TrueLife - Don Quixote - The Final Battle

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USThe Knight of the White Moon: Coming HomeAt 50—the same age Don Quixote was when he lost his mind to become a knight and the same age he was when he was finally defeated—I found myself knocked off my own horse.After 26 years as a UPS driver, I was fired. My wife is fighting cancer. The future we planned may never arrive.In the book, the Knight of the White Moon (his friend in disguise) forces Don Quixote to give up the quest, take off the armor, and go home. Everyone thinks he’s finally “cured.” But what if it wasn’t defeat? What if it was the doorway?This episode is about the moment life forces you to shed the identity you’ve worn for decades—the job, the role, the armor—and asks: Who are you when it’s all gone?I call it the second adolescence. The initiation into elderhood. The hard, beautiful rite of passage our culture forgot to give us.We explore:•  The terror and gift of being stripped of what defined you•  Why “coming home” to yourself might be the real point of the quest•  How defeat can be the beginning of something quieter, wiser, more real•  The power of elders: not what you do, but what you know after surviving it allIf you’re 50, 60, 70… if you’ve been fired, retired, divorced, gotten sick, or simply feel the armor cracking… you’re not alone.This isn’t the end. It’s the beginning of becoming who you actually are.Listen now. Walk through the doorway with me.(From the heart of a former UPS driver who’s still figuring it out.)#SecondAdolescence #Elderhood #ComingHome #DonQuixote #LifeAfter50 One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🔥 Save $2,000: Master Plant Medicines from Home (Ayahuasca, Psilocybin, San Pedro & Cannabis)Transform Your Mental Health & Consciousness with Blue Morpho’s Proven Courses:https://bluemorpho.org/plant-medicine-training/george/?ref=george🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Legal Disclaimer / Release of Liability for Podcast:This  content  is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this transmission constitutes legal, financial, or professional advice. I am not your lawyer, financial advisor, or telling you what to do.This podcast documents historical events, analyzes publicly available information, and explores hypothetical scenarios. Any actions discussed are presented as educational examples of how systems work—not as instructions or recommendations.You are solely responsible for your own decisions and actions. Any application of information presented here is at your own risk. I assume no liability for consequences of actions you choose to take.By continuing to listen, you acknowledge that this content is educational commentary, that you’re responsible for researching applicable laws in your jurisdiction, and that you’ll consult appropriate professionals before taking any action that could affect your legal, financial, or personal situation.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Live podcast. I hope you're all having a beautiful day. Hope the sun is shining. Hope the birds are singing. I hope the wind is at your back. I am 50 years old, ladies and gentlemen. The same age Don Quixote was when he lost his mind and decided to become a night. And the same age he was when he was finally.

defeated. He was defeated by the night of the white moon. The night of the white moon pummeled him to the floor and stood over him with the lance and forced him to give up his quest. Don Quixote thought his life was over. He went home, became sane,

saw reality clearly for the first time, and then he died. I have been thinking about that quite a bit lately. because I'm the same age, and I've been defeated as well. But what if defeat is not the end? What if it's the doorway? What if being forced to give up who you thought you were is what finally lets you become who you actually are?

This is the night of the white moon, and this is about coming home. Let me tell you what happens in the book. Near the end of Part 2, Don Quixote meets a mysterious knight, dressed in white with a moon on his shield. The night of the white moon challenges him to battle. Here's the terms. Quote, if I win, you give up being a knight forever.

You go home. You take off the armor and the quest is over. Donkey Yody accepts, of course. They fight. Don Quixote loses. Knocked off his horse, defeated for the first time in the entire novel. And he has to keep his word. He has to go home.

He has to give up everything he's fought for. Here's the twist, though. The night of the white moon, it's actually his neighbor. It's his good friend in disguise. Someone who loves him and thinks he's saving him by forcing him to stop. I know what that feels like. Do you know what that feels like? I was fired after 26 years at a career.

How about you? You got some stories like that? 26 years is a UPS driver for me, and I fought for myself and for other people too, for a lot of other people, for what I thought was right, against corporate greed, against a system that treated people like numbers,

and they defeated me. 26 years gone. Maybe you know what that feels like too. I bet you there's other people out there. Been through their own battles, fought for what they thought was right, ended up being defeated. Maybe you got fired after decades of loyalty.

Maybe you got divorced after years of trying. Maybe you got sick, had to give up the life you planned. Maybe you retired, if you made it long enough, and suddenly realized, wait, Who am I without the job, without the title, without the identity I've worn for decades?

Some are you in your 50s, some are 55, some are 60, some of you might be 30. And you're being forced to take off the armor, forced to give up the quest, forced to go home. And the question is, is this defeat? Or is this something else? Let me read you the moment Don Quixote is defeated. Part 2, Chapter 64 for anybody following along. Quote, Don Quote, battered and stunned,

without raising his visor, said in a weak, sickly voice, as if speaking from inside a tomb, Dulcinea del Toboso is the most beautiful woman in the world, and I am the most unfortunate night on earth, and it is not right that my weakness should discredit this truth, press your lance knight and take my life since you have taken my honor press your lance and take my life since you have taken my honor unquote because without the quest without the identity without the

armor what's left that's the question we're all asking at 50 at 60 in your 30s maybe in your 20s when we're forced to come home. Don Quixote had to take off his armor. Stop being a night. Admit that the windmills were windmills. The basin was a basin. The quest was fantasy. He had to shed his identity.

I had to do that too. For 26 years, I was a UPS driver. That's who I was. That's how I introduced myself. That's the box that I fit in when I got fired. When I had to leave, I lost that. I had to figure out, who am I without the uniform, without the route? Without the identity I built my entire adult life around.

Some of you may have just retired. Some of you might be being forced out by AI. For 30, 40 years, you were the engineer, the teacher, the manager. The CEO. And now, you're not. Who are you now? Some of you got divorced. You were husband, wife, partner for decades.

And now that's gone. Who are you without that role? Some of you got sick, got old, your body can't do what it used to do. You were the athlete, the worker, strong one. Who are you when that's stripped away? Here's what I'm learning. This is terrifying, and it's also a gift, because for the first time in decades, you're not defined by the box you fit in. You're not the job title, not the role, you're not the armor.

You're just, you, naked, vulnerable, uncertain, and you get to ask, who is that? Who am I really? Under all the armor I've been wearing. Some traditions call this a second adolescence. Think about it. In your first adolescence, your teens, your 20s, you were figuring out who you were for the first time, trying on identities, making mistakes, finding your path. Then you spent 20, 30, maybe 40 years being that identity,

the job, the role, the marriage, the armor. And now, at 40, At 50? At 60? You're being forced to take it off. And you get to figure out who you are again. Not who you're supposed to be. Not who the world told you to be. Not who you were for the last 40 years.

But who you actually are now. I'm not exactly sure who that is yet. I'm 50. Lost a career. I have loved ones that have cancer. We're fighting. But I've had to let go of the fantasy future that we planned. I don't fit into the traditional workforce anymore.

I'm in the second adolescence. I'm not going to lie. It's scary as hell sometimes. But it's also maybe the most alive I've ever felt in years. Because I'm not just playing a role anymore. I'm actually figuring out who I am. Indigenous cultures, they understood this. They had rights of passage, initiation,

moments, when you had to shed one identity to step into the next. Adolescence was one. When you stopped being a child and became an adult. And there was supposed to be another one. When you stop being an adult, the worker, the provider, the doer, and became an elder. But we don't have that anymore. We just keep working until we can't. Then we retire.

Then we, what, golf, watch TV, wait to die? That's not a right of passage. That's just ending. But what if getting fired, getting sick, getting old, being forced to take off the armor? What if that's the right of passage we've been missing? What if this is the initiation into elderhood? not the comfortable version where you retire with a pension and play golf, the real version, the hard version,

where you're stripped of everything you thought you were, so you can finally step into what you're supposed to become. The elder isn't defined by what they do. The elder is defined by what they know, what they've survived, what they've learned, what they can teach. You spent 40 years in the workforce. You know things young people don't. You've been married, divorced, struggled, survived.

You know things. You've been defeated. Rebuilt yourself. Kept going. You know things. That's not weakness. That's wisdom. And the world desperately needs elders right now.

Not people still trying to prove themselves. Not people still chasing titles. and armor and quests, but people who've taken off the armor can finally see clearly. Don Quixote was forced to take off his armor, and everyone thought, finally, he's cured, he's normal, he's saved.

But what if it wasn't about being cured? What if it was about being initiated from the night, the doer, the fighter, the roll, to something else, something quieter, wiser, more real. The night of the white moon forced Don Quixote to go home

and Don Quixote thought that was the end. But what if home was the point all along? When I got fired from UPS, I thought my life was over. 26 years gone. What now? But here's what happened.

I came home, not to a place, but to myself, to the conversations I'd been too busy to have, To the questions I'd been too tired to ask. To the time, the precious time, to be present with my wife while she fights cancer. Time I wouldn't have had if I was still grinding out routes for 12 hours a day.

Some of you retired and thought now what? Now you get to come home. To the hobbies you didn't have time for. To the relationships you were too busy for. To the questions you've been avoiding for. for 40 years. What do I actually care about? What do I actually want? Who am I when nobody's watching? That's not the end. That's finally the beginning. Some have you got sick, got old, lost your physical strength? Now you get to come home to a different kind of power, not the power to do everything,

but the power to be present, to witness, to know, to teach. Don Quixote came home and died. But you know what he got to do first? He got to be with the people who loved him the most. Not as the knight, not as the role, as himself. And they were all there. Sancho, the housekeeper, the niece, the priest, crying because they loved him.

Not for what he did, for who he was. That's what coming home means. Shedding the armor. Letting go of the quest. stepping into who you actually are and letting the people who love you see that person, not the role you played for 40 years. You, I'm 50 years old, ladies and gentlemen.

I've been defeated, lost my career, sure as hell don't fit into the workforce anymore. My wife has cancer. The future we plan might not happen. And I'm learning that this might actually be a gift, not because it doesn't hurt. It does. Not because I have it all figured out.

I don't. But because of the first time in decades, I'm not wearing armor. I'm not playing the role of a UPS driver. Not playing the role of a provider or the guy who has it all together. I'm just me, figuring it out. And the second adolescence

in the passage toward elderhood coming home. If you're in your 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, if you just retired, got fired, got sick, got old, whatever it is, if you're being forced to take off the armor and you don't know who you are without it, you're not alone. This is the rite of passage. This is the initiation. This is the moment you shed who you were so you can finally become who you are.

The night of the white moon forced Don Quixote to come home, and Don Quixote thought it was defeat. But what if it was the doorway? What if coming home to yourself, to the present, to what's real, is the whole point? I don't know yet. I'm still walking through the doorway. But I think there's something on the other side. Not the quest, not the armor, not the identity we wore for 40 years. but something real, something quieter, something wiser, ourselves.

Finally, ladies and gentlemen, that's the end of the Donkey Hode series. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Lo-hop.