The Bar Doesn't Exist

I grew up advantaged. Middle class. Two parents. Books in the home. Surrounded by families with the same. But my real advantage wasn’t any of that—it was my dad’s psychology.

I was slow to realize it, but as I read more Nietzsche, I see now that my father was just remixing the Ubermensch in his own way. The man absolutely read Thus Spoke Zarathustra—he just never wasted time telling me about it.

Because what did it matter? I was the experiment.

He was obsessed with self-mastery. With testing limits. He didn’t like it when my baseball team or basketball team ran up the score. “How are you supposed to learn determination and willpower if you never have to fight for it?” He’d race me up the stairs as a four-year-old. Played me in basketball. Never let me win. I mean never. The man died before I could beat him in basketball.

And he was always measuring my mind. Always finding my weaknesses. Always looking for ways to rewire the system so I couldn’t hide behind I tried or I thought I could.

I’ll never forget 10th grade biology. Mr. Lory’s class. First big test of the semester. I walked home with a C- or was it a D? I was sure my dad would start with the usual performance. The one where he’d make me practice saying “paper or plastic?” or “you want fries with that?” just to hammer home how easily I could fail at life. Maybe even hand me a broom. “Start early,” he’d say. “An honorable career. My stepdad was a janitor that couldn’t read.”

But that day, he didn’t do any of that.

He just looked at me.

“Did you study?”

I opened my mouth, ready to throw out some excuse, some filler. But nothing came. Because the truth was I had studied. Or I thought I had. My eyes swelled with tears, but I swallowed them whole. I wasn’t about to get the "N**, are you crying right now?"* rhetoric.

I assured him I studied so hard.

He nodded. “Maybe.”

Then he said, “Enjoy the rest of your week, son. On Saturday, I’ll show you what I mean by studying.”

It was Tuesday. By Friday night, I convinced myself he forgot.

But at 5:00 a.m. sharp, I woke up to my door swinging open.

"Good morning, son. Meet me downstairs for breakfast."

I must’ve still been half-asleep, because I assumed I was in trouble for something else. But he was all business. I sat down to eat—grits, eggs, bacon. Standard issue. He took my phone. Asked for my commitment. And then?

We studied.

Six in the morning until nine at night.

No breaks. No distractions. Just the next four chapters that would be on the test. Every paragraph, every word, every section. He sat with me the whole time. He made me discuss concepts out loud, break them down, argue them back to him. Every problem, we solved together. Every term, I had to teach back to him.

Lunch was 15 minutes. But he quizzed me through every bite.

By nightfall, I was trembling. Never in my life had I focused that intensely for that long.

But on test day?

97%.

I wasn’t even nervous. I knew I knew that shit. I was having nightmares about the functions of the body. Everywhere I looked, I saw biological systems.

After I showed him my grade, he nodded once.

“See?”

And that was it.

That Saturday changed my life. It changed my bar. Or, more accurately, I realized the “bar” doesn’t exist. It’s a limitation we create for ourselves—nothing more.

After that, my dad never had to tell me to study again. He knew I understood now. Focus is a muscle, and it can be trained to withstand almost anything. And once you’ve spent an entire day locked into pure, unshakable concentration, you never again believe you can’t do something.

It wasn’t the last thing he ever said to me.

But it was the thing he said most. A mantra. A challenge. A reminder that time was always running out.

"What are you gonna do when I’m gone?"