Training Your Weaknesses

"Haha, a wise man once told me keep me your friends close and keep your enemies closer
And he only got close enough to tell me that because, well he was a enemy
Shout out to all my frenemies"

That is a famous quote from the book The Prince by Machiavelli. Or Chamillionaire. One of the two. It does teach us a valuable lesson. One that never should be avoided and should be looked upon with great respect. Do what you shouldn't. Right? Maybe not, but you get the idea.

Now that I've started to think about that saying (Keep your friends close, enemies closer), I've started to realize that it doesn't really make sense and history is just one big floozy. I get the basics of it- you have to know your enemies to defeat them blah blah blah but in reality, when you keep your enemies close you get stabbed in the stomach with a toothbrush shank in the middle of the night. It's much safer to study your enemies from a reasonable distance. One where you can observe but be protected, watch and still be calm. That's why I propose that we edit this legendary saying to "Keep your friends close and your enemies far enough away where you are still able to learn about them and study their weaknesses without compromising your safety during times of sleep and malnutrition". Here is an example of how I could keep my enemy at this reasonable distance and still learn from it:

Phew, so safe.

However, many great philosophers like myself realize that you can't generalize. There are things that you just have to do. Aristotle said that "there must be a principle of such a kind that its substance is activity". I got a B- in English 101 so I'm not really sure what that means, but it sounds like Areesto (my nickname for Aristotle) wants you to go out and do things. Areesto also said "dealing with backstabbers, there was only one thing I learned. They're only powerful when you've got your back turned".

Is it a Federal Offense to blatantly misquote someone like that? It's not really plagiarism because I gave credit, but it was just the wrong credit. If I get arrested all of you should know that the above quote wasn't Aristotle.

WOW, world's longest introduction to my story. 

Unlike most other posts, that introduction actually fits excellently with my life lesson for the day. It involves befriending your enemies in order to destroy them.

Let me paint you a picture. I have sub-mediocre eyesight. This 9/10 times is not a problem for me. I can go about my life normally without corrective lenses. I can read, walk, watch tv, juggle (1 thing), and most importantly ride bikes. The one time where my glasses are pretty beneficial is when I am driving at night. I am FINE without them, it's just a little easier to wear them when I drive.

I hate to use them though. Not because David and Kennett throw me into garbage cans when I wear them, but because I hate admitting weakness like that. I will not give into my sub-par night vision. I also have another theory. I predict that by using my glasses, my eyes will adjust to its new found ability to see perfectly. Then, when I am not wearing them, my eyes will yearn for the magnifying lens of my glasses, essentially getting worse so that I am forced to wear my glasses more often.

That's right folks, I'm comparing vision to food cravings. Once my eyes, and therefore my medulla oblongata and cerebellum, get the taste of clarity they will want more. The glasses become a crutch and my life becomes dictated by the glasses that rest on my smushed-in nose.

Recently I've decided I'm not going to fall for these optometricks (see what I did there????) and I'm going to fix my eyes myself. Rather than aiming a laser pointer into my eye and assuming that since I watched a youtube video on D.I.Y laser eye surgery that I'm an expert, I can do it the Magyver way. With a Swiss Army Knife.

False. I decided that I was going to leave my glasses at my mom's house (on purpose, I swear) and navigate the rest of my life without them. I didn't want to become so needy on these glasses that eventually I couldn't bike pedal without them, because then David and Kennett would definitely throw me into garbage cans.

So I drove in the dark and the rain, intensely staring ahead. I don't want to exaggerate, so I'll only tell you that I could partially feel my orbital muscles twitching as they strengthened, bringing clarity through my cornea and eliciting a rushing sensation through my optic nerve resulting in an expansion of my pupils, all allowing me to see perfectly. I felt all of that.

Did it work? Why don't you take my eye test to find out!

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