Vlastimil Vohanka tells me he met online with Marin Zhelezov on June 13, 2026 and discussed the nature and examples of epic life. VV solicits my comments. Consume cum grano salis. I have not read Zhelezov beyond what he is quoted as saying below. Here are the elements of an epic life, as formulated by Zhelezov as reported by VV. My comments are signaled by ‘BV.’
1. Travel — must have, adventures unfold with travel.
BV: True! To the young, in particular, I say: get out there and take the risks. “A man sits as many risks as he runs.” (Henry David Thoreau) See the world to appreciate the homeland. Go alone, travel light, like a man, not a suitcase, swot up as much of the local lingo as you can, and try to make it back home alive. Take pictures, keep a journal. If you make it back, you won’t regret your adventures. Then you can boast, “Been there, done that.” Forever after you will enjoy the having done what the old man, having had enough of this vain world, would no longer want to do.
But be careful! Especially you women who too often are trusting to the point of being pollyannish. See The Young and the Restless: The Cautionary Deaths of Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan.
2. Meaningful goal, not just entertainment.
BV: Of course. No ‘killing time.’ Make good use of your incarnation, your time in the human body. Serious games for entertainment, games that require concentration and deep study to play well: chess and Go, for example.
3. A sense of leveling up, catching progressively stronger pokemon —> boss battle.
BV: The formulation here is too sloppy for it to be worth my time trying to make sense of it.
4. Flow state, act at the edge of your competence.
BV: There are two ideas here that ought to be separated. You can perform at the edge of your competence without entering the flow state, but if you enter said state it will probably be at the edge of your competence. Take it to the limit to see where your limits lie. The trick is to go to the limit without falling into the abyss.
In the late ’70s, training for a marathon, I pushed as hard as I could. One day after a training run, I urinated blood. I had taken it to the limit. A one-time event. Never pissed blood again. I had the good sense to back off. But if you don’t push hard, you won’t know where your limits lie.
During that marathon training I had gotten myself into the shape you have to be in to experience the flow state called the ‘runner’s high.’ I experienced it a few times. It is rare, like a mystical experience, but it is not a mystical experience. It is a form of ‘mundane transcendence’ in which your vehicle is no longer a Volkswagen bus but a supercharged Corvette.
As a a young man I drove many a time from Dayton, Ohio where I had a teaching job to Boston, Massachusetts where I had girlfriends, without stopping except for gas. 18-20 hours of driving. Thermos coffee and sandwiches for body fuel. The first ten hours were a warm-up. I then entered the flow state, in touch with my inner Neal Cassady, ready for some serious driving. “Put me on a highway/Show me a sign/ Take it to the limit/One more time.” (Eagles, 1975)
Some years later I traded in the VW bus for a 1988 Jeep Cherokee base model: five-speed manual tranny, 4.0 liter, six-cylinder engine, four-wheel drive, off-road shocks, oversized tires, and manual air conditioning. Bought it in Ohio, but kept it in Arizona despite the fact that I live in the infernal Valle del Sol — from which I don’t escape in the summer like some snowbird wimps I could mention.
Manual air conditioning: if you want air, you use your God-given hands to roll down the windows. In this part of the country manual AC is also know to the politically incorrect as ‘Mexican air conditioning.’ “Roll down the windows, Manuel!”
One blazingly hot August I drove straight through from Bishop, California up on U.S. 395 to Chandler, Arizona, 600 miles, alone. Stopping for gas in Blythe, on the California side of the Colorado river, I noted that the afternoon temperature was 115 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. Bouncing along Interstate-10 I saw that the only people with their windows down were me and the Mexicans.
It’s no big deal, really, driving through 115 degree heat in the middle of the day in the middle of the desert with the windows down. You take a bandanna and soak it in the ice water in your cooler and wrap it around your neck. When the dry blast of desert wind hits the wet bandanna some serious evaporation takes place, cooling your neck and with it the rest of your body. Feeling a little drowsy after four hundred miles of nonstop driving? Stoke up a cheap cigar, say that Swisher Sweet that’s been aging under the seat alongside those oily shop rags, and throw another audio tape into the deck. May I recommend Dave Brubeck? Or how about Kerouac reading to the piano accompaniment of Steve Allen? Or perhaps that latter-day beat, Tom Waits.
With four on the road, one in the hand, a cigar in the mouth, some boiling hot McDonald’s drive-through java in the other hand, Brubeck on the box, proudly enthroned at the helm of a solid chunk of Detroit iron, rolling down a wide-open American road, with a woman waiting at the end of the line, you’re feeling fine.
5. Winning = you must defeat someone, curing cancer is meaningful but it won’t feel epic.
BV: I agree if the one you attempt to defeat is your own lower self. But why must one defeat someone other than oneself? The above reads like a ‘manospheric’ compensatory reaction to the feminization of boys, a reaction by boys who were prevented from exercising their innate masculine aggressiveness in the schoolyard or on the playing fields.
I recall reading about the schoolyard ‘tug of war’ being replaced by a ‘tug of peace’ along with the dodge ball we played back in the day. Sickening! I of course oppose such asinine feminization. But I also oppose the mindless reaction thereto: the abuse and denigration of women.
6. Element of collecting, like Diablo 2, collecting items, making you stronger, proof of past adventures.
BV: I am a collector of trophies, ribbons, photographs, religious and secular mementos, not to mention books, books, and more books all as proof of past adventures, literary and otherwise, especially during my Wanderjarhren. I don’t understand people who get rid of their books. Many of my books are like treasured photographs. I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first read Nikos Kazantzakis’ Zorba the Greek. That book, like so many others with their inscribed accession date, marginalia, tell-tale bookmarks, love letters, dedications, and what-not are treasured mementos.
It is not clear to me, however, how this vast pile-up of personal antiquities makes one stronger.
7. Esoteric knowledge put in practice, secrets.
BV: I need some examples.
8. Coadventurers, RPG party, guild, sense of belonging to an exclusive identity (wizard’s guild). Builds frenship [sic]
BV: What’s the RPG party? The Reactionary Philatelic Gastroenterologists? The Royal Patrons of Goombahs? The promiscuous use of unexplained abbreviations rankles my ass. And we can’t have that.
9. Winning a battle brings a maiden as a reward.
BV: Here the toxic masculinity of these argonauts of the ‘manosphere’ again rears its ugly head. How much of this is mere reaction, reflexive as opposed to reflective, to their feminization? And as I have stated many times, masculinity as such is not toxic, any more than femininity as such. But there are forms of masculinity that are appropriately described as ‘toxic,’ meaning poisonous and destructive to their agents and even more to their victims. Anyone who can’t see that is a combination of stupid and morally obtuse.
Few are the women these days who fancy themselves ‘damsels in distress’ waiting for a heroic male in shining armor to come along and save them. Few are the ‘maidens’ these days who see themselves as rewards or trophies. They will not object to being mounted, in a context of love and commitment, but not on a wall.
10. Must have some form of risk.
BV: I agree. Life is for living. No living to the full without some risk-taking. The risks are all out there waiting to be taken, in matters of money, of love, of the spiritual quest. In the latter, the serious seeker must face the risk of demonic assault. The demons hate us and want to destroy us. There is Unseen Warfare; Lorenzo Scupoli calls it Combattimento Spirituale. So the highest warrior is the spiritual warrior. Take no risks without prior calculation: look before you leap. On the other hand, he who hesitates is lost. Balance your maxims. Better to sit or better to run? “A man sits as many risks as he runs.” (Henry David Thoreau)
Later addition, after the podcast:
11. To be epic, your goal must save (some part of) the world or transcend death in the spiritual realm.
BV: Agreed.