Skills for This Life

The zombies from “Last Of Us”

On a recent drive to parkour practice, my teenage son, Andre, and I discussed the top 5 skills required in the event of a zombie apocalypse. After much debate, we settled on this top 5 (using the zombies from “Last Of Us” as reference):

• Build a fire

• Drive a car

• Navigation/map-reading

• Properly handle a gun

• Parkour (I voted for code hacking but parkour is cool too)

I pointed out to Andre that I am definitely skilled at the first four, but not so much the parkour.

This conversation got me thinking more about skills.

Outside of country boy skills, my primary survival skills over the years have been related to a glib and quick tongue. These have included:

• Aggressive (and sometimes impulsive) decisiveness. I’ve always had a quick trigger with the “fuck it” button. My ego told me that I was being bold; being a good leader; being a rebel. In reality, it was just brashness. And in many ways, my aggressiveness was a way to create a reaction, which in my mind was easier to control than not knowing. I think this is why I gravitated toward anti-heroes like those played by Clint Eastwood and John Wayne. I now know that this was my lower conscious masculine at work.

• Being a great bullshitter. For many years, deceit, manipulation, and the ability to yarn a believable story were my shield, helmet, and sword. I was Machevallian; the truth was relative and the means definitely justified the ends - unless I was on the receiving end. I could play multiple roles; quickly shifting to whatever energy, tone, or personality I needed to be to charm someone into buying whatever I was selling. I recognize now that almost all of my dishonesty was around seeking acceptance and stability. I now know that this was my lower conscious feminine at work.

• Controlled vulnerability. This is a fancier term for being an over-sharer. Similar. to the first bullet, being proactively “vulnerable” was a way to manage better how someone saw me - a sort of controlled burn. This approach also bolstered my own story of having a rough life and how much I’d overcome. I realize now that this was really “trauma dumping” and it too was related to acceptance. I see now that my strategy for not being rejected was to shock people with my over-sharing and then if they rejected me, it was on them.