Brian Cook

June 29th

🍽️ Issue #46: What I couldn't control on Saturday, & the 1 thing I could.

Ali set a copy of my book in front of me Saturday & told me her father & I had been cadets together at West Point. He was class of '93, three years behind me; our years in the Corps overlapped, & we came up under the same gray walls.

More than three decades since then. Now his daughter stood in front of me at Sea Shelves in Port Aransas, holding something I wrote, asking me to sign it.

I signed it like it mattered. It did.

Pull the camera back from that table, though, & Saturday looked different.

That same morning, at least three regional wars were burning: Ukraine, the Iran and Lebanon. A planet hurtling through cold space, indifferent to every plan we make. A news feed built to grab your nervous system by the collar & drag it somewhere you have zero power to change a thing.

None of that was mine to fix. Not one headline. Not one front line.

Here is what thirty-three years in uniform & five combat tours taught me: there is a hard line between what you can control & what you cannot. Spend your life on the wrong side of it & you bleed out your energy on the uncontrollable while the people right in front of you go unseen.

The wars will not ask your permission. The world will not wait for you to feel ready.

Your table will.

That is the whole game. The Freedom Gap; the space between the life you declare & the life you actually live; does not close when you fix the world. It closes when you set the ONE table you can reach.

Saturday, my table was Ali, her father, & more than three decades of brotherhood folded into a single signature.

Tuesday, I set the next one. 5:00 PM, West Austin Chamber of Commerce happy hour. If you are anywhere near Austin, come find me; I will be the one glad you showed up. Wherever you stand, set yours.

You do not get a vote on the war. You get a vote on the table.

TAKE IT.

PS: If Saturday's story landed with you, the book it came from is right here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/set-your-table-brian-cook/1150219527

Stay in the Stay in the fight. Set your Table. ~ Brian

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