The Fortitude Chronicle: A Weekly Digest of Athletic Determination

Monday Momentum

For the Relentless Mind

We Normalized Cruelty and Called It Standards

The Grace We Refuse to Give

The athlete misses the shot. Within minutes, death threats flood his inbox.

The barista gets the order wrong. A customer screams across the counter like she's committed a war crime.

The coach loses three games in a row. Thousands call for him to be fired.

We've normalized cruelty. Somewhere along the way, being ruthless became confused with being honest. Being demanding became confused with having standards. We've convinced ourselves that our anger is justified because the service was slow, the team lost, or someone made a mistake we wouldn't have made.

Everyone you encounter is fighting a battle you can't see. The athlete who missed the shot just lost his father. The barista who got your order wrong is working three jobs to support her family. The coach everyone wants fired is dealing with his own family health crisis while trying to keep his team together.​

The cost of this empathy deficit shows up everywhere. In comment sections. In drive-throughs. In stadiums. In our relationships. We've become a society that values being right over being kind, winning arguments over maintaining dignity.

Here's what kindness costs: nothing. Maybe five extra seconds of patience. Maybe biting your tongue once. Maybe assuming the best instead of the worst.

Here's what it returns: reduced stress, better relationships, increased life satisfaction, and a world that feels slightly less hostile. ​

We trade massive psychological and social benefits for the temporary satisfaction of venting frustration at someone who probably doesn't deserve it.

Grace doesn't mean accepting incompetence or lowering standards. It means recognizing that the person in front of you is human, fallible, and likely doing their best under constraints you can't see.​

We could create a different feedback loop. One where the default response to someone's mistake is curiosity about what happened rather than immediate judgment about their character. Where athletes are treated like humans who happen to perform publicly rather than entertainment products that malfunction. Where service workers are extended the same grace we'd want if we were exhausted and overwhelmed.

The tension in society isn't inevitable—it's chosen. Every interaction is a choice between escalation and de-escalation. Between adding poison to the well or offering clean water.

You don't have to agree with everyone. You don't have to accept poor performance without feedback. But you can deliver that feedback like you're talking to someone who matters, because they do.

The world feels hostile because we've made it hostile. We've confused strength with hardness, standards with cruelty, honesty with brutality.

Grace is free. The question is whether we're willing to give what costs us nothing but returns everything.

Two Quotes

1. “Stop measuring days by degrees of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence— Alan Watts

2. “The distance between dreams and reality is called discipline.”— Paulo Coelho

Four Posts

To Building Fortitude.

 Best Regards,

Colin Jonov, Founder & CEO Athletic Fortitude