Mastodawn

The High Cost of Keeping Up

3,108 words, 16 minutes read time.

Caleb shifted the gear into park, but he didn’t turn off the ignition. The heater was blowing a dry, dusty warmth against his face, and the old sedan hummed with a familiar, tired vibration. He sat there for a moment, the grocery bags in the passenger seat settling with a soft plastic crinkle. Through the windshield, the world was tinted in the muted shades of a late November afternoon, and his eyes, almost against his own will, drifted to the house across the street. The Miller place was glowing. It wasn’t just the professional-grade landscaping or the way their windows caught the dying light; it was the sheer, unapologetic Newness of it all. Parked in their driveway was a pristine, midnight-blue truck, the kind with a grill that looked like a wall of chrome and tires that had never seen a speck of real dirt. Caleb looked at his own hands, calloused and stained from a morning spent wrestling with a rusted lawnmower blade, and felt a sudden, sharp pang of something that wasn’t quite anger, but felt just as heavy.

He wasn’t a bitter man. If you asked the guys at the warehouse or the deacons at the church, they’d tell you Caleb was the first one to show up with a toolbox when a neighbor’s basement flooded. He loved his wife, he took pride in his work, and he usually thanked God for the roof over his head before he closed his eyes at night. But lately, the roof felt lower. The walls felt thinner. Every time he saw Miller—a guy who was perfectly nice, who always waved, who once gave Caleb’s son a signed baseball—Caleb felt a strange, hollow ache in his chest. It wasn’t that he wanted Miller to lose what he had; it was just that Miller’s “more” made Caleb’s “enough” feel like “nothing.” It was a slow-acting poison, a quiet thief that slipped into his house every time he scrolled through a filtered feed or looked across the pavement. It made the life he had built with his own sweat look like a consolation prize.

He finally killed the engine, and the sudden silence was louder than the humming had been. He stayed in the seat, staring at the chrome across the street until it blurred. He thought about the ancient words from the stone tablets, the ones about not desiring your neighbor’s house or his ox or his anything else. He used to think that command was for people with black hearts, for people who plotted and schemed. He didn’t realize it was also for the tired men in driveways who just wanted to feel like they weren’t failing a test they never signed up for. The coveting wasn’t a violent act; it was a slow erosion of his own gratitude. It was the way he looked at his wife’s aging kitchen and saw only the chipped Formica instead of the thousand meals she had cooked there with love. It was the way he looked at his son and wondered if the boy noticed the difference between their life and the one across the street.

The front door of his house opened, and a rectangle of warm, yellow light spilled out onto the porch. Sarah stood there, wrapped in an oversized cardigan, looking for him. She didn’t have a designer coat or a life that looked like a magazine spread, but she had a way of looking at him that usually made him feel like a giant. Today, however, he felt small. He felt like a man who was bringing home a bag of generic cereal and a heart full of shadows. He realized then that the “stuff” across the street wasn’t the enemy. The truck wasn’t the problem. The problem was the way he was letting the image of another man’s life become a judge over his own. He was standing in the middle of a beautiful, messy, blessed life, and he was ignoring the fire in his own hearth because he was too busy staring at the sparks from his neighbor’s chimney.

He stepped out of the car, the cold air hitting him like a splash of water. He grabbed the grocery bags, the plastic handles digging into his palms. He took one last look at the blue truck, the chrome glinting in the twilight, and he made a conscious, painful effort to let it go. It didn’t belong to him, and he didn’t belong to it. He turned his back on the Miller house and walked toward the yellow light of his own porch. It was just a house with a squeaky step and a mortgage that wasn’t paid off, but as he reached the door and Sarah smiled at him, he felt the weight in his chest loosen just a fraction. He wasn’t cured, and the itch of comparison would surely come back tomorrow, but for tonight, he chose to walk into the warmth he actually had.

Inside, the smell of roasted chicken and floor wax met him—a scent that usually meant home, but tonight felt like a reminder of the ordinary. He set the groceries on the counter, his movements heavy and deliberate. Sarah was humming a hymn, something about mercies being new every morning, and the sound grated against the static still buzzing in his brain. He wanted to tell her about the truck. He wanted to complain about the unfairness of a world where some men glide while others grind their gears into dust, but the look on her face stopped him. She looked content. It was a terrifying kind of peace, the kind that didn’t require a receipt or a warranty to stay valid.

“Caleb, you okay?” she asked, pausing with a wooden spoon in her hand. “You look like you’ve been chasing the wind.”

“Just tired, Sar,” he said, and it wasn’t a lie, though it wasn’t the whole truth. “The traffic was a bear.” He moved to the sink to wash his hands, staring at the window above the basin. It looked out over the backyard, where the grass was long and the shed door hung on a single, rusted hinge. He saw the work that needed to be done, the endless list of repairs that sucked the marrow out of his weekends. In his mind, the Miller’s backyard was a sanctuary of pavers and fire pits, a place where labor was something you paid for, not something that broke your back. He squeezed the soap too hard, a green streak of liquid trailing down the stainless steel.

He sat down at the table, the old wood groaning under his weight. His son, Leo, came skidding into the room with a drawing in his hand, a chaotic explosion of crayons that was supposed to be a spaceship. The boy held it up with a grin that suggested he had just painted the Sistine Chapel. Caleb looked at the drawing, then at his son’s scuffed knees and the hand-me-down shirt that was a size too large. A voice in the back of his head—a gritty, cynical whisper—reminded him that Miller’s kid probably had the best of everything. New cleats. A private tutor. A future paved with gold leaf.

“That’s great, buddy,” Caleb said, but his voice sounded hollow to his own ears. He felt like a fraud. How could he teach his son about being a man of God when he was currently measuring his own soul against a neighbor’s driveway? He realized that coveting wasn’t just a personal sin; it was a generational shadow. If he didn’t kill the rot now, he’d pass the infection down to the boy, teaching him to look at the world as a series of gaps to be filled rather than a landscape to be explored.

Later that night, after the house had gone quiet and the only sound was the wind rattling the loose pane in the bedroom, Caleb lay awake. The moonlight sliced through the blinds, casting a ladder of shadows across the ceiling. He thought about the rich young ruler in the stories, the man who had everything but couldn’t let go of the one thing that owned him. Caleb didn’t have much, but he realized he was being owned by the things he didn’t have. The lack was becoming his idol. He sat up, the sheets rustling, and put his feet on the cold floor. He didn’t go to the window this time. He knelt.

It wasn’t a pretty prayer. There were no stained-glass words or theological flourishes. It was the prayer of a man in the trenches, a man tired of his own skin. I’m sorry, he whispered into the dark. I’m sorry for making Your grace small. I’m sorry for acting like You’ve held out on me. He stayed there for a long time, the silence of the house pressing in around him. He didn’t feel a sudden surge of magic, but he felt the fever break. The truck across the street was still there, and his siding was still warping, but for the first time in months, the air in his own lungs felt like it was enough to live on. He went back to bed, and as he closed his eyes, he didn’t see the chrome; he saw the yellow light of his own kitchen, and for tonight, it was plenty.

The next morning broke with the same relentless grey, but the air felt thinner, easier to swallow. Caleb stood in the kitchen, the linoleum cold beneath his socks, watching the coffee pot hiss and sputter. He didn’t look out the front window. Instead, he watched Sarah come into the room, her hair sleep-mussed and her eyes soft. He realized then that he had been looking at her for weeks as a co-conspirator in a life of “less than,” rather than the woman who had stood in the rain with him to bury his father and held his hand through every lean December. He walked over and kissed her temple, the scent of her shampoo hitting him like a grounded reality.

“You’re in a better mood,” she noted, leaning into him as she reached for a mug.

“Just realized I’ve been acting like a man with a hole in his pocket,” Caleb said, his voice low and raspy. “Worrying about what’s falling out instead of what’s actually in there.”

He left for work ten minutes early. As he backed the sedan out, the familiar metallic cough of the engine didn’t grate on his nerves the way it had the day before. It was just a machine doing its job, carrying him to a place where he could earn a living for the people he loved. He passed Miller’s house. The blue truck was gone, likely already whisking its owner toward some glass-towered office. For a split second, the old itch flared up—a phantom limb of desire—but Caleb choked it out. He focused on the weight of the steering wheel and the way the heater finally kicked in, warming his hands.

At the warehouse, the day was a grind of inventory and logistics, the kind of repetitive labor that usually gave his mind too much room to wander into dark corners. But today, he stayed in the present. When a coworker complained about the measly Christmas bonus or the boss’s new boat, Caleb just nodded and kept moving. He wasn’t being a martyr; he was being a soldier. He was guarding the perimeter of his own peace, knowing that once you let one “if only” through the gates, the rest of the army would follow. He found a strange, gritty satisfaction in the work itself, the physical reality of crates and clipboards acting as an anchor against the drift of aspiration.

By the time he pulled back into his neighborhood that evening, the sun had already dipped below the horizon, leaving the sky a bruised purple. He saw the Miller house, the lights glowing with that same expensive warmth. But as he turned into his own driveway, he saw something else. Leo was in the front yard, bundled in a coat that was still a little too big, kicking a deflated soccer ball against a tree. The boy saw the car and dropped the ball, his face lighting up as if a king had just arrived in a golden carriage.

Caleb killed the engine and sat for a heartbeat. The siding was still warped. The porch still needed paint. The bank account was still a source of strategic planning rather than comfort. But as he stepped out of the car and his son tackled his knees, Caleb looked up at the grey sky and felt a sudden, sharp clarity. The rot was gone. It hadn’t been replaced by a new truck or a bigger house, but by the quiet, dangerous realization that he already had everything he needed to be the man he was supposed to be. He picked up the boy, felt the cold wind on his face, and walked into his house, leaving the rest of the world to its own shadows.

The following Sunday, Caleb stood in the back of the sanctuary, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. The preacher was speaking on the desert wanderings, on the way a whole generation of people had looked at a land of promise and saw only the giants they didn’t have the strength to fight. Caleb listened, but his mind kept drifting back to the driveway. It was raining again, a cold, needle-like drizzle that blurred the stained glass, and for the first time in a long time, he felt like he was standing on solid ground. He wasn’t there to ask for a promotion or a windfall; he was there to offer up the only thing he had left—his pride.

After the service, he ran into Miller in the foyer. The man was dressed in a suit that cost more than Caleb’s first car, but up close, in the harsh fluorescent light of the fellowship hall, Caleb noticed the deep, dark circles under Miller’s eyes. He noticed the way the man’s hands trembled slightly as he reached for a paper cup of lukewarm coffee.

“Hey, Caleb,” Miller said, his voice sounding thin, like wire stretched too tight. “Good to see you.”

“You too, Jim,” Caleb replied. He looked at the man, really looked at him, and the last of the green rot dissolved. He didn’t see a rival. He didn’t see a titan of industry. He saw a man who looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, a man who was probably white-knuckling his own steering wheel for reasons Caleb would never know. “You doing alright? You look a little worn down.”

Miller paused, a strange, flickering look passing over his face—a momentary crack in the polished veneer. “Just life, you know? It’s a lot to keep moving. Sometimes I think the more you have, the more you’re just a servant to the things you own.” He gave a hollow laugh and shook his head. “Anyway, see you around, neighbor.”

Caleb watched him walk away, moving toward that midnight-blue SUV with the heavy stride of a man carrying a pack full of lead. He realized that the “shining city on a hill” he had been envying was actually a fortress under siege. He felt a sudden, sharp pang of genuine compassion for Miller, a prayer that the man would find a way to set the weight down before it crushed him.

He walked out to his own car, the one with the dent in the rear fender and the upholstery that smelled like damp earth. He turned the key, and when the engine sputtered and finally caught, Caleb didn’t wince. He drove home through the grey afternoon, pulling into his driveway and looking at his house. It was small. It was old. It was imperfect in a thousand visible ways. But as he stepped through the door, he heard the sound of Leo’s laughter and the clatter of plates in the kitchen. He saw the warped siding and the peeling paint, and instead of seeing failure, he saw a shelter that had held firm against every storm. He was a man who owned very little, but as he sat down at his table and took Sarah’s hand, he knew he was the richest man on the block. He had finally learned the grittiest truth of all: that the only thing a man truly possesses is the peace he refuses to trade away.

Author’s Note

Coveting is a quiet rot. It doesn’t start with a heist; it starts in the driveway. It’s the hollow sound of a man measuring his soul against his neighbor’s chrome.

We’ve turned “enough” into a moving target. We look at the man next door and decide our own blessings are insults. We forget that a house is just wood and nails, and a truck is just iron and grease. When you let another man’s life define your value, you aren’t just losing your peace—you’re committing a slow suicide of the spirit.

Scripture isn’t a suggestion. It’s a blueprint for survival.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” — Matthew 6:21

If your treasure is the midnight-blue paint on a truck that isn’t yours, your heart is already in the dirt.

This story isn’t about being poor. It’s about being free. It’s about the grit it takes to kill the envy before it kills you. It’s about the man who stops staring at the sparks from his neighbor’s chimney and starts tending to the fire in his own hearth.

The high cost of keeping up is everything you actually own. Your peace. Your gratitude. Your son’s respect.

Stop looking across the street. Look at your hands. Look at your wife. Look at the God who gave you breath. That is the only math that matters.

The rest is just noise. Leave it in the driveway.

Call to Action

If this story struck a chord, don’t just scroll on. Join the brotherhood—men learning to build, not borrow, their strength. Subscribe for more stories like this, drop a comment about where you’re growing, or reach out and tell me what you’re working toward. Let’s grow together.

D. Bryan King

Sources

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The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author. The information provided is based on personal research, experience, and understanding of the subject matter at the time of writing. Readers should consult relevant experts or authorities for specific guidance related to their unique situations.

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Bryan King Apr 9

The Empty Leaderboard

2,530 words, 13 minutes read time.

Mark Holloway felt the heat of the stage lights on his neck, but for the first time in his life, it didn’t feel like a spotlight of judgment. It felt like a cleansing fire. He stayed in that embrace with Chris for a long moment—long enough for the silence in the room to turn from awkward to heavy, and finally, to something holy. When he pulled back, he saw that Chris wasn’t the “Lakefront King” he had built him up to be in his mind. Chris looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes that no Instagram filter could have hidden if Mark had been looking for them instead of looking for reasons to feel inferior.

“Mark,” Chris whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the cooling fans in the ceiling. “That lake photo? That was the only ten minutes of that entire weekend we weren’t screaming at each other. My oldest son told me he hates me on the drive home. I spent the last three nights sleeping on the couch because I don’t know how to talk to my wife anymore. I saw you walk in every Sunday and I thought, ‘There’s Holloway. He’s got that quiet, steady strength. I wish I was that composed.'”

Mark felt a dry, ironic laugh bubble up in his chest. “We’ve been haunting each other, Chris. We’ve been living in each other’s shadows, and the shadows aren’t even real.”

The pastor, a man named Miller who usually kept a tight grip on the “order of service,” didn’t move toward the microphone. He stayed in the front row, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking slightly. The “program” had officially died, and in its place, something raw was breathing. Mark looked back at the stage—the mahogany lectern, the expensive lighting, the 4K screens. It all looked like cardboard now. It was all just scaffolding for the real work happening on the floor.

Mark turned toward the rest of the men. He didn’t go back to the microphone. He didn’t need the ten thousand watts anymore. “I used to think that being a ‘Man of God’ meant being a man of answers,” he said, his natural voice carrying through the hushed rows. “I thought it meant having the firmest grip and the most certain spirit. But look at us. We’re a room full of experts on things that don’t matter and novices on the things that do. We know the stats of players who don’t know we exist, but we don’t know the fears of the man sitting six inches away from us.”

A man in the back, someone Mark recognized as a high-powered attorney named Steven, stood up. Steven was known for his sharp suits and an even sharper tongue in committee meetings. He wasn’t wearing a suit tonight. He was wearing a faded polo shirt, and he looked smaller than Mark remembered.

“I’ve spent forty thousand dollars on a kitchen remodel I didn’t need because I wanted my brother to be jealous,” Steven said, his voice cracking. “And my daughter hasn’t looked me in the eye in six months because I’m never home to eat in that kitchen. I’m a success in the courtroom and a stranger in my own hallway. I look at all of you and I feel like I’m wearing a costume.”

One by one, the “Holloway Effect” began to ripple through the pews. It wasn’t a landslide; it was a slow, steady breaking of a dam. These weren’t the polished testimonies you hear on a Sunday morning—the ones where the struggle is safely in the past tense and wrapped in a neat bow. These were “present tense” confessions.

Mark sat down on the edge of the stage, his legs dangling over the side. He felt a strange sense of peace watching the hierarchy of the church evaporate. The “Alpha” guys, the “Quiet” guys, the “Success” stories, and the “Struggling” cases were all bleeding into a single, unified color: human.

He thought about his house—the one with the mortgage that felt like a collar around his neck. He thought about the SUV with the French fry in the seat crack. He thought about the regional account he didn’t get. For years, those things had been the metrics of his soul. If the account was up, Mark was up. If the house needed a repair he couldn’t afford, Mark was “broken.” He had tied his identity to a set of moving targets, and he was exhausted from the chase.

“You know,” Mark said, catching the attention of a younger guy in the front row who looked like he was about to bolt for the exit out of sheer vulnerability-overload. “The hardest thing I ever had to do wasn’t admitting I failed. It was admitting that even if I succeeded, it wouldn’t be enough. We’re all trying to fill a canyon with pebbles. We think if we just get a bigger pebble—a faster car, a better title, a more ‘spiritual’ reputation—the hole will go away. But the hole is infinite. And the only thing that fits in an infinite hole is an infinite grace.”

He looked at his hands. They were the hands of a middle-manager. They were soft in some places, calloused in others. They weren’t the hands of a warrior or a titan of industry. They were just Mark’s hands.

“I spent my whole life wanting to be David,” he mused, referring to the biblical king. “But I think I’m actually just one of the guys in the army who was hiding in the trenches because Goliath looked too big. And the irony is, I was hiding from you guys too. I thought if you saw my fear, you’d leave me behind. I didn’t realize you were in the trench next to me, just as terrified, watching me to see if I’d run first.”

The atmosphere in the room had shifted from a “conference” to a “hospital.” The fluorescent hum of the lobby seemed miles away. Here, under the dimming stage lights, there was a sense of heavy, honest brotherhood that Mark had spent forty years looking for and forty seconds finding once he stopped lying.

He stood up again, but this time he walked toward the back of the room. He wanted to get away from the “Main Stage” entirely. He wanted to be on the level ground. He passed David, the man with the truck, who reached out and gripped Mark’s forearm. David didn’t say anything, but the look in his eyes was a silent “thank you.” It was the look of a man who had been given permission to stop holding his breath.

Mark reached the back doors, the heavy oak handles cool to the touch. He turned back one last time to look at the room. The men were no longer sitting in neat rows. They were gathered in small clusters, talking, some with hands on each other’s shoulders, some just sitting in a shared, comfortable silence. The “Leaderboard” was gone. The “Highlight Reel” had been edited down to the raw footage.

“I’m going home,” Mark whispered to himself.

But home didn’t feel like a place he had to perform for anymore. Home was just the next stop on a journey where he didn’t have to be anyone but Mark Holloway. He pushed the doors open, the cool night air hitting him like a physical blessing.

The cool night air was sharp, smelling of rain and the distant scent of pine mulch from the church’s landscaping. Mark stood on the sidewalk for a moment, letting the silence of the parking lot wash over him. The gravel crunched under his feet as he walked toward his SUV—the silver crossover he had spent so many years despising because it wasn’t something else.

As he reached for the door handle, he heard the heavy thud of the sanctuary doors opening behind him. He turned to see Jim, the group leader with the booming charisma, stepping out into the light of the entryway. Jim looked different without the pulpit in front of him. He looked smaller, his shoulders slightly hunched against the chill.

“Mark! Wait up,” Jim called out. He jogged down the concrete steps, his breath blooming in the air like small, white ghosts. When he reached Mark, he didn’t offer a handshake or a pat on the back. He just stood there, looking at the silver SUV.

“I’ve lived in this town for fifteen years,” Jim said softly. “I’ve led this group for five. And tonight was the first time I felt like I wasn’t the only one in the room who didn’t have a clue what he was doing.”

Mark leaned against his car door. “You too, Jim? I figured you had a direct line. You always look like you’ve got the next five years mapped out.”

Jim let out a short, hollow laugh. “Mark, I spend my Tuesday afternoons rehearsing my ‘spontaneous’ prayers in the shower so I don’t sound like an idiot. I stay up until two in the morning wondering if I’m just a professional Christian who’s lost the plot. When you got up there and talked about the leaderboard… I realized I’m the one who built the leaderboard. I thought that was my job. To keep everyone climbing.”

“It’s a long way down,” Mark said, not unkindly.

“It is,” Jim agreed. “But the air is better down here, isn’t it?”

They stood in silence for a minute, two men in a parking lot, no longer defined by their titles or their perceived successes. Jim reached out and squeezed Mark’s shoulder. “See you Sunday, Mark. And hey… don’t worry about the parking spot next to David’s truck. He told me he’s selling it tomorrow. He’s going back to a sedan so he can start paying off his kid’s tuition.”

Mark watched Jim walk to his own car, then he climbed into the driver’s seat of his SUV. He didn’t turn on the radio. He didn’t check his phone for notifications. He just sat in the dark. He reached down and picked up the lone, shriveled French fry from the console—the tiny, greasy monument to his “mediocre” life. He looked at it for a second and then tossed it into the small trash bag hanging from the dash. It was a small act of cleaning, a minor order in the chaos.

The drive home felt shorter than usual. He wasn’t racing the phantom cars of his imagination. He wasn’t rehearsing the speech he’d give his boss to explain why the regional account was better off with the younger guy. He just drove. He noticed the way the streetlights reflected in the puddles, the way the neighborhood houses looked warm and yellow in the dark.

When he pulled into his driveway, he saw the light in the living room was still on. He saw the shadow of his wife, Sarah, moving past the window. Usually, this was the moment the “Mask” went on. He would straighten his posture, wipe the exhaustion from his face, and prepare to be the “Standard-Issue Husband.”

But tonight, Mark Holloway stayed in the car for a moment longer. He looked at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He saw a man who was tired, yes, but he also saw a man who was finally, undeniably real. He thought about his son, Leo, and the bike chain that needed fixing. He thought about the daughter who was becoming a stranger and the wife who deserved to know the man she actually married, not the one he was trying to be.

He opened the garage door, the motor groaning with a familiar, domestic rhythm. He walked through the mudroom, kicking off his sneakers. The house smelled like laundry detergent and the taco seasoning from dinner.

Sarah was on the couch, a book open in her lap. She looked up as he walked in, her eyes searching his face with that intuitive, terrifyingly accurate “wife-radar.”

“How was the meeting?” she asked, her voice soft. “Was it the usual? Coffee and a ‘be a better man’ lecture?”

Mark walked over to the couch. He didn’t stand over her. He sat down on the floor by her feet, leaning his back against the cushions. It was a position of vulnerability, of being “less than” in a way that felt entirely right.

“No,” Mark said, reaching up to take her hand. “It wasn’t that at all. I think… I think I finally quit my job today.”

Sarah’s eyes widened, her hand tensing in his. “The firm? Mark, we can’t—”

“No, not the firm,” he interrupted, turning to look at her. “I quit the other job. The one where I try to be everyone else. I’m just going to be me for a while. Is that okay? It might be a little messy. I might not have the best truck in the lot or the most polished prayer in the room.”

Sarah looked at him for a long beat, her expression softening into something Mark hadn’t seen in years—a look of pure, uncomplicated relief. She reached down and ran her fingers through his thinning hair.

“Mark Holloway,” she whispered. “I’ve been waiting for that guy to come home for a decade.”

Upstairs, a floorboard creaked. Leo was probably awake, sneaking a book under the covers. Tomorrow, there would be bills to pay. Tomorrow, the younger guy would start the regional account. Tomorrow, the world would still be full of leaderboards and highlight reels.

But as Mark sat there on the floor, his wife’s hand in his and the weight of the world finally off his shoulders, he knew he wasn’t afraid of tomorrow anymore. He had found the one thing that no amount of competition could provide: he had been found out, and he was still loved.

The leaderboard was gone. The race was over. And for the first time in his life, Mark Holloway was exactly where he wanted to be. He was home.

Author’s Note

This story is for the man sitting in his driveway with the engine idling, staring at the garage door and wondering when the hell he’s finally going to feel like he’s “arrived.”

We’ve all been sold a lie. We’ve been told that manhood is a ladder, and if you aren’t climbing, you’re suffocating. We walk into our churches, our offices, and our gyms with our chests out and our secrets locked in the basement, terrified that if the guy next to us sees a single dent in our armor, we’re finished. We spend our lives comparing our raw, unedited internal disasters to the polished, high-definition highlight reels of everyone else.

Mark Holloway is the guy in the mirror. He’s the man who realized that the “Leaderboard” he was killing himself to climb was actually a gallows. He finally understood that you can’t be loved if you refuse to be known, and you can’t be known if you’re too busy pretending to be a goddamn superhero.

Stop looking at the guy in the next lane. Stop measuring your worth by the badge on your grille or the title on your door. As it says in Galatians 6:4:

“Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else.”

This story is a punch in the mouth to the “Sunday Morning Mask.” It’s a reminder that the most masculine thing you will ever do isn’t winning a fight or closing a deal—it’s having the stones to drop the shield and tell the truth.

The race is a scam, brothers. Step off the track. The only person you’re supposed to outrun is the fake version of yourself you’ve been dragging around for years. Go inside. Be real. Be home.

Call to Action

D. Bryan King

Sources

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