Wonder if he accepted his death?

> "Small wonder that spell means both a story told, and a formula of power over living men." - Tolkien on fairy-stories

The human Operating System runs on storytelling. The framing you give your mind. The storytelling does not need to be true, to be useful. You have to give yourself a useful story or someone else will do so for you. Your parents. More commonly your peers, and instilled by what is most useful for a snake or a charlatan.

A bad story is a mental prison. Can keep you trapped in dependence, guilt, or resentment. You may have marveled at an elephant held in place by a tiny stake in the ground. The elephant is huge. It can move at any time but instead it stays put. You are that elephant when trapped in a mental prison, sticking to your lane and giving up before ever trying at all. Useful! Buy the product, consumer. You're bedazzled by the spell and sit obediently still, or worse smash up your neighborhood.

Trick is the mental prison has no lock. You can open the door and step out at any time. To write your own human Operating System is to give yourself a more useful story. Bruce Lee's quote is one example of an element that might be in that. If you look to sports teams, and military, they commonly have motto's or creed's to inspire. Those framings are pieces of a human operating system. They don't have to be true to leverage them to be useful. A more complete human operating system does not have to be elaborate but can more powerfully be a story for yourself that guides action.

In gradeschool you will find stories thrown over you like a yoke. Guiding. Controlling your behavior. Usually capped off by a fear of failure panicked and rushed headlong into signing a financial contract for a large student loan for continued years of the same. They don't teach you to author your own Operating System. Actual education begins once you begin picking up books on your own, outside the classroom.

That's why no one fighting cancer tooth and nail, completely unaccepting the idea that they might die, has ever died. You can't die if you don't accept it. 🙄

.... Somebody quoted this to a bloated orange, didn't they...

The problem I have with this kind of "advice" is it's not actionable. How do you convince yourself that you haven't been defeated?

I can say I haven't been defeated, and keep going through the motions, but my brain just processes that as lying to myself, and inside i still feel defeated.

I can't just make myself believe something I don't believe. Try and convince yourself that grass is purple. You can say it's purple all you want, and even act as if it is purple, but deep down you still know its green.

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So France still has a chance??

I think that there is a slightly more actionable side to this advice - don't kick yourself when you are down. You can't control your emotional reaction to going through a tough time, but you can at least catch yourself when you do negative self-talk during these situations.