Over the years I have learned many great lessons. At the top of my list of lessons from the beating that life has handed me is this.

A Tyrant will never, and please allow me to emphasize, NEVER voluntarily relinquish their tyranny over your life.

To be clear, let's define tyranny.

"arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority"

Now that we have that clear, then I believe you can gather that living under tyranny can take many forms.

You can have a tyrannical husband or wife. A child that dishes out tyranny. Perhaps you have a mother or a father that uses Emotional Tyranny to control your life.

Maybe you have a boss or a coworker using a type of tyranny to abuse you.

It could be a teacher, a coach, it can be present in the least likely of places in your mind.

In any event, tyranny is when another person attempts to control you and what you do, through arbitrary, and often abusive ways.

They generally can't be reasoned with and will leave you often times stunned and confused by their contradictions. One day, it will be one way, and a week later, it will be exactly the opposite.

Worse still, they will never live by the demands and expectations they lay at your doorstep; the edicts they expect you to live by, but themselves, well, they are exempt.

I have lived under emotional tyranny in a few different scenarios. I can attest to this and how it works. I can also provide you with the fix to the problem (should you be interested).

My first wife, over the years, developed some level of this in the way I am describing. There were a number of ways I struggled under her tyranny. And I did so for far too many years.

Often times, I was very confused, disillusioned, and at times fearful.

My second wife, Joelle, is 100% Italian (need I say more?) but this is compounded by her struggling with Borderline Personality Disorder.

In both scenarios there are seemingly endless levels of fear that one has to face.Let me just cut to the quick on this.

Tyranny, in every form, EVERY form, holds you and bonds you and keeps you down through one simple method. Fear.

They tyrant instills fear to get you to obey.

Over time, this fear becomes habitual, and you do things without even thinking any more because your fear created a "normal" in your psyche. It becomes ingrained and almost impossible to see.

All you know is that you are miserable most of the time. You are depressed and frequently afraid.

All the while, the tyrant dominating you looks for bigger and better ways to keep you under their control.

And again, let me be clear. They will never, EVER give up that control voluntarily. They are sinful, as are we all. Their sin is the lust for and over the control of a human being (or many human beings).

Fear creates perceived weakness, and they prey on the weak. Be that a man looking for needy women, a woman that is abusive looking for weak, mommies boy men and so on, or an entire people willing to be subservient to a dominating master.

Many of you now are in a position where fear has given way for a willingness to acquiesce to the tyranny in your life.

You are afraid of the virus and what you think it is doing or may do to you. Because of this, you obey the tyrannical demands of the despot in charge of your particular government branch bent on oppression and dictates.

You now are afraid of your state or county governments and officials for fear of what they can do to you. Or better said, what you THINK they can do to you. (many of you willingly obey anything, so this isn't for you)

When we are afraid, things become much bigger in our minds than they really are. Noises in the woods seem louder or weirder at night if we are alone out there. Shadows seem bigger in the dark of night if we are alone. When this happens, we do things we otherwise wouldn't. We allow things we shouldn't.

I stayed with my first wife for far too long given what I was dealing with. I had facts in front of my face that I ignored or reasoned away. Facts that were such that any reasonable human would see as a need to get out. This kept me in that marriage for far too long.

When it finally ended. When I had finally had enough, the emotional damage done to my mind and soul, the public abuse I went through, the gaslighting that I suffered through left me scarred and struggling to heal from for many, many years.

Why did I stay in it for so long?

I was petrified of what life would look like without her! I didn't know how I would raise the kids, how I would run the business alone. Would I make ends meet? Would we starve? What would people think of me being the dreaded D word?

I rolled it over and over in my head for so many years.

Logically, here I was, 6-1", great hair, incredibly handsome, own my own business, strong, fit, a great leader, kids becoming independent, and so on. A real catch of a guy (given not only what I saw then and see now with regard to the available fish in proverbial sea but what the women I would meet would say about the men that were available).

Yet, that logic went right over my head. I had come to a place over years and years of it, believing I may never survive!

Good Lord, what would I do? WHAT WOULD I DO?

But a time came, when I finally had enough. Anything, and I mean ANYTHING had to be better than the oppression and abuse I had allowed to become normal to me. You know, like Anthony Fauci likes to say, "New Normal".

The lesson in this for me, the word that I want to leave you with is this.

Evil people, the tyrannical among us, thrive on your obedience. They get a sick and perverse thrill in seeing you obey their ever changing demands.

When they see you submitting to them, their hearts fill, the souls get blacker, and Satan whispers in their ear more ways to find thrill and excitement in oppressing you. They listen with glee to him and go for more.

Sadly, too many of us (you) go along.

In a larger sense, what you are seeing across the nation in despotic states is the very things I outline above, on a grander scale.

Like me, you have convinced yourself that the prison you now live in is best for you. You have allowed the fear of "what if" to get control of your mind and it now has you. There is no more logic for you. Only submission to whatever they say...because...well, it's all you know now. Only emotion. You now only think with your feelings. The thing you feel the strongest then, is fear.

The people oppressing you will not, and let me put emphasis on that, will NOT give you back any of your freedom. It's well past that now.

They are banking on your fear allowing them to keep you down. They are counting on your willingness to allow them to establish control over you.

By going along with this, you only empower them further.

The look across the population and with sadistic satisfaction revel in a sea of mask donning American citizens willingly obeying their demands to give up your freedoms to them for good.

You may choose, like I did, to believe that this is normal. It MUST be normal. For to do any other thing is now too scary.

But you must know, as I do now, because I lived it first hand, that it will never end until such time YOU decide it will end.

Joe Biden is pushing the fear narrative now. His "Dark Winter" comments are meant to continue to push the fear. To set the stage to have the fear they plan to push remain. To remain means you will obey.

The longer it goes on, the longer the tyrannical among us are allowed to oppress us, the harder it becomes to break free.

Be that a husband, a wife, a child, a mother, a father, a boss, a city council member, a county commissioner, a governor of a state, or the president of the United States. Until such time you, A FREE AMERICAN CITIZEN, decides that enough is enough, their reach will continue to extend. Their oppression will only grow. It knows no limit.

The only limit that will stop it is you. It will not stop until you stop it.

And the only way it will stop is by you facing the fear that has you cowering inside, standing up to them, and saying NO MORE.

This is truth and it is fact. Fact as solid as the mountains I have climbed over the course my life on the trail or in the woods.

No one is going to do it for you. It's all on you.

It's scary, but by faith (I still can't get over the church greeters mask yesterday "Faith over Fear), you can push back the fear and do what needs to be done to take back what is rightfully yours.

Take back what has been fought for, that generations before us have bled and died for.

You are an American. You are called to be free. Free from oppression and tyranny, be that at home, at work, or under government authority.

If I could do it, you can do it.

I hope you will stand up and take back what is rightfully yours.

Honestly, I miss seeing your smile.

~rob