“How many things are now called the worst evil, which are only twelve feet wide and three months long! But some day greater dragons will come into the world” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Thus Spoke Zarasthustra‘ [January 1st 1883]

I’m an old man now, by some folks’ reckoning, and I don’t scare easy.

That ain’t bravado – just mileage. When you’ve watched the Clinch River flood and pull whole trees out by the roots, buried friends younger than you, and gone hungry in a way that don’t make the papers, fear starts to sort itself into piles. Some of it’s loud. Most of it ain’t worth giving a moment of your time.

I’ve been thinking lately about all the things I was once told were the worst evils a man could face. Funny thing is, every one of them had a size to it and a season attached.

Dusk is a mean hour for rememberin’. The day’s too tired to lie for you, and the night ain’t yet come to cover anything up. That’s when a man sits with his glass half empty – or half full, dependin’ on how honest he’s feelin’ – and he finally tells the truth, even if nobody’s listenin’.

So I’ll tell mine.

Life’s hard. Harder than folks think when they’re young and full of themselves. But it ain’t hard in the ways you expect. The things you call “the worst evil” when you’re twenty – well, most of ’em turn out to be nothin’ but bumps in the road. Twelve feet wide. Three months long. That’s about the size of most troubles.

I’ve lived through more than my share of storms – the kind that tear shingles off roofs and the kind that tear families apart. I’ve seen the country twist itself into knots, folks takin’ sides like wolves circlin’ each other. I’ve known hunger that made a man chew his pride like gristle. I’ve owed money I couldn’t pay on time – but pay I eventually did. And buried people I couldn’t replace.

I’ve lived long enough to know most of the things I once called “evil” were just inconveniences with good imaginations. But I didn’t know that when I was young. Back then every bill, every argument, every cold snap, every hungry night felt like the world was tryin’ to break me in half.

Turns out the world wasn’t even tryin’. It was just bein’ the world.

But I’m still here. And that’s worth somethin’.

When I was young, the worst evil was winter. Not poetry-winter — real winter. The kind that split your hands open and turned breath into needles. After that it was money, or the lack of it. Then it was keeping work, keeping peace, keeping food on the table. Always something twelve feet wide and three months long. Always something you could point at and say, “That right there is what’ll kill me if I don’t mind it”.

So I minded it.

I fought fires, I fought other men in foreign lands, I cut timber. I worked in factories and out on many construction sights. I worked mills that chewed men up slow. I married, raised kids, fixed what broke and learned to live with what didn’t. I fought the dragons I could see, and I fought them honest. Some years I won clean. Some years I limped. But I kept standing, and that felt like enough.

For a long time, I believed it was.

Nobody ever tells you that those small dragons – necessary as they are – train you to keep your head down. You get real good at watching your feet. You learn to measure life in short runs: ’til spring, ’til payday, ’til this mess blows over. You tell yourself there’ll be time later for big thinking.

Later’s a slick liar.

I remember one winter in particular – hard as a coffin nail. Work was scarce, wood was wet, and my first born daughter had a cough that kept me up nights. That winter taught me more about endurance than any other season of my life. I learned how much cold a man can take. How little sleep he needs. How quiet fear can be when it settles in your chest and makes itself at home.

I beat that winter. We all did. Come March, I remember standing in the yard, mud up to my ankles, thinking: That was the worst of it. Ain’t nothing bigger than that.

That’s when I was wrong.

Because while I was fighting cold and hunger and debt, other things were growing — things I didn’t know to name. They didn’t look like trouble. They looked like normal.

I used to lose sleep over small stuff. A man’s pride is loud when he’s young. Loud and stupid.

I spoke up when something felt off. Especially when I knew I disagreed with it – but it wasn’t always easier, by any means. I couldn’t let things slide, when I knew they had to be challenged. I told myself every one of the world’s wrongs was my fight – that it was the right time to fight — that a man’s first duty is to keep the peace.

Every setback felt like the world was endin’. Lost a job once and thought I’d never climb out of that hole. Had a winter where the pantry was near empty and the cold cut through the walls like a knife. Had neighbors who talked mean, bosses who talked meaner, and bills that stacked up like cordwood.

I’d lie awake nights thinkin’ I was doomed. Thinkin’ I’d never get ahead. Thinkin’ the sky was fallin’.

But the sky never fell. And the troubles passed.

Three months later I’d barely remember what I’d been losin’ sleep over.

Little by little, I learned to live narrower – patient and standing ready for the real troubles when they came. I didn’t notice it happening. Most men don’t. You just wake up one day and realize you’ve traded questions for routines, convictions for habits – still vigilant and standing prepared. You still work hard. You still love your people. But something in you has gone quiet, like a creek that’s sunk underground, always at the ready for any disaster to break across your path.

The real battles weren’t the ones I could point to. They weren’t the storms or the debts or the empty cupboards. Those were just tests — small ones, really.

The real fights were inside me.

The fight to keep goin’ when I had grown so weary of the constant battles. The fight to stay decent when the world wasn’t. The fight to hold my tongue when anger was burnin’ a hole in my chest, against my usual inclinations and own rough nature. The fight to forgive myself for the things I couldn’t fix. The fight to stay human when grief hollowed me out.

Those demons just show up quiet and sit down beside you like they plan to stay awhile – when you lose longtime friends and loved ones or awaken one mornin’ to realize you ain’t the man you fully intended to be. Those demons of the anger and lightning quick red-hot temper you thought you’d buried but didn’t. The demons that whisper in the midnight hour “you’re runnin’ out of time”, And the way you often have a sense of being alone, apart, not necessarily lonely, whenever you’re in a crowded room or even a political rally of fifty thousand people.

Those were my demons. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just steady. Patient. Heavy.

A man can outrun a storm. He can’t outrun himself.

That’s when the bigger dragons start stirring.

They don’t come with teeth and fire. They come with comfort. With distraction. With the promise that if you don’t rock the boat, you’ll be allowed to stay aboard. They teach you that survival is the same thing as living, and that keeping what you’ve got is more important than asking what it costs.

I’ve seen good men shrink under that weight. Men tougher than oak. Men who’d face a bear but wouldn’t speak a hard truth once it got unpopular. Not because they were cowards — but because they were tired. And tired men make peace with things they shouldn’t.

Another demon is forgetting.

You forget how things used to be. You forget why certain lines were drawn in the first place. You forget that the life you call ordinary was bought dear by men who didn’t live to enjoy it. Forgetting is easy when days are full and years stack up behind you like cordwood.

By the time you notice, your demons – your dragons – have already grown.

I didn’t fully see it until I was older – until the fights worth having weren’t about survival anymore, but about meaning. About whether the world my grandchildren were stepping into still had room for a man to stand straight without apology.

That’s when I understood that the worst evils of my youth – the cold, the hunger, the long months of scraping by – those weren’t the true test. They were training. They taught me how to endure.

But endurance without awareness will carry you straight into chains.

I spent too many years tryin’ to control things that didn’t give a damn about me. Weather. Politics. Other men’s tempers. The price of milk and Hershey chocolate bars. The way fate seemed to pick favorites.

I fought the river when it rose. I fought recessions and hard times when they came and stayed. I fought the banks when they came callin’. I fought the silence after someone I loved was gone.

But the truth is simple: The world don’t bend just because you push on it.

You can brace your back against it, you can curse it, you can sweat and bleed and pray – but the world keeps turnin’ its own way.

Took me half a lifetime to learn that. Took me the other half to accept it.

I’ve fought weather, men, money, and fate. Mother Nature never once apologized. Neither did the banks. Neither did the years.

I’ve stood in fields where the soil was too tired to grow anything but disappointment. I’ve watched storms tear down what took me seasons to build. I’ve seen men turn mean because fear got the better of ’em. I’ve seen good folks crushed by bad luck and bad folks lifted by pure chance.

But lookin’ back from this porch, with the light dyin’ slow and the cicadas startin’ up, I can’t even remember half the things I swore would ruin me.

They passed. They always do.

If I could tell a younger man one thing, it’d be this: fight the small dragons, but don’t let them blind you. Pay the bills. Chop the wood. Do your duty. But lift your head once in a while and look at what’s growing in the distance. And it won’t hurt you any, if you crack open the Bible every once in a while, and do your dead level best to live by it.

Ask yourself if what you’re being asked to accept as normal is righteous.

Because the day will come when something bigger than winter steps into your path. Something that can’t be waited out or worked around. And when it does, it won’t care how well you survived – it’ll care whether you remember who you are.

And I learned this:

Most troubles shrink with time. The real ones carve you into somethin’ tougher. The world won’t bend for you. But you can bend without breakin’. And a man’s worth ain’t measured by what he beats – but by what he outlasts.

The world don’t care what you want. It only cares what you can stand.

That’s a hard truth. But it’s a clean one.

People ask sometimes how I made it through all of it. Truth is, I didn’t do anything special. I just kept showin’ up.

I got out of bed when I didn’t want to roll on out – barely felt like movin’. I put one foot in front of the other. I worked when I was tired. I ate when I wasn’t hungry. I laughed when I didn’t feel like laughin’. I buried my dead and kept walkin’. I forgave what I could and carried what I couldn’t.

Strength fades. Strength gets tired. Strength breaks.

And you keep breathin’ – even when breathin’ hurts.

Survival ain’t glory. It’s stubbornness.

And maybe a little grace.

The hardest dragon I ever fought was the man I used to be.

But sittin’ here now, with the whiskey low and the light lower, I think maybe that’s the point. A man ain’t supposed to conquer himself. He’s supposed to wrestle himself honest.

And if he’s lucky, he dies knowin’ who he really was – not who he pretended to be.

Today, I’ll stand toe-to-toe or side-by-side with any man half my age to take the path less traveled – that hard road – where men go to live and fight for what is true and right in order to build a better society and a better future for those they love, no matter my age.

Now the glass is empty, the day’s gone, and the night’s comin’ on. And I’ll tell you this last thing before the dark settles:

A man don’t survive because he’s strong. He survives because he refuses to lay down and die before the world does.

That’s all I’ve got. That’s all any man’s got.

I’m an old man now, so some young bucks keep tellin’ me as I chuckle quietly to myself in knowing fashion. I sit on my porch and watch the hills change color. I’ve beat every demon and twelve-foot dragon that ever came for me.

But the ones that worried me most were the quiet ones – the ones I almost didn’t see until they were too big to wrestle easy.
If there’s wisdom in these bones, that’s it.

The small evils teach you how to live.

The greater ones test whether you should.

And the difference between the two is the measure of a man.

February 10, 2026

~ the Author ~
Justin O. Smith Has Lived in Tennessee Off and on Most of His Adult Life, and Graduated From Middle Tennessee State University in 1980, With a B.S. And a Double Major in International Relations and Cultural Geography – Minors in Military Science and English, for What Its Worth. His Real Education Started From That Point on. Smith Is a Frequent Contributor to the Family of Kettle Moraine Publications.