Book preview: intro story

A preview sample from my upcoming self-growth book

During my army days, I had the misfortune of serving in a unit commanded by a certain major who ruled with an iron fist and a vicious autocratic approach, or at least he thought so. I didn’t realize then that all this authoritarian bullshit was the result of early childhood abuse and deep unresolved mental issues fuelled by underlying insecurities. No one knew. Had I known his insecure nature, I would have given him less undeserved respect.

The whole regiment was always on edge when he was around. They were terrified of even crossing paths with their insecure commander. The poor guy was hiding behind his rank and state-bestowed “power” to micromanage and punish people. He abused his privileges with verbal attacks, threats, punitive measures, and orders to complete Sisyphean tasks that were just impossible, cruel and pointless. I had even witnessed him verbally abuse and publicly humiliate a 3-star captain to the point where the captain cried in front of other officers and soldiers. No joke! Not the most empowering look… He got a particular kick out of abusing officers. Everyone there, officer or not, was constantly stressed and they hated every second of their lives. All except one.

A few months into my service at that unit, I heard that a new lieutenant was coming onboard. I thought to myself “poor guy”. But, the way they spoke about him sounded like he was a legend, someone whom people feared and respected, but also welcomed as someone non-threatening. Word on the street was that he was insane, but cool at the same time. They whispered that he was this scary bodybuilder MMA fighter commando who could kick anyone’s ass, just like an 80s action movie star. Some claimed that he was in the mafia, and that anyone who had crossed him ended up dead. Others said that he would sneak behind enemy lines at night to slaughter an enemy soldier or two just to fun, and that he kept a bunch of enemy dog tags on his desk as trophies. Another rumor said that he was shot in the stomach, managed to put his innards back inside, and carry on this mission as if nothing had happened.

The consistent rumor, however, was that he had been a 3-star captain, but got himself demoted to a 1-star lieutenant for beating up a bunch of servicemen, including his commanding officer. This rumor turned out to be true, by the way. But the mythology around this guy was terrifying, but also intriguing. He sounded menacing but also not threatening. People who talked about him seemed to fear him but also respect him. They seemed to find his methods horrible, but they also seemed to like him. This is because among the villainous points around his persona came up concepts like honor, honesty, and having your back, if you managed to earn his respect. Those who knew him sounded excited that he was coming to the unit with us.

Some of the older officers, who had had the pleasure of knowing him, also shared with us their positive sentiments, along with the daunting ones. They told us that this lieutenant was so crazy that even our terrifying commander was scared of him, and this would keep that embarrassing insecure moron in check. A lieutenant scaring a major? That was absurd!

The day the lieutenant arrived to the regiment, I found out that he was going to assume command of my company, and I would report directly to him as platoon commander. Everyone in the camp was on edge on the day of his arrival. Maybe it was the whole myth that hyped up the anticipation, but as his vehicle approached, the servicemen were alert but also a bit excited; even our commander was in an unusually nice and tame mood. At the time, I was in the office building looking out from the window. As the vehicle stopped, I saw an average-looking average-stature bald man stepping out of it. Not impressive at all. He was in his mid-to-late thirties, well built, with a total lack of facial expression. Although his face looked rough, it signified neither toughness nor softness. You couldn’t tell what he was about. I expected Rambo to step out of the car, but instead, it was this dude. What was all the fuss about?

From the office hallway, I could hear his confident footsteps as he greeted people with a strong firm voice that was not too loud, and not too silent. I saw the commander walking by my office door. He seemed awkward, edgy, with a silly grin on his face like a little girl who was just about to meet her pop idol.

“Welcome back!” said the commander in a weak voice.

“Good morning, sir!” replied the lieutenant in a neutral-to-upbeat voice. “I’m ready to work.”

It was odd. I had never seen the commander so timid. He was always aggressive, loud, and imposing.

A second later, the lieutenant barged in my office, which was also the entrance to his office.

He looked energetic, but ordinary; average build, average stature, with nothing seemingly special about him. He saw me with the corner of his eye as I saluted in military fashion.

He didn’t salute me back. Instead, he turned to me in the most casual of ways, like we were friends from high-school, and said:

“Hey, are you with me?”

“Yes, sir, I…”

“What’s your name?” he enquired with curiosity.

I stood in attention to formally introduce myself, but he interrupted me before I even had a chance to speak.

“Fuck all that,” he dismissed. “What’s your first name?”

“Sotiris.”

“Cool. You know who I am,” he said with a confident grin. “First things first. Keep that fucking door closed! Always!” He pointed at the door connecting my office to the main hall.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be in MY office, now. If anyone calls for me, tell them to fuck off!”

I smiled and nodded. He gave me a thumbs up and then slammed the door to his office shut. I suspected that working with the “fearsome myth of a man” was in fact going to be a blast. And it was.

Long story short, this guy lived up to the legend. He was defiant, strong, self-reliant, funny, and he was way too cool for the military. Sure, much of the mythology around him was exaggeration to say they least, but that myth emerged because he had balls. Nobody, including his “superiors”, had the mental strength to cross him, let alone reprimand him for his unorthodox way of working. He was a true badass but who also treated people with respect by default. At some point, he even invited me to his home to meet his family and hang out. His badassery was proven day in day out, and he had no problem getting in the face of anyone who would cross him.

Up until then, I always thought that strength was the opposite of kindness. In my world, and in the world of many, being hard with people was a sign of strength, and being nice was a sign of weakness, and an invitation to be walked over. Sure, in movies, the good guy was strong and compassionate, but I never believed it to be true in real life, up until meeting this guy.

The lieutenant was the perfect blend of strength and kindness (not niceness), but also unrelenting payback for those who dared to cross him. His beef with the deputy commander was the gossip of choice at our unit. The deputy commander was a 3-star captain, a “superior” to us all, second only to the commander, who was a major. But the lieutenant didn’t quite respect rank. He used to troll the deputy commander with sarcasm and caustic comments, and even flat-out insubordination. The audacity and ownership of his insubordination were so intense, that he mind-fucked his superiors into believing he was entitled to it. The deputy commander could only whine about it to others because he couldn’t face him directly, and didn’t have the balls to punish him either.

One day I found the lieutenant using my computer. He said he was doing “work” as he left my desk. As I sat down at my workstation, I noticed that my screen wallpaper was a picture of 3 women in bikinis posing in a seductive pose (gorgeous, I might add). My first response was to immediately change it, but he then rushed back and to give me an order:

“You were going to change that background, weren’t you? Don’t you fucking dare change in.”

He picked the screen up and turned it around facing outwards towards the hallway door, and he then quickly opened the door wide.

“This time, I want this door open.”

I was confused. The office of the religious and pious deputy commander was right opposite mine, so I was getting into some dangerous trouble with inappropriate nudity in a pompous military environment.

“Oh, wait,” exclaimed the lieutenant. “If that piece of shit tells you anything about the girls, tell him it was my order. Got it?”

I found it odd that someone could have such a commanding, yet hilarious, presence at the same time. Up until then, I thought these two qualities to be mutually exclusive.

Moments later, the predictable happened, and the deputy commander barged in, shouting like a teenager with hormonal imbalances.

“What is this? Porn in an army unit? Are you serious?

“Uh, I was ordered,” I stated with an air of arrogance and condescension, feeling invincible with the lieutenant on my side.

An awkward pause ensued. The deputy commander’s expression betrayed disgust with a hint of despair, because he knew he had zero control over us.

“Keep doing this bullshit,” he whispered as he ran along with his tail between his legs.

That was one of the funniest stories I had from the military. The 3 nude girls remained on the background until I left the unit months later.

One other day, the lieutenant was completing some special mission directly from HQ. None of us knew what it was exactly, but we knew it was a field mission, and that it was stressful. Upon his return to the unit in the afternoon, all muddy, sweaty and pissed off, he walked by the major, and didn’t even acknowledge him. I ran up to the lieutenant with my stupid enquiry:

“Sir, the commander told me to tell you to take care of this letter…”

With the major right behind him, he vehemently exclaimed:

“Tell him to go fuck himself!” and he slammed the door behind him.

I paused in awkwardness. I expected the major to respond to a direct insult against him. He was right there! He heard an officer under his command tell him to go fuck himself. And he said nothing. He froze like a scared little boy. With his tail between his legs, the major silently walked away, silent like a cat, staring down with a blue-lips expression.

That was the apotheosis of the “adorable asshole” concept who didn’t take shit from anyone, but who was generous and kind to well-intentioned people. With only his demeanor, and without any force or external advantages to support him, this one guy managed to put abusive assholes in check. And the whole unit was more relaxed and more productive as a result. This one guy acted as a catalyst, and made friends with the good guys, while making enemies with the bad ones.

Even though I didn’t get it at the time, I knew that there were some people with the mental fortitude, mindset and skills to stay on top of social situations while putting abusive people in their place. I knew that being “all good” was weakness, and being “all bad” was weakness on steroids. But, what if the ideal was not somewhere in the middle, but was instead a harmonious combination of the two? What if you can be an asshole only to those who asked for it? What if being good only to those who deserve it, is actual strength, since you are not compulsively feigning niceness to gain sympathy? Is it possible to be feared and liked at the same time?

Some people can get away with being assholes while being adored for their mental fortitude. They are assertive when they must be assertive, and they are empathetic when they feel like being empathetic. We find most of them in fiction, in movies and books, as if we deep down know what an adorable asshole looks like. We express it and respond to it in fantasy, but we rarely see it in reality.

A few years after my military service, I began binge-watching the ‘Lost’ series, about a group of plane crash survivors on a mysterious uninhabitable island. From the start, I was fascinated by the most unpopular character, the infamous Sawyer, whose sarcastic cynical comment and unwillingness to fall in line with the self-proclaimed leader’s guidelines made him infuriating but also intriguing. From the beginning, he seemed untrustworthy, a scoundrel, a fiend. He didn’t cooperate, made up taunting nicknames for everyone, and he was always in the face of the other “alpha males” of the group, who were obviously threatened by his indifference, and jealous of his self-reliance. As the story of the series unfolds, Sawyer turns out to be not only gentle and honorable at his core, but also willing to sacrifice himself for others, just only if he deemed them worthy of his sacrifice.

The same pattern unfolds in the 1985 cult classic ‘The Breakfast Club’, in which obnoxious John Bender seemingly tries to wind up everyone with his abusive demeanor. At first, we consider him to be an annoying bully. Later though, we realize that not only is he sympathetic with a tragic background, but his attitude ends up turning 5 strangers into close friends after helping them address the issues that held them back. The delinquent teenage loser is fearless, careless, brutally honest, and isn’t afraid to point out hypocrisy in others, not to mention getting in their face. He is also extremely perceptive, empathetic, and willing to sacrifice himself to help them. The dialogue and the character arcs in that movie are relatable to the human spirit, as it contrasts John Bender, the adorable asshole, with the austere insecure school teacher with the need to abuse kids, the plain asshole.

Admit it! You’ve always wanted to be assertive yet gentle, strong yet kind, menacing yet compassionate, a cool badass, an adorable asshole. Someone who is tough enough to be respected but gentle enough to be loved. It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female; we all want to be bad enough for people to respect, but we also want to be recognized as “the good guy” (or girl).

You want to be nice to people but you also don’t want to be taken advantage of when people erroneously perceive your kindness for weakness. What often happens is that, when you are good to people, they usually don’t appreciate it, or they perceive you as needy, or they exploit your good nature. After people misuse your kindness, your behavioral pendulum swings all the way to the other side as a reaction. You decide to respond by becoming bad, only to burn bridges, alienate people, and hurt people. This makes you sick of yourself because you know you’re not a bad person, not really.

Life seems impossible when acting bad backfires just as much as acting good does. And maybe, any behavior backfires only when it doesn’t come natural to you; maybe it only backfires when you pretend to be good or bad assuming that your pretentious behavior would serve you more than your natural behavior. In essence, maybe only disingenuous behavior fails to benefit you, the kind of behavior that is not in line with what you truly want deep down.

But, what if you could be your natural self, both good and bad, and neither at the same time? What if there is no dichotomy between good or bad, and there’s a third state of being; that of aloof neutrality, of both strength and kindness, of both love and respect, of both assertiveness and empathy?

What if you could reap the advantages of good and bad with none of their drawbacks? What if you could manage to blend good and bad in harmony in a way that confuses people but also evokes both love and respect in your majestic person? What if you could be an adorable asshole? It sounds like a conundrum, but what if good and evil are a false dichotomy blinding you from an elusive truth that is staring you in the eye? What if there is no good and evil, but there is only strength and weakness? What if the good that helps people is actually strength, and the evil that hurts people is actually weakness? What if the good that supplicates is weakness and the unforgiving relentlessness rebellious “evil” is strength?

Good people don’t make it in life. Neither do evil people. Sure they can be famous or rich, but are they healthy inside or at peace with themselves? This is because good and evil is a false dichotomy. The world is not divided into good and evil, like pop culture, religions and political ideology cults want us to believe. If you try to be one of the two extremes of good or evil, you are aiming for something unrealistic and unsustainable. I don’t care who you are, man or woman, poor or rich, educated or miseducated, smart or intellectually deficient, “good” or “evil”; you won’t get ahead in life if you think in terms of good and evil. The only people who make it are those who are lucky and strong, and those who are not. This is the true dichotomy.