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 Chamber and The Knocking
What would you sacrifice for transformation when you can't see what you'll receive in return?
Episode 10 of Grandeur Man takes us deep into the shadowed corridors of a mysterious order, where our protagonist encounters a red-cloaked figure who knows his true name and demands a piece of him—a symbolic pawn—without revealing what might be gained. This encounter becomes a powerful metaphor for the bargains we all make on our paths to growth.
The story unfolds through beautiful prose as Brother Calvin guides our protagonist with a crucial wisdom: "decide now what you will never trade." Despite facing an entity shrouded in mystery, our hero discovers that sometimes the most powerful response isn't refusal but patience—answering "not yet" rather than surrendering what he isn't ready to give. This delicate balance between inevitable sacrifice and maintaining personal boundaries forms the episode's emotional core.
We often celebrate those who relentlessly push forward, breaking through whatever stands in their way. Yet this episode reveals a different kind of strength—the power to remain still when movement would cost too much. As our protagonist navigates the mysterious sanctum, retrieving a sealed box from the library while resisting the temptation to open it, we're reminded that discipline sometimes means holding power without immediately wielding it.
The final scene with the elders brings everything into focus: "This wasn't a test he signed up for." How true this rings in our own lives! The most significant challenges rarely announce themselves—they simply arrive, watching to see if we can bear the weight of our own silence.
What armor are you still carrying that once protected you but now keeps you from moving forward? Where have you mistaken movement for progress? Listen, reflect, and perhaps discover what you might need to surrender—or protect—on your own journey of becoming.
"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 10 of Grandeur man. We're already a third of the way through, guys Unbelievable. So let's go ahead and let's get into the cold opening. The morning air had weight to it, not the heavy, humid kind he remembers from summer's past, but a quiet, deliberate weight, as if the light itself had thickened overnight. The courtyard stones were still damp from early mist.
Speaker 1:Brother Calvin's voice carried easily in the stillness, sharp but not unkind, calling on instructions till the small group gathered near the fountain. Every brother moved through the forms, slow, deliberate movements of the staff turning and pivoting in unison. But he noticed, even as he mimicked their motions, not all eyes were on the work. Some of them were watching him, not with curiosity, not with warmth, but with the kind of attention a jeweler gives to a stone under light, tilting it, looking for flaws. He tried to ignore it, focusing on the weight of the staff in his hands, the sound of the wood striking against the ground. Calvin passes behind him, correcting his stance with a small push to his shoulder. You're learning, he murmured. He straightened the air, pressed closer. Somewhere beyond the wall, a bell began to ring Low, deliberate tolls. It's not the hour mark. He had learned those rhythms. This was slower, a drawn-out sound that seemed to pull the sunlight with it, dimming the courtyard for just a moment before releasing it again.
Speaker 1:When he turned towards the sound, the brothers were gone, the fountain still trickled, the staff still felt warm with his grip, but the courtyard was empty. Only the shadow of the archway remained, long, thin, stretched toward him in the way shadows should not stretch this early in the day. And then, somewhere deep in the empty air, his name, his real name, part One, the Becoming. The sound of his name didn't fade the way normal sounds do. It lingered, not as an echo but as a presence, as if the air had been carved open just wide enough for it to slip through and then refuse to close again. He stood still for a moment, feeling the weight of it, that name. It didn't belong here. No one in the order had spoken it, no one should have even known it. And yet the way it was said, it was exact, not mispronounced, not hesitant, so the kind of familiarity that only comes from someone who has known you long enough to know where your soft spots are.
Speaker 1:His hand tightened on the staff without thinking. The wood was warm in his grip as it had been resting in the sun, though the morning had been cool. The shadow of the archway stretched toward him again longer now then as a blade touching the toes of his boots. He didn't decide to move. His feet were already carrying him toward it, slow at first, then, with a kind of unsteady urgency, like a man approaching the edge of a drop. He couldn't see the archway was taller than it looked from across the courtyard. The stone was worn, edges softened from decades, maybe centuries, of hands brushing against it and passing the air beneath. It felt different. He could hear the fountain behind him still trickling, but the sound was distant now, as if wrapped in cloth.
Speaker 1:Halfway through he paused. The temperature had shifted, cooler, but not in a way that came from shade. It was the cool of something older. Something had been waiting. The voice came again, closer this time. No echo, no direction. Just there inside and outside at once. Just there inside and outside at once. He wanted to call it out, but some instinct, maybe survival, kept his mouth shut.
Speaker 1:Beyond the arch, the courtyard did not continue. Instead, a narrow corridor ran between two high stone walls, the sky just a thin strip above. The light was wrong here, not dim, but not honest, like the daylight had been altered to match someone else's memory of it. He stepped forward, the staff's tip tapping the ground once, twice, like a slow heartbeat. And from somewhere ahead, just beyond the first turn, he heard it Footsteps, slow, heavy, moving away from him, not in retreat, they were leading him on Part 2.
Speaker 1:The Becoming the corridor, narrowed as he walked, though the walls never seemed to actually move. It was a trick of perspective, or maybe of the mind, but each step made him more aware of how little space there was on either side. The stone was cold to the touch when his fingers brushed it. Not just cool, but cold in a way that bit through the skin and stayed. The footsteps ahead kept their rhythm slow, heavy, measured. Whoever it was, they weren't in a hurry, they were letting him follow.
Speaker 1:He tried to listen for anything else, breathing, the drag of clothing, but the sound of his own heartbeat began to crowd the air. It was too loud, too heavy in his chest. Each thud felt like it had been matched by the footsteps ahead, as if the stranger was walking in time with him on purpose. The strip of sky overhead was pale, almost colorless. No clouds, no birds, just an empty light that didn't seem to come from the sun at all. He couldn't tell if it was morning still or something closer to evening. Time didn't feel anchored here.
Speaker 1:A turn approached. He slowed the footsteps ahead, did not? They rounded the corner without hesitation. He stopped just before the bend, pressing his back to the wall, trying to control his breathing. This was foolish, he knew that. But he also knew the rule of every hunt, every chase Don't rush the moment of sight.
Speaker 1:From around the bend came the faint scrape of something against stone. Not a footstep, something else. Then silence. He leaned forward just enough to let one eye catch the angle of the corridor ahead. Empty. He turned the corner. The space here was different, wider but darker. The high walls leaned inward slightly, casting the shadow in the ground. The air was heavier. He could smell something faint and metallic like wet iron. His staff made no sound when it touched the ground now, as though the stone itself was swallowing it. Far ahead, the passage seemed to tilt, not up or down but to the side, like the whole corridor had been laid just slightly askew. His eyes kept trying to correct for it, and the effort made his head throb.
Speaker 1:The footsteps resumed, closer, this time, still ahead, still moving away, but the sound was sharper now, not softened by distance. He moved after them, forcing his pace to stay measured each step deliberate. He tried counting them, forcing his pace to stay measured each step deliberate. He tried counting them to steady himself, but he lost track. After twelve the rhythm would slip, then return, then double, as if one ahead was playing with the pace on purpose.
Speaker 1:Another turn approached, this one tighter. Another turn approached this one tighter. The wall on his right showing deep scratches, not random, but parallel lines, running the length of stone, like something had been dragged through here many times. He let his fingers trace one of them. The groove was deep enough to press the pad of his finger pants into. For a moment he thought he heard the faintest hum, like the vibration of a plucked string coming from the stone itself. He pulled his hand back quickly.
Speaker 1:The turn opened into a narrow stretch of alcoves cut into the walls at uneven intervals. Some were just empty shelves of shadow, others seemed to hold shapes, covered objects, maybe statues, but in the low light they were only silhouettes. As he pressed the first alcove, a faint shift and air brushed the side of his face, he froze, turning slowly toward it. Nothing moved, but the shape inside, tall, draped in cloth, seemed to lean just a fraction closer than it had a moment ago. He stepped back. The alcove returned to stillness.
Speaker 1:The footsteps ahead continued unbothered. He forced himself on passing two more alcoves without looking in At the third. The space opened slightly and he could see what looked like a narrow bench carved directly into the wall. On it sat a small wooden box, no larger than his palm. He hesitated, glancing toward the sound of the steps. Then, drawn by something he couldn't name, he set the staff under his arm and reached for the box. It was heavier than it should have been for its size. The wood was dark, smooth, without a single seam, no hinges, no latch, just a solid cube that seemed to hum faintly when he held it.
Speaker 1:The footsteps stopped. He froze, box in hand, every muscle tensing. The silence that followed wasn't just the absence of sound. It was the active presence of stillness, the kind that feels like something holding its breath. Very slowly he set the box back on the bench. The hum in his hands faded instantly. The footsteps resumed. He moved again, keeping his distance. His pulse was way too fast now, but slowing felt impossible. Whatever was ahead had noticed him long before he had noticed it, of that he was certain.
Speaker 1:The corridor bent again, this time in a gradual curve that kept him from seeing more than a few paces ahead. The stone here was smoother, worn in a way that suggested many had walked this path, though he doubted they'd all returned. As he rounded the curve, the smell of iron grew stronger. The footsteps ahead shifted in tone. The footsteps ahead shifted in tone, the sound now duller, as though whatever or whoever it was had stepped off stone onto something softer. He slowed again. The light was dimmer here. The strip of sky was almost gone, just before the path straightened. He could see the faintest flicker ahead, like the edge of a moving shadow. He stopped. The footsteps stopped too. The air between them felt thin, stretched to the point of breaking. And somewhere, just beyond the last stretch of corridor, something waited. He tightened his grip on the staff, forcing one slow breath, one more step and he'd see it, but not yet.
Speaker 1:Part 3. The Becoming. He let the breath go slowly, as if releasing it too fast would be the same as stepping forward. The staff's grain pressed a straight line into his palm. The ridge of the wood was a quiet anchor. He could feel the tiniest tremor in his forearm, where the muscle tried to decide between fight or flight. The cord of her head didn't move, but everything about it felt poised, like a body that had already decided to strike and was waiting.
Speaker 1:Only out of curiosity. Say it again, he thought, not daring to give the thought a mouth. If the voice spoke his name one more time, he wasn't sure whether he would run or answer. The smell of iron swelled, then thinned, as if the air itself had pulsed. The strip of sky overhead had narrowed to a nib of light, colorless, weightless, unreal. Under it, the stone seemed to darken, as if drinking in. What little daylight remained?
Speaker 1:One step forward. The sound came at once. Footsteps, yes, but wrong somehow. Not leather on stone, but not bearskin either. The closest he could name was a heavy cloth brushing a threshold, dragging just enough to announce itself without an apology. The rhythm was human and not it. Matched him, then missed him, then folded over his pace like a hand closing over another hand. Enough he told the part that wanted to freeze. He shifted the staff to his left hand, freeing his right.
Speaker 1:The corridor pinched and then released, not in its shape, but in sensation, like the subtle pressure you feel when an elevator glides past the floor. You wanted the curve straightened and the thin sky vanished. He stepped into a space with no sky at all. It wasn't a room, not exactly. The corridor opened into a chamber that still thought of itself as a passage. The ceiling anchored low and then higher, ribbed like a belly of a ship, turned upside down. What light there was bled from somewhere behind him, unwilling to cross the last few feet ahead. And that dusk. The floor glimmered as if slick, though when he tested it, the stone held and there it was, flat, against the far wall at first, then not against the wall at all, but standing just in front of it.
Speaker 1:A shape shoulders the suggestion of a head and height close to his own. Cloaked the color, fought the dark, not with brightness but with certainty. Red, but a red that memory recognized before the eyes do. His mouth was dry. He swallowed it anyways. Who are you, he tried to say, and discovered that to speak he required more than deciding. The air caught the words and turned them in his throat. What came out was a rougher sound, a low thing, with the edges sanded off. Who the figure's head tilted. Who, the figure's head tilted? His real name arrived again, but not as a sound across the distance. It pressed up against his ear from the inside Five letters and the one vowel that always softened him when she said it Perfectly placed, reverent and familiar at once. He flinched like he'd been touched, don't? He thought, and the thought had his teeth this time.
Speaker 1:He tightened his grip on the staff until his tendons and his wrists stood up like cables beneath skin Somewhere far behind him. A drop of art of met stone, the sanctum's old metronome, patient, absolute. The red deepened. A fold of cloak shifted slow as breath. He wanted obvious threat, teeth, a knife, a step that broke into a run, something his body would understand without counsel. Instead he got the oldest kind of danger Invitation. He realized it when his foot went forward without being told. The figure didn't move. That unsettled him more than any advance would have. Three more steps and he felt the temperature fall a degree. The hairs along his forearms rose of their own accord. The flurried that faint give again the illusion of slickness, the sensation of the weight finding not stone but attention Close.
Speaker 1:Now, ten feet eight, he could see the line of the cloak's hem, not cut, ragged, not frayed but heavy, the fabric pooling like a shadow on shadow. He wanted to see hands, wanted a face. The hood held both in reserve like cards unplayed. Show me, he thought, and the figure obeyed enough to unnerve him. One gloved hand, uncurled where it had been hidden in the opposite sleeve, fingers, long, calm, clean. The glove wasn't leather, it had a look of something older, woven, perhaps oiled, made to last.
Speaker 1:He could not bear the hood another second. He lifted the staff, only an inch and it gestured, just to feel the weight. An exact instant, the tip rose, the hand moved to the edge of the weight. In an exact instant, the tip rose, the hand moved to the edge of the hood. He felt the stupid hope of men and children and animals. That face, once seen, will explain a danger.
Speaker 1:The hood shifted, not back, not off, just enough that the darkness took on planes in suggestion. He saw a chin, the curve of a mouth, he saw the place where the cheek met the corner of a jaw, unrecognized. With nausea, they started on his knees and the familiarity of that angle, not exact, not a mirror, but closer to himself than to a stranger. The moth did not smile and did not frown. It settled in the precise neutrality of men who did not need to reach for it either. His breath forgot itself. He corrected it. The hand released the hood. See it? He thought. And this time he meant for the word to cross whatever covenant the air had made with silence. Say my name out loud. The figures had canted the other way, a heartbeat, another. When the name came, it arrived the way snow arrives in the first hour Quiet, inevitable.
Speaker 1:The world rewritten, while you're watching it, his real name, not as a possession but as a verdict. Hearing it made him understand why people kneel in rooms. They resent Not agreement but gravity. He did not kneel. You're not allowed here, he said, and the words were shaped around a discipline he didn't own. The day before he discovered the sentence as he finished speaking it, that surprised him. Some sentences came from the spine.
Speaker 1:First, the figure's hand lifted, palm out, a gesture that meant anything or nothing. Did it mean peace, halt, wait. The glove's surface made no sound. Against the air, the cloak swaved minutely Beneath it, the sense of a body that did not defer to the fabric that covered it. Another foot of distance disappeared between them.
Speaker 1:He didn't remember deciding to give it. What do you want, he asked, a weight landed in his chest, gentle and total, the way a name lands when someone who knows you chooses to forgive you in advance. He didn't want that. He wanted the old currency, threat and angle and leverage. But the room refused to spend those coins.
Speaker 1:The hand turned palm up. Now an offer or a request or a lesson? He saw it then, not in the palm itself but in the air above it, the faintest distortion, like heat over asphalt, like a memory appearing in the corner of your eye, the frame of it right and the motion inside wrong. The distortion resolved as a cylinder of space that seemed denser than the rest. The outline of a pond suggested itself in the distortion and then vanished, the trace lingering like a pressure mark on skin after a ring is removed. No, he said without hearing himself say it, the word came from the same place. The sentence above allowance had come from a place below habit. The hand didn't withdraw, it rotated another degree.
Speaker 1:Patient, the way tides are patient, he thought of the count. He carried two knights, two bishops, two rooks, three pawns and understood something about the math of his counter. He had not understood in the corridor. The malice was not an accent of his path. It was a design someone else preferred. The figure took one step, no more. In that small advance.
Speaker 1:The red read as deeper wine blood, the inside of a mouth, and then it read as cloth again. It sensed a struggle to decide which world to honor with interpretation. Speak, he said, and the request surprised them both. He wanted voice, now, he demanded it. He wanted voice Now, he demanded it. You already know.
Speaker 1:The room answered and the room was the figure, and the figure was the room. And his own head chimed with literal sameness of that truth. He swayed, caught himself with the staff Say it. He insisted, less because he needed the content than because he could feel something in him hardening properly each time. He chose condition over reaction.
Speaker 1:The hand lowered a fraction, not refusal, not agreement, a third answer that men invent when the first two do not serve their purpose. He understood then in the quiet flash, the body recognized before the mind does. This was not a negotiation. It was the sort of test that sifts not what you know but what you'll do without knowing. He glanced down, not away, just down, a fraction of a second, to confirm the line of his feet, to measure this distance. Brother Calvin kept correcting with two fingers at his hip and one at his shoulder. When he lifted his eyes, the distance between them had doubled. He hadn't heard the step. You're not allowed to move like that, he said. But it was a child's protest naming a rule after it had been broken.
Speaker 1:The figure stood as it stood, head turned, the hood's edge, describing a straight line he wanted to erase. The staff suddenly felt clumsy. He set it back to the ground to hear its truth and the tap. It heard nothing. The floor swallowed the sound again and was certainty. Why my name? He asked, and there was no art in the question, which is sometimes the only way to put a question to a king.
Speaker 1:The figure did not speak in reply. The answer arrived in his own mouth without the impulse to form it, because I am the only door you will still open. The answer arrived in his own mouth without the impulse to form it, because I am the only door you will still open. He recognized his own cadence, not the wording he had never thought that sentence but the way the words landed, the way he lands words when he has decided what he'll be before he has earned it.
Speaker 1:Something like anger tried to rise. He didn't give it the head. He let it go heatless through the piping of his veins until it lost the fuel of attention. What do you need from me, he asked. The hand still, palm up, rotated again. He watched the skin beneath the glove seam at the wrist, not visible, just implied. Then the knuckles still still, still the distortion. Lifted and returned, and lifted again and often repeated until its own repetition became instruction. I won't take another, he said. He said, and the word take touched a tripwire. The corridor behind him shivered in the way long birds do before flight. Then leave one, he nearly laughed. It came out of his breath with a ragged edge.
Speaker 1:The count sat heavy in his chest and his forearms down the shins. Two knights, one bishop, two rooks, three pawns he had never left one. He had lost, misled, found but never left how? He asked, which meant plainly, where would I put it? That would not be a loss. The figure's hand folded back onto itself, hiding the palm again. The hood tipped A degree In the dark under it, a small glint, a suggestion of an eye.
Speaker 1:No, not reflection, recognition, moving here, the room said, and the floor acknowledged the invitation by becoming many floors at once. Stone that remembers rivers, wood laid over earth, packed dirt, feeling the pressure of centuries of men stepping in the same place for reasons they did not name. He felt for one of the ponds and found, as always, only the knowledge of it, not the object. He knew where it was because it wasn't in his pocket or palm, or his pack. It was in the part of his body that inventory had placed. With faith, he tightened his jaw until the muscle sat hard. Not yet, he said, and the sentence had a ring of vow which he hadn't intended.
Speaker 1:The room accepted the refusal as of receiving a coin in the correct currency. The hand did not lift again. The red did not brighten or dim. The smell of iron turned to rain for a heartbeat and then to ordinary air, like a storm that changes its mind over an ocean. You'll ask again, he said, because it was true. The figure did not nod, but agreement traveled between them as surely as heat travels from palm to palm. The drop of water met stone again behind him. Then again, the metrodome reasserted itself, not louder but nearer. The sanctum was reminding him who owned the walls.
Speaker 1:He became aware of his own body as a series of borders Skin against robe, tongue against teeth, heel against shoe, staff against ground. Each border carried a small answer yes, you are here. Yes, you are whole, yes, you are seen. He let that be true. I will not kneel, he said, not because kneeling was being asked, but because naming what would not be done is sometimes how a man keeps a door from being walked through from the wrong side.
Speaker 1:The figure turned its head to the space over his left shoulder, as if glancing past him to measure what waited there. He resisted the urge to look. When he held still, the figure returned to face him In that minuscule arc. He saw what he had not been given Impatience, not much A drop of it. Enough to be human time. The figure did not follow, and that abstention steadied him in a way no promise would have. He took another. The distance held, he drew the staff across his body, then down A simple motion made Ritual by restraint you don't get to name me, he said. The distance drew blood somewhere he could not see, not from the figure, from the place where the figure was curated.
Speaker 1:Silence shifted its weight. He heard again the scrape. He heard earlier in the corridor the sound of something large reminding itself of its edges. He kept backing until the quarter gathered itself from the chamber's mouth. The breath he took tasted cleaner. The strip of sky reappeared with a soft blue. He had not earned and did not trust.
Speaker 1:At the curve he paused. The figure not moved. The red still possessed the center of the space, like a stain a building learns to live with. He bowed, nothing ornate, just the acknowledgement a man gives to whether he cannot control, and the room took the bow as if he expected it. He turned his back then and the act landed inside of him as the right thing, not cowardice, priority. The quarter returned him to the scratches and stone, the alcoves holding their stillness, like breath held too long. The Ludwin box humming because his body remembered the hum, he did not touch it. He did not look back.
Speaker 1:At the last bend where the light regained its shape, brella Calvin's shadow found him. First it stretched over the floor like a road, and then Calvin himself stepped into the view with that quiet economy of movement older men will acquire when they've stopped taking credit for their strength. Calvin's eyes searched his face and then did not. Whatever he saw, he refused to weaponize. Walk with me, he said, and did not make an invitation, a question.
Speaker 1:They took the long way to the courtyard, so the sanctum had time to be itself again. Between the pillars, the fountain spoke in its own language. He did not realize it until they reached it and that he had not unclenched his jaw since the chamber. Calvin dipped his hand into the water and did not flick it at him, it did not touch him. He let droplets run over his own knuckles like a man checking that the world was still wet. You met a threshold, calvin said.
Speaker 1:He opened his mouth to say a man in red, and discovered that naming the red here tasted wrong, not forbidden, just premature. I met something, he said. Calvin nodded as if the noun mattered less than the verb. It'll ask you for pieces, he said Not once, not kindly. It'll make every ask look like your idea. Calvin waited for that to land before he went on. So decide now what you will never trade.
Speaker 1:He looked at the water. Then his hands. The staff studied in them again. His breathing had joined the sanctum's rhythm instead of competing with it. I won't leave one, he said. And then, because the red might hear bravery better than prudence, he added not yet Kelvin made a sound at the back of his throat. It could have been approval or it could have been grief. He took the staff, turned it in his hands, weighed it like a story and gave it back Tonight, coven said. I said they've been talking about it all night long. You'll go to the library. There's a sealed box in the north stacks. You'll know about how it refuses your eyes. Bring it to me unopened. The instructions slotted into place with the day's true shape, he exhaled.
Speaker 1:The figure in the red folded itself back into the stone of his memory, not gone, Not sleeping Perched. He looked at Calvin. What if he asked and didn't finish the question, then you will remember what you decided at this fountain, calvin said, and for a second the older man's face held the exact expression a father does when he lets his son go somewhere he shouldn't have to. The bell, the honest bell, rang, not slow, not stretched. The courtyard took the sound and bounced it off the walls. So it turned to their feet in pieces. Men crossed the stone with soft scuffs of robes and sandals. The world resumed the discipline of names. He touched the staff to the ground tap and the tone came back clean. He felt the answer in the wood and in his bones. He would go to the library, he would not look for red, he would not kneel, and if asked again to leave one, he would decide to say not yet, not as defiance, but as a man buying one more inch of clarity before the door that bears his name opens.
Speaker 1:From the wrong side, behind his sternum, the count arranged itself one more time like a man on a wall Two knights, two bishops, one rook, three pawns. He felt their weight like a promise the body itself had made to the future he had not met. He turned toward the corridor that would take him to the evening, and then to the night. The archway didn't lengthen its shadow this time. It waited, like a mouth that could not be hurried and could not be denied.
Speaker 1:He walked, his fingers closed, and the pond was colder than the room. Not ordinary cold, mineral cold, the kind that carries a memory of deep places. It sat in the web between the thumb and forefinger like a dropped star, small but absolute. The stone of it, blood, dark, with a sheen that wasn't polished, stole the heat from his skin and gave him nothing back. Good, the voice said, and the word didn't travel. It arrived already, spent, as if it had been said a long time ago and only had now been delivered.
Speaker 1:He expected the figure to withdraw its hand, but the extended arm stayed, palm open, the emptiness above it, holding the exact shape the pawn had once occupied. The absent felt indecent, like a mouth left open after a breath had gone. He tried to step away and discovered that the room had opinions about distance. The floor accepted his rate and then revealed how much of him it would keep if asked. He stopped not for fear of falling but because motion felt too expensive to attempt without a plan.
Speaker 1:The pond gathered itself into his warmth, as illness might slow. Patient certain, he lifted it to eye level. It had no ornament, no inscription, no seem to suggest it had been joined to anything else, and yet from some angles, to anything else. And yet from some angles, a faint line ran around its neck where the head met the body. Not a crack, so much as a memory of a crack, as if breaking and been made whole again were part of its design. Mine, the voice said, not as a claim, but his history, and now not mine. He could feel his own heartbeat in his fingertips.
Speaker 1:It reached into the pond and found nothing to grasp, matter only, no pulse, no answer. What's the price, he asked? He didn't realize. He asked until the question hardened the air in his mouth. On its way out, the figure neither nodded nor shook its head. It closed its extended hand and then opened it again, palm up Empty, expectant. You want one back, he said. A length of silence passed between them that felt measured Like a rope let out hand over hand when its reach has ended. The figure tilted its head. A fraction, a gesture so small. It should have meant nothing. It meant yes. He looked at the pawn again, then passed it toward the hood. He wasn't going to see a face. He understood that now.
Speaker 1:The room gave him familiarity, angles, gestures, never ownership. He felt anger rise like a tide, but refused it to show it on his face. No, he said not today. The room accepted his refusal, like a bank accepts a deposit. Recorded without praise, noted without scorn. The figure's glove made the smallest sound. Fabric over fabric, as fingers curled back to neutrality. It stepped one step only, a precise gift of distance, and the floor unlearned his feet by the same measure. So the space between them held constant.
Speaker 1:He realized then that the chamber wasn't just a place, it was a balance he'd been invited into, who would not be allowed to disturb without consequence. You were supposed to meet me sooner. The voice said, and something in that sentence was almost bored, not disappointed, not angry the boredom of a teacher who has watched the same delay perform itself in a hundred different bodies. I got lost, he said, and immediately knew how small the words sounded in a room like this. You were never lost, the voice answered. You were deciding whether to arrive.
Speaker 1:A memory surfaced of Brother Calvin's two fingers at his hip, the small correction that made a stance true. Fingers at his hip, the small correction that made a stance true. He eased his weight through his heels and felt the body reassemble itself around a cleaner line. The staff obeyed him again. The breath remembered its own depth. What do you call this? He asked and gestured out with a pawn, but with his chin and the space between them at at the red, not at the room.
Speaker 1:Instruction For what? For not kneeling. He let that sit. He had already chosen it. He'd already known there would be a lesson attached. Why me? He asked and instantly despised the question. It was a child's bargain, an attempt to trade innocence for certainty, because you are the kind who will ask that question and then hate yourself for asking it, the voice said. And then go on anyway. He exhaled through his nose and the breath came out warmer than it should have in an air like this.
Speaker 1:He lowered his gaze to the pond one more time, in a different room, under a different sky. He would have weighed it like a thing, measured it like a tool. Here it behaved like a decision already inside him, uninterested in his evaluation. What happens if I refuse all of them? He asked softly, and then the question had a shiver of confession. You won't. The voice answered, and this time there is warmth in it, the warmth of certainty, not comfort. You will refuse some. You were made to refuse some, not this one. He closed his fist around the piece until the edges kissed bone. The cold hurt now, not the surface pain of skin, but the deeper ache that tells you You've held a winter too long in your hands. I'm leaving, he said.
Speaker 1:This time the floor kept no secrets. It lent him his own feet. With interest, he took one step backward. The red did not move. He took another the chamber. The red did not move. He took another. The chamber's ribs seemed to spread, granting him back a sliver of sky that was not sky, only the idea of it, thin and bloodless At the arc of shadow where the passage reasserted itself. He stopped and did something that surprised both of them. He bowed Not deeply, not with servile the bow of a man who gives an ocean A recognition of what cannot be bargained with. The hood did not nod, but the room felt fractionally lighter when he rose. He turned his back and did not feel hunted. Not forgiveness, not truth, just the clean violence of an ended lesson.
Speaker 1:The corridor welcomed him the way a road welcomes a soldier who passed a test and never announced. The alcoves watched without breathing. He let his shoulder brush the stone where the grooves ran parallel, as if something heavy had insisted on leaving proof of passage At the shelf where the small wooden box had rested. The hum returned back to his palm as a ghost of pressure. He did not touch it, he did not look for it, he did not look back At the bend where the light found its memory of blue.
Speaker 1:Brother Colvin was waiting, hands folded in front of him, as he had been counting minutes by the pulse in his wrist. Colvin's eyes traveled to the fist at his side, then returned to his face. He didn't ask. Instead he said walk. They did Not far, not fast.
Speaker 1:The courtyard took them into a square of honesty, fountain stone the day, like a sheet laid flat. The world's loud logic resembled around, birds and wind and distant clatter of wooden pail striking another. He opened his hand. The pawn sat in his palm, darker now, as if it learned his color. Calvin did not reach for it. How many? Three before he said Four.
Speaker 1:Now Calvin's mouth made the shape of a number, without speaking it then. And the ask to leave one, he answered. And your answer not. Yet Calvin nodded once. Not approval, not correction. A marker set on a map.
Speaker 1:Then the library, he said as the decision brought passage to the next gate. He knew the library by silence before he knew it by shelves. Rooms that carry a certain kind of quiet announce themselves even through walls, the hush that isn't absence of sound but presence of attention. When they entered, the air drew itself taut and the sanctum's older breath moved around them like smoke under a door. The stacks were not ordered by anything. He recognized no letters, no numbers. The spines wore no names, only scars. Some shelves held only empty space that did not behave as empty space, and he felt a small steadying in his chest when he realized the room did not care if he understood its logic.
Speaker 1:Calvin led him not believing at all. He simply walked a path that suggested itself, one step at a time, turning where the glow of high windows thinned and stopping where the floor darkened by degrees as the flight itself respected certain thresholds North stacks, calvin said. And the direction meant nothing in a room that had eaten the compass. A sealed box, you'll know it how it refuses your eyes. And the direction meant nothing in a room that had eaten the compass. A sealed box, you'll know it how it refuses your eyes. He almost smiled. That was how the pawn had energized itself by refusing everything but being held. What if the other side asks again? He said he wasn't asking permission, he wanted to hear the sound of the question in this air. Then you remember what you decided at the fountain. Coven said, and there was a grief in that word remember, not because he doubted him, but because he did not. They separated at a pillar that had learned to carry the weight of time without complaint.
Speaker 1:Calvin's step faded into the way old men's steps do, and they had nothing left to prove to the floors. He moved alone into an aisle where the books were not books but bindings around something that did not want to be named. He did not search, he let the refusal find him. It did. Two rows down on a shelf, placed literally below eye level, where men who were in a hurry never look. A box sat there, size of a heart, not wood this time, not stone, something like lacquered ash. Matte, unreflective, the opposite of notice. His glaze slid off of it, the mind wandered as bored. He let boredom pass across him until it cooled into recognition. There you are.
Speaker 1:He reached for it and felt no weight until his hands were already committed. Then the gravity revealed itself sudden, loyal the way a sleeping child becomes heavy once you lift them. He held it close without meaning to no seam, no hinge, no lock, no hinge, no lock, no ornament, only edges. As if what was sealed inside had taught the container that decoration is a kind of lie. Unopened, coven had said he had not realized until now that the instruction would require restraint of a new species. He wanted to open it, not because he needed what was inside, but because he needed the room to stop asking the question of him. He breathed until the want and instruction could not sit at the same table. He turned. The aisle had moved, not in distance, in mood, the highlight had shifted one degree warmer and in that tiny change he felt the sanctum remind him the world outside your body is allowed to evolve without asking your permission.
Speaker 1:He walked At the mouth of the stacks. The floor announced a threshold, with a softened groan wood, remembering a foot that had pressure here an hour ago, a year ago, a century. He stepped across the groan, quieted, satisfied, a quarter unrolled toward the south windows and at its far end, a strip of ordinary day burned in like a promise kept without affection. Halfway down, the air changed, iron again, and not the memory of it, this time fresh, inevitable. He knew it, in the way animals know weather before it imprints itself on the sky. He did not stop, he did not quicken. He adjusted his grip on the box so it rested against the line where ribs meet sternum and let his forearms do small work of steadiness. At the second pillar, something new presented itself without appearing the sense of being watched by a patient that had paid in advance. He did not look left or right, he allowed the watcher the dignity of not being searched for. At the third pillar, a voice spoke his real name, the way a mother says it when she chooses not to beg. He held the box tighter and kept walking. The fourth pillar did not arrive. The distance between the third and the courtyard lengthened by one invisible foot and then another, like a road outside a city that loves to hold men longer than it should. He did not indulge frustration. He measured his next step with the same care he had carried water in the first days, when the jolt of a footfall cost you half a cup. Then the courtyard took him as if he paid for space in front of him and the receipt had cleared the fountain, the honest bell, the mild wind that crossed stone and wrote nothing, everything together, like a hand closing around a shaking wrist.
Speaker 1:Calvin waited at the edge of the square, one palm laid flat on a marble lip of his basin. When he saw the box, he did not reach for it. He looked at the man first. His eyes softened, then did not. You kept it closed. He said yes, and you kept the other. He nodded and he opened his left hand to show the blood-dark pond. It's cold now, tempered by the heat of his skin, as if the stone decided to accept the order of his body.
Speaker 1:Calvin's jaw worked once, an old ache revisiting with the precision of weather. Good, he said, and then to something he had not done since the first week. He placed his hand at the back of the younger man's neck and left it there long enough for the touch to mean blessing and not control. Tonight, calvin said we watch without sleeping. For what? For whether they ask again. The older man's hand fell away, the box remained, the pawn remained, the day went on, pretending to be nothing more than light and shadow and water and stone. Somewhere beneath it, the chamber with the red waited, like a door a house keeps hidden from guests. He looked down at the pawn and felt the count rearrange itself with a new precision, as if his body were updating a ledger. He could not see Two knights, two bishops, one rook, four pawns. He did not like the math. He did not like how it leaned. He also did not kneel, and when the bell called the brothers to the evening, it sounded like a question answered correctly, without anyone clapping for the student. He followed the sound, not because he was obedient, but because obedience and alignment share a corridor sometimes, and a man who knows the difference can walk in either without losing himself. The night would come. Then asking would come. His answer had already learned its shape.
Speaker 1:Part 5, the Becoming the chamber had a way of making time feel smaller, not faster, not slower, smaller, like the seconds themselves had been compressed Until they barely existed. He had been compressed until they barely existed. He had been here before, in the same circular room, beneath the lantern glow, but tonight there was no sense of being part of an audience. No other candidates waiting along the wall, no quiet murmurs from the shadows. Tonight it was only him.
Speaker 1:He had woken in his quarters to the sound of the bell, not the usual call for meals or assembly, but the deep, single strike that resonated in the walls, traveling down the bones before it ever reached the ears. He had been told early on that, when that bell called, you didn't ask why you went. The corridor to the chamber was longer. This time called, you didn't ask why you went, the corridor to the chamber was longer. This time it bent in ways he didn't remember, as if, though, the order itself had reshaped the path to remind him he was being summoned, not simply arriving. The wall, stone-lined with heavy tapestries, carried the faint smell of old incense, like a memory kept alive just enough to be recognizable. A memory kept alive just enough to be recognizable. He passed no one along the way, not even the silent attendants who always seemed to appear when you needed them. When the doors to the chamber opened, it was with no visible movement. One moment they were closed, the next they simply weren't.
Speaker 1:The assembly, the seats around the half-circle table were occupied, not by strangers. These were faces he had seen in passing elders, teachers, the ones who had always seemed both part of the order and above it. The air was heavier here, not with heat, but with presence, and in that moment he realized something. This wasn't a test he signed up for. This was the test they had been waiting to give him. The light came from a single lamp above Its glow, so precisely focused that the rest of the room fell away into shadow Dust. Motes turned into beam, like fragments of slow-moving galaxies. Motes turned into beam like fragments of slow-moving galaxies. The table to his left was bare no board, no pieces, no scrolls, only the faint outline of where things had been before, indentations into the wood from years of wait.
Speaker 1:A man he knew only as the first host, tall, draped in a robe that seemed to absorb the light instead of reflect it, rose from the seat in the center. His face was unreadable. The kind of expression that gave away nothing, yet seemed to know everything. You have been among us long enough to see the surface of our ways. The verse host began, his voice low, steady. But the order is not learned from the surface. It is not a place you enter or a title you take. It is a state, and to stand in it fully you must release what you still hold. The words weren't unfamiliar. Variations of them had been spoken in lessons, murmured in corridors, etched in the carved beams above the library entrance. But hearing them here, with the elders watching and their pressing against his lungs, it felt different. The quiet test. He thought briefly of asking what he was being asked to release. But the question died before it left his mouth. They weren't looking for him to confirm understanding. They were looking to see if he would understand without being told.
Speaker 1:The science that followed wasn't empty. It was thick, as if the chamber itself had paused to see what he would do. His hands felt strange at its hides, caught between the urge to clench and the instinct to remain still. He didn't feel fear exactly, but there was an edge to the moment, like walking along the top of a wall and knowing the ground was far below, behind the row of seated elders, in the deepest part of the shadow, something shifted. He didn't see it. He felt it, the way you feel the air change when a door opens to a colder room. It brushed the base of his neck cool, deliberate, and for a heartbeat he thought someone had stepped forward, but when he looked, the space was empty.
Speaker 1:The first host stepped closer. This is where you choose, he said, simply the name. It wasn't a choice between staying and leaving. He knew that now. It was a choice between the man who'd walked in weeks ago, hungry, hollow, uncertain and the man who would stand here without needing to prove anything. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a name began to take shape. Not the name he'd been given at birth, not the names the others had called him. This one was different. It was older than life and yet he felt it like his life had been moving toward it since the beginning. He didn't know if he was choosing it or if it had chosen him. When he spoke it out loud, it didn't echo. It settled like a stone dropped in a deep water. The elders did not react, but the air changed again. Somewhere in the shadows there was a faint sound of a chair shifting, as if someone unseen had leaned forward the path forward.
Speaker 1:The first host inclined his head slightly Not approval, not dismissal, something in between, an acknowledgment that what needed to be done had been done. He stepped aside, creating a narrow path that led toward the far end of the chamber. You may begin, he said. The door ahead was unlike the others in the order no handle, no visible seam, only a faint ripple in the wall, like water, held in place. He didn't raise a hand to open it Somehow. He knew it would open when it wanted to, if it wanted to. As he walked toward it, the air shifted again, not stronger, not closer, just present, as though something vast had decided to follow him, not in pursuit, not stronger, not closer, just present, as though something vast had decided to follow him, not in pursuit, but in witness. For the first time since arriving here, he didn't feel like an outsider. He felt like someone becoming Okay, let's go ahead and get into the monologue here.
Speaker 1:You know, this is one of those episodes, right, where you get asked to give up something, but you don't know what you're going to get in return, because you really can't see who or't know what you're going to get in return, because you really can't see who or what it is you're bargaining with. They're showing you just enough to show you that maybe it is a good deal or maybe it's not a good deal. And that's really how life works. A lot there's no guarantee that what you give up you'll get in return right. And especially when he's in that room with this individual with the white cloth hand, it's asking him for something constantly, and even his brother, brother Calvin, said that you're going to give up something eventually, and that's really how life works in general.
Speaker 1:You know you want to get out of something, you want to make something of yourself. There's always a give and there's always a take. There's no way around that. Right, and if you think that you want to succeed or you want to strive or you want to become better, there's things that you have to always give up Yourself, your time. You give up. You have to give effort, you have to be consistent in what it is that you're doing, and the things you give up is comfort, sometimes stability, relationships. They go hand in hand, and that's something that he's finding here. He's finding that, the more that he's in this order, he's finding out that you have to give more and more of yourself. You get these pieces to give them away, right, and that's what the other side is asking what are you willing to give to me without knowing what you're getting to return? And I would say that life is a lot like that.
Speaker 1:So, as we're talking about that, this is something that I think most people miss, and this is what people don't tell you, or life doesn't tell you, is that no one tells you, right, that the real test, it doesn't come with instructions. No one leans in and gives you the right answer. Instead, the test waits and watches and to see if you can survive the weight of your own silence. Right, because that's what this all is. That's what's happening right now in the story. You know, we spend our lives learning to push to force, to break down whatever stands in our way. It's a skill the world celebrates the relentless man who will take no for, who won't take no for an answer. But here's the thing there's a different kind of strength. The world doesn't talk about the strength to stop pushing, to stop proving, to let the moment be what it is and not rush into something. Because the truth is this Not every door opens because of your effort. Some doors only open when you've let go of the part that's still trying to earn them. And see that's still trying to earn them. And see that's something the order never said out loud, but he's learned it in every shadowed hall, in every glance from an elder that lasted a little too long. They weren't measuring his ability to move forward. They were measuring his ability to move forward. They were measuring his ability to stay still and honestly, that's the hardest thing for any man who's been fighting his whole life is to finally put down the fight, not because he's weak, but because he's ready.
Speaker 1:So let's go ahead and let's get into the reflections here. Reflection one what armor are you still carrying? That was useful once but now keeps you from moving forward? Man, that's a big question. Number two how do you react when life presents a door you can't force open? Number three where in your life have you mistaken movement for progress? Man? That's such a big question too. Number four what would it mean for you to stop pushing and start listening to what the moment is asking you? That's being socially aware, and a lot of people are not. And number five how would your life change if you allowed the next crossing to change you before you ever took a step. That's part of the journey right there. That's something you don't learn until way, way later.
Speaker 1:So I know these past couple episodes have been kind of long, but there's a lot of stuff going on here, guys, and I just I know I say this all the time, but I just appreciate you guys listening and your viewership and your listenership. It just means the world to me. It means so much that you tune in every day, monday through Friday, to listen to these episodes. I can't tell you how grateful I am, and especially with a lot of the comments I'm getting now and support from you guys. It's amazing. And if you want to support the show it's so simple I just ask you to do two things. One, share this with a family friend or a family member Super easy. Or a friend, right, doesn't matter. Or if you know someone going through something, share this series with them or share this show with them. I'm telling you there's so much here that we can help people with. Second way, super easy leave a comment, subscribe, leave a review. Those things are super, super helpful. So that would help too.
Speaker 1:And if you want to have a conversation with me, I talk to a lot of people here now. There's a couple of ways you can do it. The first way is on the description of this podcast. There's a let's chat function. Once you click on that, you and I can have a conversation about this series, this episode, what's going on in your life, whatever you want to talk about, you and I can have a conversation Right. Second way is going to be through my email. My email is anthony at gentsjourneycom. And then, last but certainly not least, you can always go to my Instagram. My Instagram is my gentsjourney. So again, guys, thank you so very much for listening today and remember this you create your reality. Take care Bye.