Let me borrow your internal movie maker for a bit. I’ll give it back, I promise. I want you to envision a war room. Put it inside a tent. There should be a huge map sprawled on top of a big table surrounded by hard men. What type of warriors are they? Horse-riding Samurai? Anglo-Saxons in heavy, jingling mail? Modern Spec-Ops guys kitted out in plate carriers and FAST helmets? It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that they’re all gathered around, analyzing the enemy’s position, and that at least one of them is smoking a pipe.
Picture one of the men closer to the table—preferably not the pipe smoker—pressing a dusty finger onto the map. He might be pointing at a gate, a tunnel, or any building in particular. It doesn’t make much of a difference, so long as he’s indicating a spot that an enemy would have a hell of a time defending, monitoring, and/or restricting access to. Now, imagine him speaking up, probably in a higher-pitched voice than you might have otherwise expected.
“Here’s the weakest point in the enemy’s position—the place where they’re the most vulnerable.” A few heads nod. There are a couple of grunts of agreement as the others see it, too. So, he carries on. “Then, by all means—and at all costs—we should avoid it because, you know, vulnerability is strength.” The room goes quiet.
I picture him standing up a bit taller, convinced that what he just said is both profound and useful. In my mind, he’s smacking fruit-flavored gum while everyone else in the tent is trying to wrap their heads around the nonsense that came out of his mouth. Finally, someone breaks the silence—it’s the guy with the pipe.
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