It is best to avoid falling into all forms of fixity: postural, behavioral, cognitive, emotional. The world is much richer when you are able to greet every dawn as a unique miracle, to be approached as an individual, one-time, not to be repeated event.
As I look at my own history, and learn, it occurs to me that it is quite possible to pass from birth to death without ever learning how to learn. It is in fact so common that it might be termed the default outcome.
There was a long time I wanted to be in the military. I enlisted in the Air Force when I was about 19, but they wouldn’t take me. I got booted out of MEPS. I tried to get into Marine ROTC, but they would not take me either. My eyesight was too poor.
As I see now, what I wanted was an external framework to build within me the rigidity to avoid facing my emotional conflicts. When you are in a behaviorally small, conformist, and demanding environment, the little voices inside of you can readily be silenced. And having once done it, I think many people cross lifetimes like that.
Please do not get me wrong: there is huge value in self discipline. All the spiritual traditions and most cultural traditions are in accord on this. We read that some one third of CEO’s nationally are former Marines. That is a huge number.
The point I am trying to make pertains to me, certainly, but I suspect others as well. It is that we need to beware of easy fixes to deep emotional conflicts. As annoying as it sounds, particularly for men, sometimes we do need to admit a lack of control, a lack of the ability to form a clear plan of action, and even a lack of genuine hope that things will get better. I think that admitting these things is how light gets back in.
I have “Don’t whine/don’t complain/don’t make excuses/Never quit” tattooed on me. I get the desire to refuse to “wallow”. It has kept me going. The first three come from John Wooden’s father. But to the point, he clearly came from a wholesome, loving family, in which everyone felt they belonged, and in which there was clarity as to roles.
Genuine, useful discipline comes from a well tempered desire for the pleasures of accomplishment. It is a simple extension of the perception that most things in life that are worth having require work and delayed gratification.
The type of discipline which is bad is that in which no deep emotional expression is allowed (anger and envy likely being OK for most men, but nothing else), and in which the focus is on work precisely to keep this from happening. You can be a highly successful lawyer, or doctor, or business executive like this, and yet still feel misery, and feel the need for “hits” of power, prostitutes, and booze to silence that inner voice that is starved for attention and recognition.