The Three-Strike Rule
On respect, will, and small mercies.
When an insect bothers me, I allow myself three strikes. No more. If it survives, it lives.
This may sound bizarre, even absurd, but I have held myself to this rule since I first started boxing. Boxing taught me something that has never left me: a weak, little body can house an enormous heart. A fighter’s will to continue often dwarfs his size, his strength, even his skill. Once I had seen that, I could no longer swat at an insect without asking myself: what if this, too, was a creature with heart?
So I made a rule. If it survives three assaults from a force immeasurably stronger, then it has earned the right to continue living. And once I framed it that way, my conscience never allowed me to behave otherwise.
My father, a boxer, pilot, engineer, and special forces veteran, thought this practice was utterly ridiculous. He mocked me for it more than once. But he kept the rule also, even when I wasn’t looking. Perhaps he saw, as I did, that there is a kind of dignity in restraint, even in so small a matter as a fly.
Practicing the Rule
Over time, the rule grew beyond the ring and the flyswatter. It became part of how I carried myself.
On occasion, I will stand and wait at a path for an insect to cross. Not because the insect cares. It cannot appreciate the courtesy. But because it was there first. Respect, even for a creature that does not know it has been respected, still matters. It matters because I know.
That distinction is important. I do this for myself, not for the insect. Each small act adds red to my ledger, though I do not deceive myself that it erases the black. It is not about balancing the accounts so much as refusing to let them run further into deficit.
Something unexpected happened when I began practicing this discipline: insects began to bother me less. What once was annoyance became a test of patience, even a reminder. Treating with kindness the things that annoy, infuriate, and bother you causes your character to grow. That growth does not come quickly, nor painlessly, but it comes.
I am not proud to admit that when I fail: when I swat without counting, or kill without cause, my subconscious howls at me. It is as though I have betrayed not the insect, but myself. The discipline once chosen became binding. My own mind will not allow me to break it needlessly; it punishes me when I do.
The Humbling Turn
There is another reason I keep the rule. Someday, I will be the insect.
Life has a way of flipping the table. The day comes when your body is slow, your timing is off, your lungs feel small. You are overmatched. If I want mercy when I am weak, I must practice mercy while I am strong. The habit must be trained into my hands before the bell rings.
Power without restraint is cheap. It is the easiest thing in the world to crush what you can crush. The harder thing, the thing that makes a man, is to carry strength with a governor on it. Not out of fear, not out of softness, but out of principle. That is what the three-strike rule really is: a principle you can hold even when no one is watching.
Leadership, Dignity, and the Use of Force
This practice has bled into the rest of my life. I have learned to recognize “the insect” everywhere: the junior who keeps showing up; the idea I thought was foolish that refuses to die; the competitor who will not go away. I do not have to like them. But if they survive three clean shots, I have to respect them.
Respect, in my world, is not a sentiment. It is a behaviour. It changes how I speak, how I decide, and how I escalate.
In conflict: I aim to correct before I erase. Strike once with clarity, twice with patience, thrice with finality. Then accept the outcome. If they are still standing, I change my stance.
In reviews and feedback: Three specific, fair chances to meet the mark. If they meet it, dignity is preserved on both sides. If they do not, the decision is clean, not emotional.
In negotiation: When I have leverage, I try not to humiliate. Winning that way is a kind of loss. Leave the other party a path to cross with their head up.
This is not pacifism, and it is not performance. Sometimes the right thing is decisive force. And quickly. Health, safety, duty: these are not surrendered to rituals. But when force is not required by duty, restraint should be required by character.
The Rule’s Guardrails
Three strikes is not numerology; it is a brake. It prevents me from acting at the speed of my annoyance. It also binds me, not the world. I cannot take three lazy swipes and claim I kept faith. Each attempt must be honest, clean, and owned. With each strike, I strike to win. That sincerity of force is the rule’s underlying principle.
Nor does the rule make me virtuous. I am under no illusion that waiting for an ant erases a sin. I keep a ledger, and there is black in it. Small mercies add red, not absolution. But they do something important: they make me into the kind of man who can do the larger mercies when the day requires them.
My Father and the Line
My father mocked this rule when I first told him. He loved the tease: boxer, pilot, engineer, special forces veteran. He had earned the right to call nonsense when he saw it. But when I was not looking, he held the line. Somehow he intuited what I felt: the rule is not about insects. It is about the man.
That is what tradition looks like when it is alive. Not a museum piece, but a standard that passes from one set of hands to another, even if the hands pretend to disagree. He held it because he could, because it cost him nothing and purchased a little dignity: for himself, not for the fly.
What the Rule Has Taught Me
It taught me that disgust is a bad counselor. It taught me that annoyance can be transmuted into discipline if you give it a place to go. It taught me that character grows when you practice kindness precisely where you do not want to. And, oddly, it taught me that the world shrinks when you try to dominate it, but expands when you show it restraint.
Most of all, it taught me to recognize heart where I did not expect to find it. A weak, little body can house an enormous will. If I cannot respect the smallest will to live when it is placed in front of me, how loudly can I claim to respect my own?
Closing the Hand
Sometimes I still fail. I strike without counting. I kill without cause. My subconscious screams. And it should. That is the sound of a standard doing its job.
But most days, when a small life is in my way, I put my hands behind my back and wait. No one will know. The insect cannot appreciate it. The world does not take minutes. But I will know, and the man I have chosen to be will remain intact for one more day.
Three strikes. If it survives, it lives. And if it lives, so do I. By my own measure.
In parvis initia magnorum.
— Dr Stephen D. Jones
Postscript: The Flea That Lived
Parasites are exempt from the rule. One day I found a flea on me, killed it, and flushed it. Minutes later it clawed back up the drain, slipped, climbed again: pure refusal to quit. I changed my mind. I warmed it, gave it what it needed to recover, and carried it outside. I chose gift over theft: what I would not permit to be taken by force, I offered of my own will. I never saw it again. Tenacity can reset the sentence. Even a parasite can force respect. Sometimes. Let this serve as a reminder: never follow a rule blindly. Follow it to its purpose.
#Leadership #Stoicism #Discipline #PowerAndRestraint #Character