I'm not a big Brooks fan. We get on the rhetorical boat in this article thinking we're headed for deep water, a la Viktor Frankl, who saw people grapple with what life expected from them in a deeply personal and horrifying way in the Nazi death camps. Instead, Brooks takes us on a lightweight fun-filled harbor tour, telling us that working at the seafood house is its own reward. Lecturing us that traditions deserve to be respected and that personal desires minimized.

What life wants out of you is a deeply individualistic thing. Life is not the same as Baseball. It's not the same as reporting, or college. College might expect you to study and get good grades. Life expects you to continue to learn and grow. Life is anything but an institution. E-gad, man. Drop the poetry book and take a look around.

I don't know what he's smoking, but whatever it is, I'll pass. It sounds like the prelude to a call to arms to support tradition. This philosophy of the group or the tradition being greater than the individual is strangely narcissistic -- I'm very important because I'm part of a very important institution. Whatever it is, it's not American in origin. At least I hope not.

As a former service member, I'm deeply aware of tradition and the higher value of culture and civilization above the individual. But that only exists in the context of supporting the individual's right to reject, to reinvent, to be stubborn, ugly, and ornery. Without that, institutions become machines to eat people and their lives.

Thanks for the ride, David, but next time I'll stay home.