Just Remember What Ol'Jack Burton Does

Just Remember What Ol’ Jack Burton Does When the Earth Quakes, and the Poison Arrows Fall from the Sky, and the Pillars of Heaven Shake. Yeah, Jack Burton Just Looks That Big Ol’ Storm Right Square in the Eye and He Says, “Give Me Your Best Shot, Pal. I Can Take It.”

There are moments in life when the universe clears its throat, taps the microphone, and announces it is about to drop something heavy on your head. These moments rarely arrive with a calendar invite. They show up unannounced, wearing muddy boots, tracking catastrophe across the living room rug.

The earth quakes. Poison arrows fall from the sky. The pillars of Heaven shake like they were installed by the lowest bidder. And right then—right when a sensible person would consider hiding in a crawlspace or politely weeping—Jack Burton does the unthinkable. He squares his shoulders, plants his boots, looks directly into the swirling nonsense of existence, and says, “Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.”

This is not bravado. This is not confidence. This is pure, distilled, cinematic stubbornness—the kind that doesn’t ask if something is survivable before deciding to survive it anyway.

Jack Burton is not the smartest man in the room. He is rarely the most prepared. He often does not understand what is happening, why it is happening, or who signed off on it happening. But Jack Burton understands one critical thing: panic has never fixed a single blasted pillar of Heaven.

In July 2024, the universe took more than a few swings at me. Five heart attacks. Three strokes. Kidney failure. No metaphor, no poetic exaggeration—just the full-force, no-warning version of life saying, Let’s see what you’ve got. That was the storm. That was the ground shaking. Those were the arrows falling. And somehow, against the odds and the expectations, I took its best shot and survived.

Recovery doesn’t come with a soundtrack. There’s no slow-motion walk away from the explosion. It’s quieter than that. It’s slower. It’s a lot of small, stubborn decisions to keep standing when sitting down forever would be easier. Somewhere in the middle of all that, Jack Burton’s attitude lodged itself in my brain—not as a joke, but as a compass.

Not nothing can hurt me. Not everything will be fine.

Just: I’m still here, and I’m not done yet, relentless and defiant.

Consider the modern equivalents of poison arrows. Emails marked “per my last message.” Appliances that break only when company is coming. Bodies that suddenly decide to renegotiate the terms of existence. These are the arrows raining down daily, and Heaven’s pillars—also known as plans, routines, and assumptions—are always one tremor away from collapse.

Jack Burton would not refresh his inbox 40 times. He would not bargain with fate. He would look at the situation, acknowledge that it’s ugly, unfair, and wildly inconvenient, and then square up anyway.

That mindset hits different when you’ve already been flattened and stood back up.

Jack Burton doesn’t deny the storm. He respects it just enough to face it head-on. There is no inspirational poster version of this wisdom. No soft-focus sunrise. Just grit, sarcasm, and the refusal to let chaos have the last word.

And yes, sometimes Jack Burton gets knocked down. Sometimes he doesn’t understand the rules of the game he’s playing. Sometimes he survives more on attitude than planning. But he gets back up. He keeps moving. He keeps his eyes open.

That outlook—simple, stubborn, unglamorous—has changed how I look at everything now. I don’t need to conquer the storm. I’ve already been through one. I just need to stand there, breathing, and remind it that I’m still here.

So when the ground shakes again—and it will—when the pillars wobble and the arrows fall, I know what to do. Square up. Take a breath. Say the line. “Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.” And if experience has taught me anything, it’s this: sometimes you already have—and you’re still standing.