The Mystery of What Endures

The Mystery of What Endures

What remains when all control is lost?

I’d searched every gin joint and dive in the city. Rain poured steady as I ducked under the awning of a closed sandwich shop. The case had started like any other. A dame, the pushy type, telling me to track something down. She wanted control, the slipperiest suspect of them all.

But I knew her type. All flash and fuss on the outside, ego at the core. And the ego always wants control. I wasn’t sure I’d ever find it, but I was intrigued enough to take the case. So here I am, beating the streets on another stormy night. I’ve got one solid lead, and I’m following it. A little hidden-away Chinese joint. Inside waits my first two informants: Heaven and Earth.

Our First Lead: Heaven and Earth

Heaven and earth last forever.

Why do heaven and earth last forever?
They are unborn,
So ever living.

The first whisper from Lao Tzu comes in paradox. Heaven and earth endure because they do not claim life for themselves. They are not bound by ego, ambition, or grasping after permanence. They simply are. Their strength lies in their emptiness of self, in their refusal to cling. The rain falls, the mountains rise, the seasons turn. They do not strive, yet they last. That is the first clue in this case: endurance belongs to what lets go.

The sage stays behind, thus he is ahead.

Here Lao Tzu points the way. The one who insists on being first will exhaust himself. The one who is content to step back moves in rhythm with the Tao and so is carried forward. It is a reversal of ordinary logic. To be ahead, you stop trying to be ahead. The sage teaches us that fulfillment comes not by force but by humility, not by pushing forward but by knowing when to yield. Jesus would later echo the same truth when he said “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first,” (Matthew 20:16).

He is detached, thus at one with all.

Detachment here is not indifference. It is freedom from clinging to control. The sage does not cut himself off from life; he dissolves the barrier between himself and others. In stepping back from ego’s demands, he is free to flow with all things. Detachment opens into unity.

Through selfless action, he attains fulfillment.

The circle closes here. Heaven and earth endure because they do not live for themselves. The sage finds completion because he does not chase it. Action without self-interest, without grasping, brings about a fulfillment that striving cannot. Here is the paradox: by yielding, one endures. By releasing control, one discovers freedom.

This is the first major clue in our investigation. Lao Tzu tells us that what lasts is not what clings, but what lets go. Endurance and resilience are found not in seizing control, but in surrendering to the Tao. The world whispers that control is strength. The Tao shows us that letting go is stronger still.

Both Lao Tzu and Jesus turn the world’s wisdom on its head. Greatness is not found in pushing to the front. It is found in humility, in stepping back, in living for more than the self. Finding a statement so close to Lao Tzu’s words led me to the man himself. Another informant, this one closer to home. His name has been bound in a thousand sermons and buried under layers of dogma. But if you strip away the creeds, the arguments, the centuries of scaffolding, you may hear his voice more clearly. That is the second clue in this case.

Our Second Lead: Jesus and Deconstruction

When you walk away from a system, the temptation is to burn it all down. The pain of betrayal, the weight of control, and the endless rules dressed up as holiness can make you want to strike the match and watch the whole edifice collapse in flames. Many who deconstruct their faith go full nuclear. They cast off the teacher himself along with the theology. They throw Jesus into the rubble with the scaffolding, and in doing so, they risk missing the wisdom hidden in plain sight.

Yet if you stop and look again, something remarkable happens. Freed from the machinery of religion, Jesus often speaks sharper than ever. His words are no longer strained through centuries of commentary or wielded like weapons in theological debates. They stand on their own, and they grip you. The parables breathe like living things when they are no longer pressed into service for argument. The sayings are no longer bricks for a fortress. They are seeds.

Consider again his line, “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.” This is not a doctrine to be systematised, nor a slogan to be weaponised. It is a reversal of logic, an insight that cuts across cultures. Lao Tzu said the same when he taught that the sage stays behind, and therefore moves ahead. Two voices, separated by centuries and continents, yet striking the same chord. Both knew that true strength lies in humility, not ambition.

But hatred is just another chain. To vilify Jesus is to remain bound to him. The obsession only changes costume. Blind devotion and bitter rejection are mirrors of one another. In both cases, the ego still clutches at control, still insists on making Jesus into something to serve its ends, either idol or enemy. To see clearly, you must let go of both.

Deconstruction, at its best, is not an act of arson but of archaeology. You peel away the layers, the additions, the power plays, the dogma that calcified over centuries. You step carefully through the ruins, searching for what endures. And there, beneath the rubble, you may find a voice speaking fresh as the day it was uttered. A voice that points to freedom, not control.

This is the second clue: deconstruction is not demolition for its own sake. It is clearing away what no longer serves while keeping what still shines. It is learning to hear the teacher without needing to make him into a god. When you release the need to worship or to hate, you are free to listen. And when you listen, you may discover that truth was speaking all along.

The Third Lead: The Many Voices of Noir

The third lead takes me back to the page. After long nights of red ink and rewrites, Pure Evil is finally through its revision. Now it moves into formatting, the last stage before release. If all holds, it will step into the world by Thanksgiving, dressed in both e-book and paperback. That is a milestone worth marking. And if you haven't picked up a copy of my first book yet...well, what are you waiting for?

But the work of writing does not belong to me alone. I walk in the shadow of others who carved paths through the noir tradition. Hammett, Chandler, Spillane. Three titans, three very different voices.

Hammett gave us sentences like chiselled stone. He was all business, no wasted motion. When Sam Spade looks down at a corpse and simply observes, “He looked rather pleasantly dead,” you hear the detachment of a man who deals in facts, not frills. The prose is lean, stripped to its bones, and yet the world it sketches feels sharp enough to cut your fingers.

Chandler, by contrast, painted with smoke. His Philip Marlowe would describe a streetlight as “a sick cat in the rain” and in those few words you see not just the lamp, but the whole mood of the city. His gift was metaphor, lush, sardonic, and oddly tender in its bleakness. Chandler made Los Angeles shimmer with grime and poetry at once.

Then there is Spillane. He did not bother with stone chisels or watercolours. He came out swinging with a hammer, every line a blunt-force weapon. Mike Hammer does not light a cigarette, he grinds a butt between his teeth. He does not press an elevator button, he punches it like it owes him money. Even sex is written like a gunfight. It was fast, loud, and hard. Subtlety was not his trade, but raw sensation was.

Three men, three very different coats on the same body of noir. One precise and cold, one lyrical and haunting, one explosive and sensational. Each man told the truth as he saw it, in the only voice he could write it.

The clue hidden here is simple but vital. No one voice carries the whole truth. No one style has a monopoly on meaning. A story can be lean, lush, or loud, and still strike the same chord of human longing. The form bends, the colours shift, but the essence endures.

That is the lesson of this third lead: truth wears many coats. The trick is not to mistake the coat for the body it covers.

The Fourth Lead: The Iron Law of Discipline

The fourth lead comes not from the streets but from the field of war. Jocko Willink’s Discipline Equals Freedom reads like an after-action report written for the soul. No frills. No wasted ink. Just hard truth served in short, punchy bursts.

“There must be discipline.” That is the refrain, the drumbeat that drives the whole book. Out of the gate, Jocko makes it clear. There is no life hack here. No shortcut. The only path is through discipline, and discipline is not the enemy of freedom. It is its source.

The style matches the message. The sentences are stripped to the bone. Commands more than suggestions. Discipline to Jocko is not theory. It is action. Wake up early. Put in the work. Control your mind, or it will control you. The prose itself feels like a drill instructor in print, hammering you with clarity until you can no longer pretend you do not understand.

Yet beneath the steel, there is depth. As a deconstructed Baptist, I found myself stopped cold in the section on death. Jocko does not paint it in comforting colours. He calls it what it is: unfair, final, and brutal. But he does not end there. Death teaches us the preciousness of life. And when a loved one dies, the only honour worth giving them is to live. Grow. Laugh. Carry their memory not as a weight but as fuel. Live for them, not instead of them.

It reframed things for me. In religion, death was often explained away or softened with promises of heaven. But Jocko does not offer escape. He offers resolve. Life is short. Death is real. So live with discipline, and live with purpose.

The clue here is one we have seen before. True strength does not come from indulgence, excess, or easy answers. It comes from clarity, structure, and the hard work of facing reality without blinking. Freedom is not the absence of limits. It is the mastery that comes from choosing them.

Case Closed: The Truth in What Endures

The clues were all there, scattered across the city like cigarette butts in a back alley. It just took some digging to see how they fit.

First, Taoism whispered from the shadows. Lao Tzu told me that heaven and earth endure because they do not live for themselves. Selflessness is the secret to resilience. You last longer when you are not clutching so hard at your own survival.

Second, deconstruction brought me face to face with Jesus. Not the stained-glass figure of dogma, but the man whose words cut clean when stripped of the weight of religion. The first shall be last, the last shall be first. A wisdom worth keeping, even if the old system had to be left behind.

Third, the streets of noir showed me that style changes, but truth still bleeds through. Hammett’s hard precision, Chandler’s smoky poetry, Spillane’s blunt hammer blows. Three different voices, one genre, each proving that there is no monopoly on meaning. Truth can wear many coats and still be truth.

Finally, Jocko stepped in with the hardest lesson of all. Discipline is not the enemy of freedom. It is its foundation. Death is not fair, but it reminds us life is precious. To honour the dead, we do not lie down. We live, and we live with purpose.

And there it was. The case solved. Resilience, wisdom, and freedom do not come from chasing absolutes or swinging to extremes. They are born in balance, in restraint, in knowing what to hold and what to release. Freedom is not about doing everything. It is about finding what is essential and living it fully.

That is the mystery solved. The truth in what endures.

And with the mystery solved, I walked off into the rain-soaked night. Back at the office, I filed the paperwork under “R” for Release. Another late night, but worth it. Another case will come, sure as the rain will quit and the sun will rise to melt the shadows away.

Peace, and keep asking the big questions,

The Sage Wanderer

P.S. If you would like to support my journey into solving the bigger mysteries of life, I would love it if you would buy me a coffee. The warm liquid dries my bones, keeps me going, and reminds me that I helped someone out there. That's what it's all about.