, crippled by abuse, and after gaining freedom taught a philosophy of inner liberty so durable it shaped Marcus Aurelius, early Christian thought, modern therapy, and the Western idea of resilience. He didn’t know any of that would happen.
A Familiar Answer
This shows up on merch: “We are responsible for the try. God is responsible for the result.” Whatever. Am I right? I mean, AntiFa is going to win against the most evilist, evil, evil dictator ever, and nobody will be oppressed, we’ll all have unlimited free snacks, and the weather will always be sunny and seventy degrees. It will be glorious.
Yeah. Good luck with that.
News flash — movements like AntiFa are losing steam. The “Progressive wins” you hear about are happening in pockets where the left already dominates, and even there the trends aren’t great. So… are we screwed? Is it all stupid? Does nobody worth anything give a damn?
Actually… no.
The crazy thing about rock bottom is that all directions lead to better. And every single one of us can do something right now, with what we have, to make a difference in our lives and in the lives of the people in our circles.
All five of the guys I named did exactly this — the next right thing. They acted without knowing the outcome, without any clue that their choices would echo across centuries. They did what needed doing in spite of the challenges. I’m not suggesting anything epic like getting crucified. My answers are a lot more pedestrian. Some of my own next right things are laundry, the cat box, and vacuuming my rugs. None of those will eliminate historic, systemic, or existential *ism. So be it. Happy cats is definitely a thing.
Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy
Next, misery. There is no path to a better world — or to enlightenment — that is misery‑free. Protesting ICE is a lot of things. Pleasant isn’t one of them. Cincinnatus sure didn’t revel in the news that he’d been drafted into a war he didn’t want to fight. I can imagine him muttering, “Let’s get this over with so I can go back to my farm.” Fighting didn’t mean doting servants and free snacks. People died. Let’s also give an honorable mention to risk. A promised “sure thing” claimed to be risk free earns my cynicism. The things I do, like this space, don’t come with good odds of success. I do it anyway.
The other four — Socrates, Hillel, Jesus, and Epictetus — made their mark through misery and strife. They didn’t get five stars or a medal. They didn’t get applause, parades, or a “thank you for your service” discount at the agora. Their lives were hard in ways we forget because we only see the marble statues and the stained‑glass windows.
Comfort wasn’t part of their story. Recognition didn’t show up either; the work chewed them up more than it celebrated them. And the wildest part is this: their names survived empires they never imagined would remember them. They just did the next right thing — in misery, in obscurity, in strife — and history handled the remembering.
Do Hard Things
“Do Hard Things” is spelled out in alphabet magnets on the side of my fridge. It’s there to remind me that health demands some misery from me. Reading from the Daily Prayer app causes me internal conflict. I judge the prayers instead of just letting the words come into my soul. Walking a mile every day is the reason I weighed myself at 209.8 this morning. It’s also why my numbers are on point.
These old legs don’t bend like they used to. Sitting in seiza for any length of time is painful. Half-lotus is better but still not great. But the growth only happens when I get down on the floor, fold my legs and start a timer. It’s a noisy span of time while I meditate. I am tempted to break posture the whole time. Yet once I’m done there is no other feeling like it.
Words. Over a decade I’ve published more than a half-million words in this space. Some weeks the battle inside me is too much and I don’t publish anything. What sets me apart is that I keep coming back to this space and writing. What makes a writer is writing. Becoming a writer means dedicating onesself to putting out at least 250 words a day, every day, without fail. It’s a hard thing I do. I keep doing it, with no hope of reward and no clue of these words will ever reach beyond my own small shed in the digital landscape.
Choosing
There is something in your life you will suffer for because you have a talent for it and that thing is a core need like eating or sex. It is something you would do for free, in spite of the struggle, because you love it. I can’t promise you it will solve the world’s problems or get the elites in DC to behave. If DC is a motivator for you, bless your heart. My drive comes from a decade of giving my time to this folly that puts words here. That’s enough for me. The rest is “let go and let God.”
Kittens knead because they are hungry. Bakers knead because it’s a step in baking things they sell. I knead my sore legs after meditating because I’m old and out of practice. With all three, needs are met through small work that makes life.