"My greatest fear, son, is not that you'll fail, but that you'll succeed in becoming mediocre."

-My father.

My earliest memory was holding my Green Army Men.

Whenever they fought, they all came home in the end.

Because everyone under my protection survived.

My father bought me a game called Terra Nova.

One level, your best friend is hit by a stray drone and is killed.

100+ times I restarted that level, before realizing the reality.

The game was scripted. To proceed, my friend in the game must die.

This was my first dose of reality.

Before discovering TheRedpill, my life up to that point had been orbiting whatever girl I had currently become obsessed with at the time. Women needed saving, after all, right?

In one case, I had been accused of the most heinous crime: molestation after a consensual encounter by the girl I had loved for years. Everyone turned against me except one: my father. My mind was tortured constantly by the encounter. I stayed up many nights, for years, thinking back on that night. Had I molested her?

My father thought otherwise.

Of course, he was right, looking back.

Once upon a time, I was engaged. My fiance was caught cheating by my father.

Naturally, I accused my father of ruining my life in my bluepilled mind. He robbed me of my dream.

Little did I know.

I remember thinking back,

"Fuck my father. That piece of shit! He ruined my life!"

"He robbed me!"

Then my father fell ill.

I was ready to find the love of my life. My father was old, after all, and I didn't need him anymore.

It was time for me to settle down, get married, and have kids. Find the real love of my life.

I discovered TheRedpill, and I did everything prescribed. Ate right, dressed well, lifted, held frame.

Then the love of my life called me up: she was pregnant from another man, and wanted me back.

That was the day I had swallowed TheRedpill.

Those who cannot sacrifice anything, cannot change anything.

I walked away, and I never looked back. She was dead to me.

I came back to my father's hospital bed. 109lbs at 5'10". He was on life support, and wanted to be taken off. He wanted to die. While I chased after women, my father had been fighting for his life.

Earlier that year, I had given him a speech about being there for him. Of brotherhood.

Of remembering where you came from. Why you are here.

I had clasped his hands, I had looked him in the eye, and I had told him that we'd get through this together.

That his sacrifices would not be in vain.

That he needed to look at himself properly on what kind of man he wanted to be remembered as, of what kind of man he would see in the mirror.

"You are my rock, son."

"I'm tired of fighting."

"It's your turn to carry the torch."

Others around me told me the same thing, more or less. The gym, work, friends, family.

"/u/Black_m0ngoose, I look to you for strength."

The truth was, I had never felt weaker. Why did all these people look up to me? Even my own father, who was larger than life growing up, a shell of a man, looked up to me now.

That's when I realized that they all saw the same thing.

Perseverance.

In my most private moments.

With tears streaming down my face,

I yelled,

I grit my teeth,

I clenched my fist,

I would ask myself the same thing.

"Why did you embark on this path?"

"Why are you here?"

"Remember where you came from."

I thought back to the little boy playing with his toys.

"I wanted to be a hero."

"I want to save my dad."

I thought back to what my father told me 15 years ago:

"In order to be a hero, son, you don't need to save the world..."

"...you only need to save one person, and in their world, you're a hero."

Little did I know at the time, that my father's life would be the one I saved.

I was not a nurse. I was a warrior! How could I take care of my dad?

I thought back.

Those who cannot sacrifice anything, cannot change anything.

I knew what needed to be done.

I quit my job, drained my savings, bought an off-grid trailer, parked it on a piece of land in the country, and set up the inside of the trailer into a mini-hospital.

Everyday I do physical therapy with my father.

Every day, I fill up his feed bag.

Every day, I clean my father's trach.

Every day, I change my father's diaper.

And every day, I'm grateful for the opportunity.

Because I'm a symbol.

Not only to my dad.

But everyone around me who witness what I'm doing.

A man's most valuable asset is his commitment.

Who better to receive the best years of my life, than my father?

In saving my father's life, I unknowingly saved others.

As I unapologetically marched through the obstacles, saying what I had to say, being a man in a feminist world, I redpilled others.

I showed them it was ok to be a man.

Today, my father sat curled up in his blankets. His depression was coming back.

"I'm sorry I'm putting you through this son."

"I wish I had died, rather than put you through this."

"You should've let me go."

I looked over at him-

"Dad, this is the path I have chosen."

"If it wasn't for you, I would never have been able to kill the weakness in my heart."

"It's because of you that I've gone through all this."

"Don't wish for the world to be easier. Wish for yourself to be better."

"I wanted to be a hero."

"You're my soulmate, and the love I've been looking for in a woman was right in front of me this whole time."

"If I turned my back on you, then I turn my back on the part of me that I love the most."

"If you wanted me to let you die, you raised me the wrong way."

"You raised me to be a man amongst men, and I'm not going to be the one that loses this."

"You gave me a gift."

"I'm going to do justice to that gift."

"If I turn my back on you now, all the pain, the agony, everything we've sacrificed to get this far will be for nothing."

"You and I are going to leave a mark on this world. And that mark isn't going to be a that of a shit stain in some garbage town in the history books."

Because of my father I realized that the only true love to be had is the love between brothers.

My father is my brother from another life.

He reminded me of where I came from.

He reminded me why I went through all this.

To be strong. To be respectable. To matter.

To be worthy of being called a man.

To be a warrior.

To be a hero.

To all the men looking for love in all the wrong places.

I'm here to tell you.

That the only true love you'll find in this life is the love of a brother.

A brother that you've fought beside in this battle we call life. A brother that you've shed blood, sweat, and tears with.

My father told me he had me because he couldn't find a best friend, so he decided to make one.

Every day, we have a chance to prove to ourselves, and thus the world, what we're made of.

Don't be afraid to take that first step.

Show the world they were wrong about you. Show them all they counted you out too soon.

All we have, at the end of the day, is who we see in the mirror.

Are you going to see a winner?

A soldier dies for another man's cause.

A warrior dies for his own.

Happy father's day, dad.