Run six miles a day. Intermittent fast. Take cold showers. Remain uncomfortable.
Then you’ll be beautiful.

Beauty is pain…

Deep in a mine, patrolled by vigilant guardians roaming the surface, two rare stones are being smuggled in the belly of an African news anchor, working undercover in one of the most dangerous jobs within 500 miles.

It was really nothing, he just swallowed them. But it may be the only way Jacoby was going to afford a flight back to Nicaragua if he made it out alive.

The diamonds were small enough to avoid detection by the scanners at the surface, and still, stateside would be worth upwards of thirty thousand dollars each, but Jacoby planned on peddling one to a taxi-cab driver and another to a local hustler for barely enough money to get home.

The question had come down to not how much money he could escape with, but whether he could escape at all.

Workers at the private mine are reminded how the diamonds are formed everyday they arrive for work. It’s because all of them are under extreme amounts of pressure, stones and men alike.

Guardians stand with Ak-47’s in BDUs while they pass through the changing station where they will replace their civilian clothes with a plastic jumpsuit, that they’ll sweat in for the next four hours alongside the picking line.

The conditions are less bearable than Jacoby had heard.
He’d seen one man lose his fingertips as the tiny sifter under the belt-driven picking line whisked away his rubber gloves and more than half his pay for shutting down the operation.

The gloves are tight so that you can retrieve the sparkling grains from the rapidly vibrating rollers but they can only fill up with so much sweat before you end up like Manny.

Only men with nerves of steel make the big bucks down here in the dirt. Keep breathing, that’s the key.
If Jacoby’s learned one thing from this assignment, it’s that, when it comes right down to it, pressure is what makes these beauties.

When Jacoby touches down in Nicaragua and sees his family again, he might be just as broke as before. But he may not be aware that he’s lost a wrinkle or two and the women will definitely notice that he’s got a great story to tell.

Overall, the stress will have made Jacoby a little more attractive.

Maybe there’s something to being under pressure?

Three thousand miles away in a lab formerly owned by Zales, Brian Rothers is overseeing the formation of today’s newest fad in engagement fashion.

Carbon is compressed and super-heated to form precious jewels right from the comfort of his own office.
Fabricated diamonds are a hot commodity. But, despite being fifty meters above sea level Brian Rothers is no stranger to the pressures of securing a fortune.

In three months, five employees have been detained for trying to use the equipment illegally during off-business hours. Found out, only through the labors of his accountant who pays the the Greenwich Power and Light bill.

Brian’s wife weighs two hundred pounds. Both of his kids dropped out of high-school when they turned eighteen, and his father just passed from complications after being admitted with acute pancreatitis.
Brian suffers from the same alcoholism — in silence.

But Brian is a good looking dude. Could’ve passed for thirty though he was pushing fifty-five.

He watches the orange and yellow glow in the cracks of the crucibles from behind the plexiglass and imagines the extreme stresses that those atoms are undergoing to become beautiful.

In goes an ugly duckling and out comes a swan, he thinks when the fusion is complete. A sparkling jewel is staring back through the window.
Amazing.

He thinks of his dad and then wonders if maybe he should have been harder on his wife and kids. He gave them everything they asked for and they ended up growing lazy and obese.

He’d known food could spoil, but never thought people would, at least not in a literal sense. Then too many times he’d heard that a man’s endearments makes a woman beautiful.
But, he’d tried that and look at her!

Brian glanced back at the diamonds and watched, arms crossed, as his staff removed each beautiful piece.

He’d decided it was time to make the woman work.

Mining for diamonds, creating them in a lab, or stealing them; it’s all hard work. Will you let it get to you?

Whether you ferry a boat across a river, chase storms, or manufacture precious stones. When you do something for a great enough time you will learn that there are two ways to go about it.

It’s just human nature to fall in tune with the things you are passionate about. If you focus on something long enough you will eventually hear it speak to you.
It will tell you.

You can work it. Be active.
Heat it up with ambition and stresses. Organize it into something beautiful and aesthetic. Or, you can leave it be. Let it sit and eventually disorganize itself, losing all concern for appeal and growing soft in its own self-value.

Either way, you’ll grow no richer if you don’t listen to the voices and educate yourself. Find ways to conserve more energy and stave off more losses.

Statistically, it’s fifty-one percent safer to hire family.

You’ll keep them young and beautiful by putting them to work for you and they will return the favor by keeping you stressed out.
I mean, who better can you trust?

Would you rather die in a hot mess or a puddle of peace?

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but not here.
That would just be weird.

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Jay Horne is an author and publisher out of Bradenton, Florida. He is a husband and father of four.
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