Gents Journey
Helping Men become the Gentleman they deserve to be. This Podcast is part inspiration part motivation. We discuss what it takes to be a Gentleman in the 21st Century. We also talk about how to deal with the internal and external battles that life throws at us. So come be apart of the Gents Journey!
Gents Journey
GRANDEUR: The Choice
Have you ever stood at the crossroads of who you were and who you might become? The sixth episode of Grandeur takes us through the raw, unfiltered journey of a man who's lost everything yet still clutches two chess pieces that seem to hold the key to his future.
This isn't your typical hero's journey with clean edges and triumphant music. Instead, we walk alongside a broken man through Chicago's winter streets, shelter fights, and moments of crushing solitude. Through his eyes, we witness transformation in its most authentic form—not as a glamorous rebirth, but as the final gasp of an old life before something new can emerge.
The episode reveals a powerful truth often missing from personal development narratives: your defining moments don't arrive with fanfare. They happen in silence, when you're alone, when the costume you've been wearing starts to burn against your skin. It's in these spaces—when you've exhausted all options except truth—that genuine power awakens.
What makes this story particularly compelling is the chess metaphor woven throughout. The knight and bishop pieces serve as physical manifestations of potential and protection, humming with energy that responds not to desperation but to stillness and resolve. As our protagonist discovers, "Peace, just like your potential, doesn't get activated by panic, it gets activated by stillness."
Through five thought-provoking reflection questions, we're invited to examine our own lives: What decisions are we avoiding because they lack certainty? What old versions of ourselves do we still feed with our attention? If no one ever applauded us again, would we still choose to rise?
Ready to stand in that uncomfortable hallway between who you are and who you're becoming? Listen now and discover why sometimes the most powerful move in life's chess game is simply deciding to stay present when everything in you wants to run.
"True mastery is found in the details. The way you handle the little things defines the way you handle everything."
Hello and welcome to the Gentleman's Journey podcast. My name is Anthony, your host, and today we are in episode six of Grandeur. So let's just go ahead and let's get into it, cold, open, one way out. It starts with motion, not forward but down. He slips off the curb and lands too hard gravel scraping the skin through his worn jeans. It's not the first time he's fallen, but it might be the first time. He doesn't bother getting up quickly. He just lays there On the side of the street. No one stops Above him. The sky is too clear, almost surgical in its indifference. It doesn't rain, it doesn't threaten to. It just watches A bus roars past. The wind lifts the edge of his coat. He's too thin now. His shoes are held together by desperation and duct tape. He finally sits up, just enough to check if the night's still there. It is Still cold, still heavy, still his. The same hand that once held a ring now clutches a relic. That's what he's named it now A relic, not a symbol of hope, just a marker of what was lost.
Speaker 1:He limps towards the shelter again. Same cracked brick, same flickering light above the door. Inside, someone's screaming, someone's crying, someone's praying. The three sounds blend together so perfectly it could be a choir. He signs in without making eye contact. They don't ask his name anymore. They know the weight of it.
Speaker 1:Back in his bunk he lies on his side, doesn't sleep Not really. He turns the light over in his hand. It doesn't hum. That's what scares him the most, because now even the silence feels like abandonment. Part One no Way Back. The night clings to him like guilt Thick, heavy, unrelenting. Every sound on the street feels like a question he can't answer. A bottle breaks somewhere behind him, a woman screams from a second-story window. Tires peel from a nearby alley. The city's orchestra of chaos continues, but he moves through it like a ghost with nowhere to haunt. There's a man asleep on the stairs of a boarded-up pawn shop. Another is talking to himself, yelling at memories. No one else can see but him.
Speaker 1:He's the silent one now. He stopped asking for help, stopped explaining the smell, stopped trying to appear okay. He showers once a week now, on Tuesdays. That's the only time the shelter water isn't ice. His skin always smells faintly of rot and steel.
Speaker 1:He carries his belongings in a torn backpack that squeaks when he moves. There's one pair of socks, inside a crumpled photo of her and the night, the night. Some nights he tries to forget it's there, pretends it's just a trinket, but it pulses quietly like breath, like something asleep that dreams. He doesn't understand it, but he started talking to it. Why me? He whispered two nights ago, and the shelter's half-light. No answer. But it was warm in his hand. That was the night he didn't sleep, not even the kind of shallow sleep he's come to rely on, not even the kind of shallow sleep he's come to rely on. He lay there staring at the ceiling, tiles, warning if it was purgatory and if this is what it feels like Never punished, never saved, just suspended.
Speaker 1:This morning he wakes on a bench, not even remembering how he got there. The air is damp, cold enough to bite. He rubs his hands together and stands, and the ache in his knee reminds him how long he's been walking. He passes a cafe. The reflection in the glass startles him. He doesn't recognize himself. He doesn't recognize himself beard, unkempt eyes, bloodshot, a jawline tightened by starvation not resolved. He moves on. By noon he's back at the bridge, the same one, always this one. He doesn't know why it pulls him, maybe because it feels like a moment waiting to happen, a place suspended in indecision, somewhere between where he was or where he'll never return. He leans against the railing. The night is cold today, quiet. He clutches it anyways.
Speaker 1:Across the bridge a figure appears, the same man as before coat, dark face, unreadable. He steps closer, stopping a few feet away. You haven't dropped it yet, the man says. The voice cuts through the fog. Didn't plan on it, he says, says the stranger nods slowly. Good, that's the only piece that knows the way forward. What? What does that mean? The man doesn't answer. Instead he reaches into his own coat. You don't give a man the whole board at once, he says. He wouldn't know what to do with it.
Speaker 1:A hand emerges, finger curled around something small, another piece, the bishop. He doesn't move. He asks what if I don't want it? The stranger tilts his head. Then don't take it. But know this Refusal Is still a move. Silence. Then a soft click, the sound of a porcelain Against stone. The bishop is left on the railing. When the broken man finally looks up, the stranger is left on the railing.
Speaker 1:When the broken man finally looks up, the stranger is gone. The city feels quieter, even the wind stills. He reaches for the piece. It's warm. The moment he touches it, something sharp runs up his spine. Not pain, not pleasure, something else like alignment, like something deep in the morrow. Waking up, he doesn't cry, but the muscles behind his eyes twitch as if his soul is trying to remember what tears are. He pockets the bishop. He walks on, no direction, just movement. But for the first time in weeks, maybe months, he walks with something more than despair. He walks with intent. Part 2. The Wait Between.
Speaker 1:He wakes in the shelter, but it doesn't feel like waking more, like surfacing from underneath something heavy, something that didn't want to let him go. There's a bruise on his wrist, a new one. He doesn't remember how it got there. The night is still in his coat. It's silent. Now it's cold. He sits up, scans the room. A fight must have broken out sometime after he dozed. The man in the corner has blood on his shirt. The air reeks of sweat, smoke and something synthetic. Whatever pills they passed around the hour before midnight. He doesn't ask, he just stands, steps over a boot that isn't his and makes his way out.
Speaker 1:The morning isn't morning. It's gray, washed out like the city forgot to color it in. By the time he's outside, his stomach's already aching. He hasn't eaten since two nights ago Half a sandwich left by the church bends. He checks the pocket for coins nothing. So he walks, not because he wants to but because movement is easier than hunger.
Speaker 1:The sidewalk knows him now. Its cracks and patterns almost feel familiar. He knows where not to step to avoid the puddle that never dries. He nods at the old woman who always mutters to herself by the bus stop. She never looks up. He passes a man with a sign saying spare what you can. They make eye contact. The man looks away. He keeps walking.
Speaker 1:Eventually he finds himself back at the corner of the convenience store. He doesn't know why he just always ends up there. There's a girl handing out soup. Her jacket is too thin, her hands are red with cold, but she's smiling at everyone, even at him. When it's his turn he almost says no, shame, curls up his spine like it wants to wear his face, but she says you look like you need it and hands him a bowl. He doesn't remember the last time someone looked at him like that, like he wasn't fading. He eats slowly. It's not the soup that warms him, it's the moment and the moment after, when she presses something into his hand before he leaves. It's not a piece, it's a folded note, four words, you're still there.
Speaker 1:Part 3. The Wall. Beneath the Wall he hasn't seen a mirror in days. There are shards of reflections, windows, puddles, the back of a bent soup spoon, but nothing direct. And maybe that was the point. If he could just see himself clearly, it might confirm what he's already beginning to suspect.
Speaker 1:He didn't look like him anymore, the man walking these streets in the early gray morning light wore the same coat but hung inside it differently now. Shoulders curled inwards, face slacked from nights spent chasing sleep and mornings waking up with someone else's cold breath in the room. A man who started flinching at kindness more than cruelty. It's freezing again. Chicago's winters are brutal. But he got inside, where you were still still, and he's been here still too long.
Speaker 1:His fingers ached. Eve Wynn shoved it deep in his pockets. His feet's blistered soles he couldn't afford to replace. Hunger sharpened the corner of his thoughts. The only thing not deterring was the night. It was still there, tucked into that same chest pocket, the lining worn thin around it. It pulsed every now and then, not electrically, but like it was breathing, like it knew. He found himself staring at it some mornings, not out of curiosity anymore, but out of resentment. What do you want? He whispered at once. What do you want from me? Of course it didn't answer. It never does because it doesn't have to. It kept dragging him places, not physically, just rhythmically, like his body moved in cadence with something older than instinct. His feet turned corners before his brain processed the sidewalk, his eyes locked onto buildings before his neck turned.
Speaker 1:He'd walked this city for years, but not like this. Today was one of those days. It started with a woman screaming, not in terror, just fury, a guttural, exhausted scream from the alley near the shelter. When he peeked his head around the corner, he saw her Small frame, tangled hair, too many coats, kicking a metal trash bin, screaming I was someone. No one else looked, no one ever did, but he did. He saw her, but he did. He saw her and for the first time in days, the night warmed.
Speaker 1:Later he sat on the curb across from the train tracks, not because he needed to be there, just because something told him that this was a place to stop. He had six dollars and a half pack of gum in his pocket. The night stayed quiet. A man approached Older, weary skin, like someone who lived too many summers in a tent and too many winters beneath bridges. But his eyes were sharp, too sharp for someone who was truly gone. Gone you caring? The man asked Shook his head. The man didn't believe him but didn't press. Good, he muttered, there's still a chance. Then what do you mean? The man just smiled and walked off. That night he stood in front of the church again, not the one from the shelter, the other one, the small brick one with a crooked cross and fading mural. He hadn't gone in since the funeral. He didn't even believe anymore. But tonight he needed to stand near something. He gripped both pieces in his coat pocket the knight and the bishop opposite sides of the board one for the move, one for the protection. He didn't know how he knew that, but he did Suddenly. He wanted a mirror, not to see himself but to prove he hadn't vanished completely.
Speaker 1:Part 4, where the Fog Breaks. He's tired of walking. That's the first honest thought he's had in days. Not hungry, not angry, just tired. His legs feel like they're made of soaked denim. His thoughts are slower too, like he's been breathing underwater without realizing it. The city blurs past him in faceless patterns. Streets he's walked for weeks now feel foreign. Familiar corners twist just slightly out of place. A mural he's passed every morning for a month now has a different face on it, or maybe it was always that way. He couldn't tell and he stopped asking. It's better to let things slide.
Speaker 1:He just toured a small diner on the corner Not to go in, just to sit outside. There's a concrete barrier just beneath the boarded window that holds his weight like it knows him. Inside, two men are arguing, not loudly but enough. One wears a suit, the other looks like he hasn't slept in days. He catches fragments. You said I'd get the rest. That's not how this works.
Speaker 1:The suited man adjusts his tie and leaves the other man stays head in his hands. A waitress his tie and leaves the other man stays head in his hands. A waitress walks over and leaves a cup in front of him. No words, just presence. He watches that. It stings more than expected. He's never been good at being comforted. Even when she tried, she always reached for his hand when he was angry. Never said anything, just placed her finger over his. At the time it made him feel exposed, like she saw something he hadn't decided to show. Now he'd trade everything for that touch again.
Speaker 1:A boy approaches him eight maybe nine, holding a handful of crushed wildflowers in an old paper cup. Spare some change. He stares then laughs, not cruelly, just strangely Funny. I was about to ask you for the same thing. The boy shrugs. You look like you have a lot less to lose. He smiles Smart kid. The boy walks away. He watches him disappear around the corner, then looks down at his coat. The bishop is still there. He can still feel it like a presence, not just an object, object. It's not humming at this time, it's just warm. It's waiting like it's watching.
Speaker 1:He makes his way back to the cemetery, not for her, well, not entirely. It's the only place he still feels time, moving normally, where silence doesn't feel like punishment. He steps between the rows of stones like he's navigating a conversation he doesn't want to have. At our grave he sits cross-legged. No ceremony, just exhaustion. I don't know what I'm doing. He says aloud. The wind responds. A low whistle through the iron gate Got another one. The bishop it's. It's heavier. No reply. I thought they'd give me answers. He pauses, but it's just more weight. His fingers dig into the grass, cold and damp. Why am I still here? Behind him a church bell rings. He turns, but the chapel is empty, but the chapel is empty.
Speaker 1:Back at the shelter there's a fight, not with him, not about him, but it rattles him anyways. Two men yelling about a stolen coat, someone gets shoves, a bottle breaks. He backs into the hallway and finds a corner. He doesn't want to be here anymore. He doesn't want to be here anymore. He doesn't want to be anywhere. He pulls off the bishop. It's glowing just slightly, a soft pulse like breath. He doesn't understand what it means, but he knows this. He's not the same man who took the knight. Something shifted, something moved. He didn't ask for permission. He slides the bishop back into his coat and in that moment, for the first time in a long time, he stops asking for permission too.
Speaker 1:Part 5. The One Without a Map. He didn't plan to walk this far. His shoes are damp with the rain from three days ago. Blisters have formed in places where blisters have already formed. The skin on his heels feel like paper thinned by too much folding. But still he walks because standing feels like drowning. The city, whatever it used to mean to him, now stretches and grays, doesn't welcome him, doesn't warn him, it doesn't even acknowledge him. It just breathes Asphalt and alley, glash and shadow.
Speaker 1:Another man without a map. He crosses a neighborhood he doesn't recognize, though he's sure he's been here before. Everything's familiar in a kind of blurry way, like remembering someone else's dream. The trash bins overflow, an old man coughs something wet into the street. A teenage girl yells at her boyfriend while holding a baby on her hip. No one sees him, or they see him, but it registers as furniture Something you expect to be there, something easily ignored. That used to break him. Now it's kind of a relief.
Speaker 1:There's a corner bodega with a steel gate. Halfway down A single flickering neon letter. Oh, the rest of the sign has died. He stands there for too long, not sure why. He's not shopping, he's not resting, he's just standing Until the Kirk yells at him through the crack in the gate, tells him to move.
Speaker 1:He does Down two more blocks, past a graffitied payphone. There's a man handing out newspaper. No one buys. The man doesn't say anything, he just shoves one into his chest, he takes it, walks away. He reads nothing on the front, but the back page is blank. That stops him. He turns it over again, checks the other pages All fine Headlines, smudged ink, ads for bail bonds and car washes, but the back is empty. He rips it off and folds into his pocket, not for any reason, just he doesn't want to throw it away.
Speaker 1:He walks until he hits the tunnel underpass. It's one of those places where light doesn't behave, where the day doesn't quite reach. There's a rhythm of dripping water, a low echo of cards. Overhead, something else, faint, humming like electricity, with a voice. He steps inside. Halfway through there's a figure Seated Hood up, hands out, not just begging, just resting their fingers trace circles on the concrete floor, slow, deliberate. The humming stops when he enters. The figure doesn't move, doesn't look. Still, he nods as he passes, not out of fear, because something about this person feels Fixed, like they belong here and he doesn't Not.
Speaker 1:Yet On the other side of the tunnel, a boy tries to sell him a cracked iPhone, tells him it works great. He smiles, hands the phone back and keeps walking. His body is sore, the kind of sore that goes past muscle, bone sore, spirit sore. He feels like a man who lost a war. No one else knew was happening.
Speaker 1:He finds a bench. The wood is warped but it holds him. He takes off his shoes, looks at his feet, smiles bitterly. Becoming something new always costs something old. He says aloud to no one. He pulls off the night. It's heavier now, or maybe he's weaker. He doesn't hold it up like before, just rested on his lap, looks at it like you'd look at an old photo, something that once mattered more than anything and now it hurts to remember.
Speaker 1:A kid on a bike stops in front of him, points at the piece Is that a horse? He nods Kind of. The kid squints, what's it do? I don't know. Yet the kid shrugs and rides off. He watches the boy go until he's gone. Then he places the night beside him on the bench. Just for a moment he closes his eyes. For the first time in weeks he breathes Deep, real, like. Maybe, just maybe he can stay here for a while, not because the pain is gone, because he learned how to carry it. He doesn't stay long. It's long enough to know he'll come back, not here, but to himself. Eventually. When he does, he'll know why, even if there's no map.
Speaker 1:Part 6 the Moment that Held, this moment doesn't simmer. It sits Heavy, quiet, present. The air feels thick, like it's holding its breath, like even the city has paused, waiting to see what he'll do next. He stands in the middle of the alleyway. His shadow splits across the wet ground by flickering light above One bulb. One moment, one breath, and in his pocket two pieces the knight and the bishop. He doesn't know what they mean yet, doesn't know why he was given them what he's supposed to do. But you know one thing he hasn't let go, not once, not even when it got hard, not even when it got pointless, not even when no one believed. Because some part of him, a part he can't explain, knows this means something. He tried throwing them away. Tried, forgetting. Tried walking in the other direction. And still they hum, they vibrate against each other in his coat like a quiet signal, like two frequencies slowly tuning into the same channel. He's not sure if they're calling him forward or reminding him not to go back.
Speaker 1:Tonight he stood on the corner, forgetting and remembering. He almost turned around on the corner of forgetting and remembering. He almost turned around, almost gave in, almost let the street swallow him, like many others before. But something, someone stopped him, and it wasn't the old man, wasn't the girl, wasn't the silence. It was him, the part of him that still wants to know, the part of him that still wants to know, the part of him that still cares, not about being great, not about being seen, but about being real. And now this is as real as it gets. A man with no answers, no map, no promise of reward, just two pieces in his palm. Two choices stay or vanish.
Speaker 1:Tonight he stayed, and that changes everything, because there is a moment every man comes to, the one where running stops feeling like an escape and starts feeling like a betrayal. Like an escape and starts feeling like a betrayal. This is that moment. He's not brave, he's not ready, but he's here and maybe, just maybe, that's enough. He turns the knight in his hand. Then the bishop, each carved edge, cutting the silence. He doesn't look for signs anymore. He is the sign. He doesn't wait for the voice to tell him. He decides. And that's the beginning of something. Not a legend, not a miracle, but a man, finally. A man standing in the ruins of who he was, holding, the first pieces of who he will become. So now let's go ahead and get into the monologue. So let's talk about what just happened.
Speaker 1:If you felt uncomfortable during this episode, good, you were supposed to See. This was the episode where everything turned, but not upward, not yet. This was the final gasp of the old life before it suffocates. You've watched a man with no safety net, no identity left to retreat into and no illusions to hide behind. He stood in a hallway too narrow for comfort, pressed between two selves, and what was left of the lesser man is something else, something unformed, something waiting, and in that space he did something most never do. He chose Not because he felt strong, chose Not because he felt strong, but because he had no other direction to crawl in. That's how power is born Not when we feel ready, but when we feel abandoned by every option but truth, when the costume we've been wearing starts to burn on our skin and when the silence becomes so loud we can't pretend anymore. There's a reason. We made this part ugly, bleak, claustrophobic Because every man glamorized the moment he took his life back. But they never tell you about the roaches in the corner, the smell of mold in your pillow or the way the shower doesn't work. They don't tell you about the moment you start becoming new. It's the moment you feel like you might die.
Speaker 1:This episode was about choice, without applause. There were no cheers, there's no signs, there's no angels, just a man alone in the weight in his pocket that won't stop humming. Did you notice that? The night still hums, but no longer responds to desperation. It responds to stillness, to presence, to resolve. This is the key that peace, just like your potential, doesn't get activated by panic, it gets activated by stillness.
Speaker 1:Under pressure, you probably missed how subtle that shift was. He didn't stand tall or he didn't roar right, he just stopped looking back. And that's what the choice looks like. And for you, if you're listening to this, it means one thing. You're standing in that hallway too, and I'll tell you what no one else will. You won't get clarity first. You won't get proof, you won't even get a guarantee that it'll work honestly. All you'll get is a choice To stay invisible or to become unseen. If you don't know what that means yet, don't worry. By the end you will.
Speaker 1:So let's go ahead and let's get into our reflection questions. Number one what decision in your life have you been avoiding? Because it doesn't come with certainty. That right there, I'm going to tell you this People with that question, people stay in relationships longer than they should. They stay at jobs longer than they should because of that question, because that answer is scary.
Speaker 1:Number two when was the last time you were alone in silence, and what did that reveal. Number three have you mistaken noise for power? What would stillness look like if it looked as your strength right? If you're still, and you made that your strength right, that your strength right? Number four what old version of yourself do you still feed with your attention or habits? And number five, if you're ever I always say this if no one ever applauded you again, would you still choose the rise? You know? To kind of tack on to that question, I'll just say this for me personally you know the thing about, like personal development, self-improvement, these things. Your biggest moments don't come with applause. They're usually by yourself. When you make that choice, that change, and you decide to put yourself in front of everything else, when you decide to move away from that relationship, when you decide to quit that job that's been soul-crushing you for years. There's no applause in those things, but those are the moments in your life where your life changes for the better, usually. So just remember that as you're going through this.
Speaker 1:Okay, now, as I said, this is a very heavy series, but, as you can see, you got another piece. You got a bishop. Things are starting to turn for him. He's starting to take what we always talk about accountability and responsibility. Once you take accountability and responsibility for your life, that's where your life changes. That's what he's doing here.
Speaker 1:Okay, as we're talking about this, I've been getting a lot of feedback on this series and I just want to thank you guys so much for your feedback and just your support. I got an email today from somebody and they told me I was doing good and to keep it up, and it just meant the world to me. I just want to just thank you guys for your support. So, as we're talking about that, if you want to to support the show, really the best way to do it is doing one of two things, two things. If you could first leave a review of the show right, you know, talk about how great the show is, leave stars, that'd be awesome. Second way is just share this with a family member or a friend, right, we're trying to do this organically. We're not trying to pay algorithms. We're trying to do this organically. So if you could do that, I would sincerely appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Now, as we're talking about that, if you want to get a hold of me, you want to have a conversation about this episode, this show, this series or the 270 plus episodes that are out there. There's three ways you can get a hold of me. First way is going to be actually in the podcast description of this episode. It'll say let's chat. You click on that, then you and I can have a conversation about this series, this episode or, like I said, the 270 plus episodes that are on Gents Journey. Second way is going to be through my email. My email is anthonyatgentsjourneycom, so please, please, please, feel free to reach out to me there. And then, last but not least, you can always go to my Instagram. My Instagram is mygentsjourney. Again, guys, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for listening today. And remember this you create your reality. Take care.