The Tao of Hank Schrader

In the series Breaking Bad after successfully gunning down the maniac Tuco, Hank gets given a promotion working in El Paso. This is where the real action is close to the cartels where extreme violence is commonplace.

It’s a plum job and recognition of what a good officer Hank is. Unfortunately he gets made fun of. All of the other speak fluent Spanish (which they insist on doing all of the time) and have Jesus Malverde icons (the patron saint of drug dealers) on their desk. This latter fact Hank finds funny and makes a light-hearted joke about it. After this he receives the po-faced response.

If you know your enemy as yourself, you’ll fight without danger in many battles. Sun Tzu – The Art of War

In other words – they’re a bunch of nerds who never got over the fact that they learned another language or read a particular book. Furthermore, there is a hint that in some respects they consider themselves above the basics of the job.

Hank though is still effective and manages to survive a gun battle that decimates a lot of the staff.

The truth of the matter is that Hank is someone who understands the most important parts of his job and is good at them. He doesn’t devote energy to the less important aspects (such as reading Sun Tzu).

It is so easy though to get caught in this trap – you want a particular result and you do all of these weird esoteric things to solve the problem rather than the basics that are effective.

At the moment – I am feeling very run down. There are weird things I can do to deal with the problem. A good question to ask though is – “What is the bleeding obvious?” One obvious thing is sleep. It’s so important. To quote another figure from the world of art, Macbeth, who comments on the value of sleep.

Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

chief nourisher in life’s feast.

Doesn’t it make sense that I focus on this “chief nourisher”? Don’t I want to soak my aching body into “sore labor’s bath”?

I think over the next few days I might do a mini series on this and get this sorted out. Thanks Hank.

Have a good day everyone!

Joe