| Admonishment #404. On the Will to Foil Assassins
Having recently survived an assassination attempt when my front left tire mysteriously blew out—I knew if some rebuffed stalker were after me, resentful of my celebrity, he or she would try to make it appear an act of God, as if God Himself had brought judgment against the elite—I reflected on the stages of post-traumatic stress through which I had subsequently passed. Immediately after the explosion I was basically in denial as I wrestled my wounded vehicle to the shoulder. I told myself this was not happening, until upon emerging to view the shredded radial, perforce I changed my tune. An anger stage set in, during which I cursed unpardonably and shattered the driver's window with a lug wrench. I cursed the limitations of mechanized transport and I cursed those who wished me dead. I verbally wrung my vengeance into the wind. Then it vaguely dawned on me that there could be paparazzi with telephoto lenses out there in any direction having a million-dollar day, to my humiliation. Thus for practical reasons the anger stage gave way to acceptance and to a kind of rational regret that I had exacerbated damages during my rage.
And then I laughed a shrugging kind of laugh. If they're going to get you, they're going to get you. Acceptance of the situation morphed into a spiritual anticipation of the afterlife, should I be so favored as to have one. I had found a peace in which an exploded tire meant not a thing to me.
All these stages within twenty minutes or so. Not at all the way former President Sarkoff of planet Lindor in the Blake's 7 episode "Bounty" faced the intruder Blake, who Sarkoff thought had come to dispatch him for political purpose. Sarkoff appeared unruffled, mustering up one of the most impressive of moot, anticlimactic monologues I have ever taken in. Blake asked him to listen for a moment, but Sarkoff was having none of it:
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| You go, guy! Continuing my reflections on my own reaction to the prospect of assassination and comparing it to Sarkoff's reaction, I had to conclude that the former President had it all over me. In a matter of twenty minutes I had come around from boisterous, self-sufficient macho-man to the point of welcoming the afterlife. Not so different from Sarkoff, you will say: he admitted his readiness to die as well. You'd be correct, except that I have not told you everything. Sarkoff was lying. A few moments after his big speech of defiant resignation, he was holding a ray gun on Blake and doing the whos'-ya-daddy-now. What Sarkoff had said might have been true in the final resort, but he had not reached final resort. He was packing heat and milking a plan. |
| Therefore my admonishment to you must be, my little friend, to voice complacency to your aspiring assassins, putting them off their guard, setting them up for the coup that you shall have planned and executed to a tee. The specifics will differ, but the essential element, the element I had been lacking, is the active will to win. Realizing this from the outset, seize upon it and never let it go. |
luminance
