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 Collapse
What if the moment everything falls apart isn't your ending, but your beginning? In this soul-stirring episode of Gentleman's Journey, we venture deeper into the mysterious world of "the Order" where our protagonist faces the ultimate test – the complete collapse of his carefully constructed identity.
Through hauntingly beautiful prose and symbolic imagery, we witness a man caught between two worlds: the life he desperately wants to reclaim and the transformation that awaits him beyond his brokenness. Dreams of a lost love blur with reality as he carries chess pieces and an engagement ring – physical reminders of what he's lost and what he still hopes to reclaim. But within the Order's stone walls and quiet rituals, a profound truth emerges: "We are not who we remember being. We are who memory refuses to let die."
The episode masterfully explores how collapse becomes the necessary gateway to evolution. As one character poignantly observes, "You'll be alright" – "Don't lie to me" – "Okay, you'll just be hurt better." This exchange perfectly captures the essence of genuine transformation. It's not about eliminating our wounds but learning to carry them differently, with more wisdom and purpose.
For anyone who has faced their own moment of breaking – whether through loss, failure, or disillusionment – this episode offers both comfort and challenge. Anthony's five reflections at the conclusion invite you to examine your own relationship with collapse: When was the last time you felt yourself starting to break? What parts of your identity are you clinging to that might need to be destroyed for growth? If you knew collapse was the doorway to your next version, how would you face it differently?
Remember, you create your reality. Sometimes the most profound strength isn't in remaining unbroken, but in how we choose to rebuild after everything falls apart. Join our community of seekers and share your own journey of transformation – because the story isn't over when we fall; that's often where it truly begins.
"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 8 of Grandeur. So let's go ahead and let's get into the cold open. The air inside the dormitory is still not silent. It's never truly silent in the order, but still enough that he can hear the faint click of the radiator behind the wall, the scrape of a shoe from a hallway down the corridor, the sigh of someone turning in their sleep, and then her voice. Not here, not now, not possible. But it's there. He's dreaming In the dream. He's not in the order.
Speaker 1:He's laying on the pavement, wet with rain, cold seeping into the bones of his back. There's a soft light coming from somewhere, moonlight or a street lamp. It's hard to tell. The world is grainy, blurred, like an old film reel. She's standing above him. She doesn't say anything at first, just looks at him. And it's that look, the one she gave him the night he proposed. Only this time her eyes are wet, but not from joy. You weren't supposed to go, she says, voice like wind through glass. He opens his mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. His chest won't rise, his body won't move. I waited, she whispers. He wants to reach out for her hand, but it's already gone. Now there's only the streetlight and the cold and the sound of sirens in the distance.
Speaker 1:He wakes, gasping. There's a shadow across the room. It's just a coat dripped over a chair, but his body doesn't know that. His body remembers the dream and something else. There's a box beside the bed. He doesn't remember it being there. It's carved from the same black wood as the nightpiece, but smaller, lighter, inside a ring, the one he gave her. He holds it in his palm. He's not sure how long it stays that way. He's not sure how long it stays that way. Eventually the sun will rise, the order will stir, training will begin, but for now he sits with the silence and with the dead. Something is shifting and he knows this place isn't just a sanctuary, it's not just recovery, it's a threshold. And he's not just remembering. It's a threshold and he's not just remembering. He's being shown Part One, the Wound that Stays.
Speaker 1:He's been here long enough now to forget the sound of the streets. It's used to hum beneath his feet, a low growl, a steady vibration, but now it's used to hum beneath his feet, a low growl, a steady vibration, but now it's just silence, not the peaceful kind, the kind that lingers, that listens back. They don't call it a temple, but it feels like one clean stone corridors, dim lighting, everything built to swallow sound, conversations stay low, footsteps are padded, even the clock moves without a tick. A month, maybe two, he hasn't really been counting, not really. But there's a rhythm here, a ritual.
Speaker 1:He wakes, he eats, he trains, he listens, he reads and he speaks with men who, like they've lived five lives and bled in all of them. They don't posture, they don't sell anything, they speak when needed and they disappear without a sound. He's not one of them, not yet. But he's not on the outside anymore either. Something has shifted. He knows the patterns now the way the quiet old man oversees the library, nods once and only once when you've asked the right question. The way the inner courtyard smells different when it's about to rain. Sees the library and nods once and only once when you've asked the right question. The way the inner courtyard smells different when it's about to rain, the exact moment the tea is served before dusk, the steam curling upward like it's trying to escape something. There's a kind of peace here.
Speaker 1:But it hasn't reached his chest, because last night he dreamed she was there and it wasn't a memory. It was something he'd lived before. It was something else, something new. She was standing above him, he was on the ground, unable to move, and she, she was crying not sobbing Just silently looking down at him like he was already gone. Her lips moved but no sound came out. He reached for her, but his hands wouldn't move. Then he woke, drenched breath caught in his throat like a name he wasn't allowed to say.
Speaker 1:He sits now in the quiet hallway outside the observatory, a place where they say you can hear the future if you know how to listen. But he's not listening. He's remembering. It wasn't just the dream, it was a look in her eyes like she already lost him and in that moment some part of him knew he was never going to see her again. But that doesn't make any sense. She's not out there. He pulls a ring box from his pocket, still there, unopened, untouched. He brought it with him even when he had nothing, even when he didn't know who he was. But now he was starting to, and the weight of that knowledge, the slow, creeping realization that he might not be who he thinks he is, makes his stomach turn. Because what if he didn't leave her. What if he never had the choice?
Speaker 1:Part 2. The Unraveling Silence. He wakes before the bell. No alarm, no footsteps in the corridor, just that deep, quiet click inside his body, like something shifted or snapped. For a moment he doesn't move, just stares at the ceiling, the shapes of shadow and morning light bending over the old beams. The room is simple, clean and oddly serene, a borrowed piece, but today it sits wrong. He breathes then again slower. There's a knot in his chest he can't name, like his body knows something his mind hasn't caught up to yet.
Speaker 1:By the time the others begin to stir in the hallway outside, he's already at the sink. The mirror's cracked, one vertical line splitting his reflection. The face on the left looks older today. The one on the right doesn't blink. He presses both palms to the edge of this old ceramic cold reel. But something inside is not. The courtyard is quiet. He skips breakfast, doesn't greet the others. There's too much noise in his head.
Speaker 1:The chestburred fragments have been rearranged in his dream again. This time the bishop sits directly beside the knight. The rook hovered above, but the strange part wasn't the arrangement, it was the absence. The queen was gone, not missing. It was removed Like someone had lifted her clean off the board and taken her with them. His stomach tightens at the memory. Was it a dream or a warning? He wasn't sure. Anymore, reality is not the firm, flat stone it used to be here in this strange place beneath the world. Things bend, days repeat, clocks slow down and memory well, memory lies.
Speaker 1:The order has begun, training him in earnest now, not just the philosophies or the quiet rituals, but something older Movement, breathwork, work, the silence between the strikes. They don't call it fighting, but it is. It's a war, only one that begins within. The elder, with the silver ring on his left hand, pulls him aside that morning, doesn't speak, just nods once and starts walking down past the practice mats into a low corridor with worn wooden floors, a training chamber, but not like the others. Here, the walls are lined with objects. None of them are weapons. A violin, an hourglass? None of them are weapons. A violin, an hourglass, a stone bowl with ash, a robe, a blindfold and a broken watch. What are these, he asks. The elder doesn't respond, he just gestures. Choose one. He doesn't know why his hand moves towards the watch, but it does. The weight of it, the crack across the face, the weight still ticks, even when broken. He pockets it, doesn't ask permission. The elder nods approving Good, now carry it. Why? Because we all do.
Speaker 1:That night the dream returns. Only now. It's not a dream. She's there, her hair pulled back, her eyes bright with something unspoken. She doesn't say his name, she just reaches for him and he doesn't move. He can't. He's on the ground looking up at her. Her face is soft, but her gaze is distant. Not afraid, not angry, just gone. Say something. He tries to whisper, but no sound comes. She kneels, pressures something from his forehead and he realizes he's bleeding From where she leans closer, whispers, one word why. He wakes up with his hand clenched around the broken watch and in the hallway outside the bell begins to ring, part 3. Quiet Rooms and Loud Echoes.
Speaker 1:He learned the building by heart before he learned himself again. Not on purpose, it just happened while the days repeated. The small square window in the landing that sometimes caught the late sun and turned the dust into glitter. The shallow notch on the fourth stair where a boot heel had dug a crescent into the wood decades ago. The hairline crack in the stone just outside the kitchen door that his right foot always found without looking. He could move through the place blind and never bump a shoulder. Familiarity is a soft god. It blesses you until you kneel to it.
Speaker 1:A month here had done a strange thing to him. It took the panic out of his mornings. The order didn't chase him out of bed, no one barked, no one checked a clipboard, the bell sounded, the hall breathed and the day rose. He woke most mornings before the bell. Now, not with dread, but with a clean, empty feeling like the inside of a bowl after it's been scrubbed. Peace wasn't a rush, it was an absence. He would just quietly in pocket the pieces the knight and bishop on one side, the rook and the pawns on the other and touched the ring box once, pressing a bruise to see if it still hurts. It always did. Her can be a compass when you stop pretending it isn't there.
Speaker 1:He talked more too. Not much. He wasn't sure he remembered how to speak the way people do when they haven't been on the ground. But words started to return to him like birds that had been spooked and forgot why they were afraid. He learned names Marion, who had the laugh of a man who'd run out of tears and chosen comedy as weapon. Elias, who carved small wooden animals in late hours and left them on doorways like this from a ghost Dace who always ate last and washed the pots. Like he was fighting a battle no one could see and winning in small, soapy victories.
Speaker 1:Nothing dramatic happened, no visions, no secret doors opening, no thunder inside the skull, just work Scrubbing pans, folding sheets, while someone told a story without looking up. He was carrying water, listening to men apologize to the air and not to each other. He began to stand on the door of the library and read the spines without touching them, because the old keeper didn't like fingers on anything, until you knew why you needed it. And still the quiet wasn't silent. It had a pulse underneath it, thin and steady, like a far away drum you can only hear when you stop running. He could feel it most when he sat alone after the evening meal and watched steam crawl out of a chipped mug. Some part of him was waiting For what he would not say out loud. He had learned here that naming a fear too soon was the only way to feed it.
Speaker 1:On the seventh morning of this not-so-quiet peace, the elder with the silver ring took him to the east corridor where the floorboards dipped. The room smelled like old rope and cedar oil. No weapons. As always, the order insisted that an unguarded man was a dangerous one. Today's lesson had nothing to do with strikes or stances. The Elder sat, two chairs facing each other and said Sit. He sat. The Elder said Look At what At me he did.
Speaker 1:The elder's face was a map of long distances and short nights. His eyes did not flinch, neither did his breathing. They sat like that until his own shoulders started to ache and his mind tried to invent emergencies. He wanted to cough, to scratch his cheek, to say something clever that would dissolve the tension. He did none of it. The elder waited him out.
Speaker 1:Time turned thin. Okay, what is it? He finally asked when patience felt like a weight on his chest. What is what the elder said? This, this exercise? This is not an exercise. The elder's voice was not unkind. This is a mirror For a heartbeat. He almost laughed. Then laughed I, because the truth of it was too naked. He could see it the twitch in his left eyelid whenever he thought of the ring. The way his jaw hardened when silence got too honest. The small, involuntary turn of his head whenever footsteps crossed the hallway. How he listened for a past that wasn't walking here anymore. The elder tipped his chin toward the pocket everyone already knew about. Why do you carry it every day? He didn't touch the ring Because I haven't earned the right to put it down. The elder's mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile, or because you're afraid that if you put it down you'll forget. He swallowed the room, tilted a fraction. He didn't want to answer because both truths were neighbors. Again tomorrow, the elder said, standing Same time. There were no grades here, no gold stars, just repetition. Until the repetition changed you.
Speaker 1:He walked alone afterward, hands empty because he didn't trust them, without anything, and he found himself in the laundry where long ropes of sheet and towels hung like quiet flags. The heat of the room loosened his chest in a way that almost felt indecent. Marion was there whistling a tune from nowhere. You look like you wrestled a statue'. Arian said without turning. "'lost'. He said "'Lost'. Arian nodded like he expected that. "'statues always win. They've got all day'. "'he held up a towel. "'help me pretend this is a sail'. "'they hung cotton like they were rigging a small ship to nowhere'. He realized halfway through that he was smiling. It wasn't much and it didn't stay, but it came on its own without a permission slip. He pretended not to notice, and so did Marion.
Speaker 1:At dinner he sat with Elias and Danz. The food tasted like it always did simple, hot and enough. Elias slid a small wooden horse across the table without looking at him. The little thing was rough and perfect. Each imperfection a decision. He didn't say thank you because Elias didn't raise his eyes. In the order, some gifts arrived wrapped in an amenity. You ruin them if you try to catch them with gratitude. Too loud for the room he slept that night without the dream. The absence was almost louder than her voice had been. He woke unease because he did not know which version of the night he preferred the one where she came back to haunt him or the one where the room was just dark and he was the only man in a bed.
Speaker 1:In the morning he swept the courtyard with a straw broom that lost pieces of itself with every pass, and he thought about the broom and how it was still useful while falling apart. He thought this without trying to make it a new metaphor and then got angry at himself for thinking in metaphors all the time. Grief makes you poetic. Against your will, you try to name it and end up making a shrine out of your own throat. After midday they sorted books that no one would check out. He found one with a torn cloth cover and a title he could barely read because the gold had worn off Inside. Along the margin of a chapter about names, someone underlined the sentence with a dull pencil we are not who we remember being. We are who memory refuses to let die. He put the book back, even though the sentence wouldn't leave him alone. It followed him down the corridor like a small animal. You pretend isn't there because you're worried. You'll have to feed it if you admit you see it.
Speaker 1:He did not notice the first crack until evening. He was seated by the window in the common room, shoulder to shoulder with two others, the smell of soap still on his hands. Someone told a good story, badly, and everyone laughed anyways. He laughed too and then felt inside the laugh a thread pulled tight. It ran from the sound he was making to the ring, pressed into the lining of his pocket. He touched the pocket and the thread burned under his skin. You weren't supposed to go, she said in the dream. That wasn't a dream.
Speaker 1:He looked at his hands. They were clean and shaking. He put them on his knees and watched. He watched them until they were still again. No one saw. Or maybe every man in the room saw and chose to treat it with mercy of deliberate blindness.
Speaker 1:In this place, not everything that is noticed is named. There were days that were counted by small anchors. He found himself making a calendar out of habitual mercies. Marian would leave a heel of bread on his ledge, elias started a second horse with a curved neck, dace cutting apples, with the concentration of a surgeon, the elder, appearing in the doorway at the exact moment, his patients began to smoke and saying without moving his mouth very much. Again he looked at his reflection more often, not because he liked it. The crack in the mirror cut his face when he moved, and many times he stood that way on purpose, letting the vertical line split him. Half of him looked like a man making progress, the other looked like a man dressed up as the first one.
Speaker 1:He did not sleep well. It was not the dream's fault, it was the absence. He kept waiting for the room to turn into a graveyard of memories again and it didn't. So he lay awake and learned the entire orchestra of the building Pipes throat-clearing, a window's low whine an old hinge catastrophizing about a future door it might have to carry. Toward morning he dozed In that sleep. Her shoes appeared. He knew them by the scuff on the left one and the way the laces always seemed one thought away from coming undone. He woke angry at the mercy of such a small detail. Anger was easier than sorrow. It gave your hand something to hold, even if it was only fire.
Speaker 1:Sometimes the order asked questions in a circle. No one was forced to speak. Silence counted. What mattered wasn't disclosure, it was honesty. He said nothing most nights because he didn't want to trust his mouth. Tonight the circle was smaller and the question was quiet. What are you pretending not to know? No one looked at anyone else.
Speaker 1:Men spoke to floorboards that had ears. He almost said nothing again. Then he surprised himself. Almost said nothing again. Then he surprised himself. He said that I still want the life I was supposed to have. He said His voice belonged to him and a stranger at the same time that I would take it if someone offered it back. He hated that his eyes weren't wet when he said it. He did not wipe them and that I don't believe I'll ever be okay with not getting it. The floorboards listened. No one offered him a tissue or a lesson. Marion exhaled like a tire, with a slow leak. The elder nodded once. So tiny you could miss it and so large it moved the whole room. Elias placed something on the floor near his boot before they broke the circle and left. It was the second horse unfinished. He picked it up and felt the half-sanded back with his thumb. The place where the tool had paused was tender, almost warm.
Speaker 1:The next morning the elder did not take him to the mirror room, he led him down into the storage where the ceiling ducked and the air was still. With honest work he pointed to a pile of broken things that were so worth keeping chair legs, chip bowls, rope that only needed a knot in the right place. Choose something that looks like you, he said. He chose a frame with no picture, its corners loose, the nails peeking out like teeth. He didn't know why. He only knew that when he carried it up the stairs, careful not to catch it on the banister, it felt like he was bringing himself to a place where someone could finally fix him without pretending he wasn't worth the trouble.
Speaker 1:He spent the afternoon learning how wood behaves when you ask it to come back together. You don't force it, you persuade it. You sand where there is a splinter, you glue where there is the gap, you clamp what wants to drift apart. He thought he understood structure before he did not. What we call strength is often only patience. Wearing a uniform, by dusk, the corners held. He set the frame upright and felt a small undeserved pride. Marion came by and tapped it once in the center Now you need something to carry. He said. Now you need something to carry. He said like, what a picture. No, like a name. Marion said already walking away.
Speaker 1:That night the dream returned. Not the whole of it, just one detail the way her hair had stuck in her cheek in the rain. He woke with his own cheek wet and didn't bother pretending it wasn't sweat. He sat on the edge of the bed until the bell and then stood before it rang. The day met him like a room he had been in a thousand times and couldn't quite rearrange. This is how stability cracked, not with a shout, but with a small, steady pressure. He did the work. He made the tea. He carried the frame from one room to another because he couldn't figure out where to hang something without a picture in it. He only spoke when spoken to and sometimes when he wanted to. He ate the soup and tasted all the parts. He found a new notch on the fifth stair and felt affectionate toward it. The ordinary behaved like a tide, coming in, going out, and somewhere below the waterline a rock waited for his ankle. And somewhere below the waterline a rock waited for his ankle.
Speaker 1:In the afternoon the elder asked him to sit by the window again and look at nothing for longer than felt really sane he did. He watched a leaf on the sill try to decide if it wanted to leave. He watched the dust admit it was light. He watched his own hand relax. In the middle of all that, so gently he almost missed it. A thought arrived without an invitation. If the dream is memory, then the life I want has already ended. He did not say no to that thought. He did not say yes. He set it on the windowsill next to the leaf and let them both stay undecided. He went to the kitchen and washed dishes until his fingers pruned, because water tells the truth in a language a human can understand if he's tired enough. Days hummed something that might have been a hymn, but probably was not, and every now and then their shoulders touch because there's not much space between men who are both trying not to break any more plates.
Speaker 1:He returned to his room at last, not to to sleep but to sit with the frame and the horses and the ring and the box he wouldn't open. He placed the unfinished horse inside an empty frame and balanced both on the edge of the table. For a second it looked like a scene from a childhood. He didn't get to keep. He almost reached for the ring box a childhood he didn't get to keep. He almost reached for the ring box then almost he didn't. He set his hands flat on the table to feel how steady the wood can be when you can trust it. He didn't hear Marion in the doorway. He only felt the room agree to another body.
Speaker 1:Marion stood there like people do when they're about to say something that matters and are trying to find a way to make it sound like it doesn't. You'll be alright. Marion said Don't lie to me. He said softer than expected. Okay, you'll just be hurt better. He laughed at the sound that might have been a cough. Is that supposed to help? It's the only thing it ever has.
Speaker 1:Marion left a small cloth packet on the table and went away. Inside were three nails, a folded scrap of paper with a pencil line that could one day be a horse if someone believed in it, and a string long enough to hang a frame that wasn't ready yet. He threaded the string through the hardware and let the frame hang against the wall, without a picture, because sometimes you have to build the place. Something will live before it arrives. He stood back to see. If it looked ridiculous. It did. He let it. Ridiculous things saved more lives than logical ones. He slept a little.
Speaker 1:The dream did not come, the feeling did. It sat on his chest like a small child who refused to be put down. When mornings found him, it was a man who was learning how to carry something without naming it every ten minutes At training. The elder handed him a broken watch he had chosen and said Set it. It can't be set. He said the stem is missing. Set it anyways. So he turned his stem that wasn't there and watched the second hand that didn't move. It felt like a minute pass that he had no proof of. When he looked up, the elder was not smirking. He was nodding like a satisfied farmer with a sky he could not control. By the end of the day he felt both taller and more hollow, which is strange. It's a strange combination if you haven't lived it.
Speaker 1:He took the long way to his room through the courtyard because at the door, with the notch he could find, with his eyes closed, did not go in. He stood there, the ring box heavy against his ribs and his breath, doing the math of an impossible choice. He wanted his old life. He admitted it again. He wanted the bar where the stool on the end wobbled and the bartender knew how to put the napkin down first. He wanted the way her hand found his sleeve when she crossed the street. He wanted the future he had already built in his head and decorated with jokes he hadn't told yet. He wanted to stop wanting what could not have been without breaking something sacred in the world that wasn't his to touch. These are not the kind of wants that could live in the same room. One of them would have to move out.
Speaker 1:He opened the door and sat on the bed and stared at the empty frame. He hung like a dare to himself. He waited for the dream or for silence, silence or for a bell or for an answer. None of them came. He smothered the bread spread with the flat of his hand until the fabric agreed to his idea of order. His hand shook once he let it. He picked up the wooden horse and felt the unfinished back under his thumb again. There's a mercy in stopping in the middle. It means you can begin again.
Speaker 1:He turned down the light and lay back on a pillow that smelled faintly of soap and dust and something like cedar. He closed his eyes Behind them. Not a vision, just a fact-shaped ache that belonged to no vocabulary he learned before the fall. The room did not breathe. He did. Somewhere in the building, far away, and also inside his own chest. A bell began to sound that no one else could hear. It did not call him anywhere, it did not warn him of anything. It rang because a part of him had decided, quietly and without his permission, that the thing he was pretending not to know would need to be faced soon, and he was not ready. But he was willing and that difference was the only comfort available.
Speaker 1:He turned on his side and pressed the ring box into the mattress so the sharp corner would keep him from rolling onto it in his sleep. The way people put furniture against the door, not to stop a thief, but to buy enough time to wake up. Then he breathed, until breathing seemed like something you could do forever, and forever was only the next minute. The minute ended, Another began, nothing broke, not yet he slept. Finally, the dream did not come. The space it had made did part four.
Speaker 1:He woke up with a taste of metal in his mouth. It wasn't blood, well, not exactly, though. He had learned in the months since he stumbled into the Order that the body could remember tastes even if they weren't there. Memories had a way of leaving traces in the present, and lately, the past was bleeding into everything. The cot under him was warmer than he expected. Someone had turned the radiator up too high. His skin felt damp beneath his shirt, the walls plaster, patched and repainted more times than anyone could count. Pressed in with stale heat.
Speaker 1:He sat there for a while, elbow on knees, staring at the floor, trying to catch his breath, without knowing why he was out of breath at all. It had been weeks, months maybe, since they brought him there. He'd stopped counting days. Counting was for men who had somewhere else to be. He was trying, he told himself, trying to adjust, trying to learn their rules, trying to memorize the faces that moved past him in the hall, nodding politely, offering words he couldn't fully believe. The order fed him, clothed him, gave him a room without roaches. He started talking to people again, small talks over bread in the dining hall, exchanges and training rooms, about the right grip on a knife or how to throw someone off balance with half a step. He even laughed once a week. It caught him by surprise that sound in his own throat. But the nights were dangerous, the nights where his progress came apart, because the nights brought her back.
Speaker 1:It started as a dream, at least that's what he told himself in the moment. But it didn't feel like a dream. It felt like a memory short enough to cut. He was lying on the pavement, cold, biting through the back of his shirt, a distant ringing in his ears, a streetlight glare above him and then her standing over him, kneeling eyes, wet but steady. Her lips moved but he couldn't hear the words. The world was muffled like it was wrapped in cotton. She reached in her coat pocket and pulled something out, a small box. She opened it. The ring caught the light, like it knew it was being seen for the last time. Her lips moved again. This time he read them. Them, yes.
Speaker 1:He woke with his chest, tight Shirt clinging to him in the dark. The radiator hissed in the corner. His breath and his breathing Felt too loud. In the small room the next day he moved through the halls Like a man in the wrong house. His training was off. He missed simple catches, stumbled on a turn. Someone asked if he was okay. He said yes, he didn't mean it.
Speaker 1:By the third day the exhaustion was heavy enough to tilt him forward. When he walked, he skipped the meal, skipped training. He found himself sitting alone in the upper room near the library, staring at the pieces he collected. They lay on the table like witnesses, silent and waiting. The hum from the night was gone again. He leaned forward, elbows on the wood, head in his hands. The conversation outside the door blurred into meaningless noise. His mind was on the pavement again. The box, the ring, the word, the cold. Something broke. It wasn't loud, no one heard it, but inside it felt like the scaffolding that held him together through these past months simply gave way. His breath quickened, his vision tunneled. The weight in his chest became unbearable. He pushed away from the table, his chair scraping his knees unsteady beneath him. He stumbled into the hallways shoulder hitting the wall, someone calling his name but sounding a mile away. Down the stairs, across the corridor, the exit just ahead, when his legs failed, he collapsed. The last thing he saw was a knight sliding out of his coat pocket, landing beside him on the cold stone floor, turning slightly until it faced him.
Speaker 1:Part 5. The days inside the Order had begun to settle into a rhythm training sessions in the morning, quiet study in the library during the afternoon and evenings spent in the common hall where the faint glow of candles bled into the scent of old wood and ink. He started to know faces, to learn names, the strange guarded nods that turned into conversations. For the first time in months, there was something that almost resembled stability Almost. On this night the hall was busier than normal. A visiting group had arrived from one of the orders of their enclaves, messengers, scholars and disciples turning from months in the field. They carried with them the air of travel, dust on their boots, eyes that scanned every shadow and the kind of silence that spoke of things they could not or would not say. He sat at the table near the far wall, the knight and the rook resting in his left coat, pocket their weight, a constant reminder. His hand drifted to them without thought, fingertips tracing their edges. They felt heavier tonight.
Speaker 1:It was then when he noticed one of the newcomers watching him, not openly, not for long, but enough. The man was young, perhaps a few years older than himself, with a sharpness of his gaze that was both measuring and familiar. There was no hostility in it, only calculation. And familiar. There was no hostility in it, only calculation. When their eyes met, the man offered a small, knowing smile before turning back to the group.
Speaker 1:Hours later, when the hall had thinned and the air had cooled, he passed the same man in the corridor. No words, just a glance, a pause, and then the faintest whisper as they passed each other Not all of us serve the same king. The words were gone as quickly as they come, swallowed by the sound of boots on stone. He turned, but the man was already gone, disappearing down a side passage that led deeper into the enclave. The phrase repeated in his head long after he lay in his cot None of us serve the same king. Could have been nothing. A strange comment from a stranger, but there was something in the way he said it. It was low, it was deliberate, almost as if it was meant to bypass thought and settle somewhere deeper In the shadows. Above him, the ceiling beams seemed to shift. The thought came unbidden what if one of them wasn't here for the order at all? What if they were there for him?
Speaker 1:Part 6 he had been in the Order's compound long enough now to know the smell of the place that had embedded itself into him. Not just the faint incense or old world polish from the main hall, but the undertones, the damp stone corridors. Oil from the main hall, but the undertones. The damp stone corridors. Oil from the lanterns, the mineral tang of water drawn from deep underground. The sounds, too, had become familiar the low hum of murmured conversations in distant rooms, the careful footfalls of disciples on marble stairs, the occasional rattle of chess pieces being set on a board on marble stairs, the occasional rattle of chess pieces being set on a board. He was learning their rhythms. Morning grills in the courtyard, silent meals where eyes did more speaking than mouths, afternoons filled with instruction, not just in the game, though that was constant, but in the way of seeing the world. The order taught in circles, ideas moving back on themselves, questions answered only with more questions, discipline and force without raising a voice. They spoke of the grand game not as something played on a board, but as something lived in every breath In that month, maybe two, maybe three, I don't know, but time was strange.
Speaker 1:Here he began to find his place. The first weeks had been a disorientation stacked on top of exhaustion. Now there was a tentative stability. He had people he could call friends, one of them, a quiet man with sharp eyes called Calder. He had people he could call friends, one of them a quiet man with sharp eyes called Calder. He'd taken it upon himself to explain more obscure customs when to speak, when to be silent, how to recognize when you're being tested. But the knights, the knights never gave him peace.
Speaker 1:The dream returned again, always in fragments, always shifting, but the center of it was fixed. She was there, standing over him, light behind her, so bright it haloed her in white and gold, her eyes looking down with an expression that broke him in ways no blade could. Her lips moved, but the words were soundless. He could feel himself lying on the ground, his cheek pressed to something cold and unyielding Stone Pavement. He couldn't tell. Every time he woke before she finished speaking. This time he didn't wake. The dream blurred into the day. He found himself halfway through a lesson with Master Veileon, the old man's voice winding through some metaphor about sacrifice and position, when the edges of the room bent, sound narrowed, the air thickened. The last thing he saw was Calder's face, lips moving in alarm before the world tilted and then black. The collapse was sudden, absolute, no stumble, no reaching for balance. One moment he was there, the next he was gone. The last flicker of awareness was the sensation from the dream, lying on something cold, the same angle of her gaze as she stood over him, the same unbearable weight in his chest, the bored, the pieces, the lessons, all dissolved into nothingness and the world went silent.
Speaker 1:Part 7. Here comes the monologue. You felt that moment, didn't you? You know, this collapse wasn't just physical. It was the weight of everything pressing down at once. The weeks of trying to adapt the slow climb towards something like stability, the fragile threads of trust. He was starting to adapt the soul climbed towards something like stability, the fragile threads of trust he was starting to weave inside the order. And then snap One small crack in the mind, one unexpected memory really, and it all comes crashing down.
Speaker 1:It's in the moments like this where men meet themselves, not in the triumphs, not in the polished photographs, but in the collapse, when your knees give away, when the air feels too heavy to breathe, when you're convinced you cannot take one more step. But that's when the truth comes out, and that truth is rarely kind. He's been here before, but not like this. This isn't the street, this isn't the cold. This is something deeper. This is the kind of breaking that happens inside. You've been there, haven't you? Where you're surrounded by people, yet utterly alone, where help is so close enough to really touch, but pride or shame or sheer numbness keeps you from reaching for it. See, the order is watching, but not with pity, not with judgment. They're measuring him. Every collapse is a test and every test has a price. And now he's paying in something more valuable than gold. It's the remnants of who he thought he was.
Speaker 1:But here's what you have to remember Collapse isn't the end, it's a turning point. If you listen closely, you can almost hear it, the ground giving way, but almost the first whisper of the next step. The version of you that comes after this will not be the same as the one who fell. So let me ask you are you running from your collapse or are you running toward it, because one of those paths leads nowhere and the other leads to the man you've been avoiding becoming.
Speaker 1:So let's go ahead and let's get into our five reflections. Reflection one when was the last time you felt something, or I should say, felt yourself starting to collapse, and what triggered it? Number two Do you allow yourself to be seen in your weakest moments, or or do you hide until they pass? Reflection three what parts of your identity are you clinging to that might need to be destroyed for you to grow? That's such a huge question. Number four who is silently watching you now, measuring what you'll do next? And number five this is a big question, by the way, if you knew the collapse was the doorway to your next version, how would you face it differently? So, yeah, this was a big one. You know he's gaining pieces, but he's also having to face himself, and that's really one of the biggest tests he'll have in this series.
Speaker 1:But I cannot thank you guys enough for listening, for your support, for your messages of support, and really the dialogue I have with you guys is just. I feel so blessed and just so grateful for you guys being a part of this community, like I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Now, if you want to help support this podcast, it's really easy. I just ask you to do two things. One, share this podcast with a family or friend. That is going through something People identify with stories. I know I do. It's how I learn.
Speaker 1:Second way leave a review. Reviews are so, so helpful. I can't tell you how helpful they are. Leave a review. It'd be great. Now, if you want to actually have a dialogue with me or have a conversation with me about this episode, this series, the 14 other series that are out there, the 270 plus episodes. It's super easy. First way we can have contact or have a dialogue is actually on the description of this podcast. There's a thing that says let's chat. You click on that and you and I can have a conversation again about this episode, this series, you know, the 14 other series that are out there and the 270 plus episodes, right? Second way is going to be through my email. My email, as always, is anthonyatgentsjourneycom. 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 my gents journey. Feel free to reach out to me there as well, too. Okay, so again, thank you so, so so very much for listening today. Remember this you create your reality. Take care.