If Mick had some hard years, made some sucky decisions - he is no different than most of us, if we admit it.
The problem is that he doesn't admit it.
What point is there to keeping throwing his past in his face whether it be true, false, confirmed or shrouded in mystery - let's help him put it behind him.
The problem is that HE won't put his past behind him. Instead, he very much puts it in front of him... at least his version of it. And that's a shame because his knives don't need it and I really don't think he -- as a man -- needs it (it being the fictional past) either.
I don't know Strider, but I know if the roles were reveresed, I'd appreciate it if folks would just let the past die.
I have often said that the person least likely to make a mistake is someone who has already made that mistake. Part of becoming an adult is realizing the errors of your youth. Defining them away by replacing them with a fantacy I not realizing them, it is perpetually lying about them.
I, for one, would be the first to forgive Mr. Strider any past errors and praise him for what he has accomplished since.
Most of the errors we're talking about, six days of AWOL, getting apparently asked to leave the Army, the carjacking, prison, those all happened within a few years after he graduated highschool. He was a kid.
Prison is a watershed experience. For some, it is the beginning of the end of their lives. For others, it's the swift kick that propells them and puts them back on track. Mr. Strider seems to fall into that later group.
Since his prison experience, he has pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. The body of work he's produced speaks for itself; he has become a skilled knife designer and skilled knifemaker. He has been instrumental in building the company that bears his name into a going business, a reliable military contractor, and a good employeer. Those are all "tabs" that nobody but Mike Strider can take away from Mike Strider. And those are "tabs" which anyone could take great pride in.
I would love to be able not to let his past die and be forgotten but to see it as what he, by his own strength, overcame to become the success that he is. But, Mr. Strider will not see it as what he overcame. Instead, he sees the need to falsify it and to lie about it and look on knowingly while other misrepresent it too. That is not putting your past behind you.
Yes he does, and very good knives. But he also misrepresents himself and allows others to too. And I really don't know why he does that since he's done so much for real to be proud of -- so much more than most men -- that he just doesn't need the false backstory; it actually detracts from him.
