To Fight, Or Not To Fight? That Is The Question

It has recently been brought to my attention, that two words more than any others tend to feature in my writing.  Those are the words love and fight.  I must wholeheartedly agree that I do use the word love frequently, since it is my belief that love is the driving force behind life, and as such, is one of the most important words ever written.  So then, what about the word fight?  Why would that word occur so often and is my use of it indicative of some deeper subconscious thinking, some underlying thought that shapes my life?

Fight.  I went to the internet and typed it into Google and I found this as the second part of a definition: struggle to overcome, eliminate, or prevent.  It is the first term used here that instinctively connects with me - the struggle to overcome.  When I write about the fight, I am writing about the need to overcome all of the barriers and impediments to achieving your dreams and your goals in life.  Given enough time and determination, it is possible to succeed, and to find yourself walking on your one true path, that path which will lead you to glory, and to the discovery of the light that resides within.  In his writing, Paulo Coelho refers to this as 'fighting the good fight', and it is this sentiment that I often echo in my own writing through the expression of my own thoughts and experiences.  Walking the path is not easy.  Many times you will find yourself challenged, banging your head against a seemingly impenetrable barrier, and these are the times when it is necessary to take a stand and fight for what it is that your heart would have you do.    

 

When I was first confronted with the idea that I am constantly fighting, my initial reaction was one of dismissal.  I try to live my life in as peaceful, calm and quiet existence as is possible, but at the same time, I also knew that the words that I read touched a nerve and rankled me.  They could only do that if there was an element of truth in them, and I knew, deep down inside that there was a real truth in them.  My whole life has been a fight, or perhaps it is better to describe it as a series of fights.  I fought for the love and affection of my parents; I fight to be accepted by my brother; I continually fight against seeing myself as overweight; I fought my way from working on a factory production line and to a successful career; I fought to give up smoking; I fought to gain recognition and acceptance from my superiors and peers at work; I fought against the voice inside of my heart that told me all I had to do was to be myself; I fought to win the heart of girls and women who perhaps did not deserve me; I still fight to see my own reflection as something other than unattractive; I fight to see my soul as better than worthless.  In short, my entire life has been and still is a fight, and the one fight that governs it all, the one overarching theme, is the fight for love and acceptance.    

My friend wrote that it seemed to her that I was always fighting for love and for life, and that perhaps I should try to see them as friends, rather than the fire breathing dragon against which I, like a knight from Arthurian legend, am always fighting.  I read her e-mail once, I went away and I read it again a little time later.  As I read through this second time, a ray of sunlight shone out from behind the clouds, shooting forth its life giving golden beam of light.  It was as though I had been stripped down naked and my soul laid bare.  A truth had been revealed to me and I felt the weight of its meaning and the repercussions that will surely come from the discovery of it.

Throughout my entire life, or at least for as long as my memory allows me to know, I have seen and portrayed myself as an underdog.  I am Rocky Balboa, plucked from obscurity to take on the heavy weight champion of the world, Apollo Creed; I am Luke Skywalker up against the might of the Empire; Ernest Shackleton and his men, lost and alone in the Antarctic, battling against hunger, the bitter cold, and the extremities of life at the South Pole; I see myself as the hapless guy from one of those romantic comedies that Hollywood churns out, who falls for the girl that fails to see him for all that he is, until finally the light dawns and he wins her over; I am the archetypal superhero, who must surely be counted down and out, whose cause seems to be all but lost, before rising once more to vanquish his enemy.  I have always had great empathy for the underdogs in life, for I count myself as one in their number. 

The way in which I have lived my life, can perhaps best be summed up by a verse from Walt Whitman's poem, A Song Of Joys:- 

O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted!
To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand!
To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face!
To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance!
To be indeed a God!

Until now.  The light that switched on in my head has revealed to me the errors that I have been making.  Why should I find myself fighting for the love of a person who is not reciprocating in kind?  A love not given freely is no love worth attaining.  Why should I persist in destroying the foundations on which my life stands, only to have to build it up once more?  What I realised is that there are certain times and situations that will require me to fight - the bringing to fruition of my dreams and the yearnings of my heart are those times.  In all other situations, I must cease my fighting.  There is a need for acceptance and through this acceptance, I believe I can begin to find some peace in my heart.  If I have to fight for the recognition of my achievements, if I have to fight in order for someone to see me for the person who I am, then these people truly do not deserve me.  They have no right to have a place in my life and my continuation with them serves me no purpose.  If fact, it is detrimental, negative, and hurtful.  Certainly things I really could do without.  There is enough to get on with in life, without having these kinds of people involved.  It does not necessarily mean that I will eliminate them entirely, for surely some of these people I cannot eliminate from my life, but it does mean that I have to ignore them and not to think of their reactions to me as a sense of failure on my part.  I cannot waste my energy trying to make people like me and want to spend time with me.  Either you do, or you do not and if you do, then surely I will know it, I will never have to question it, and I will never have to chase you.

That is a new realisation.  A sense of failure on my part.  Yes, that is exactly how I have always seen it.  That is why I fight so hard.  I try to show everyone that rightness of myself, my thoughts and my beliefs.  I feel a strong need to justify myself and my actions.  I am driven by this need to not be a failure, to be somehow better, stronger, more self-sufficient, more able.  I can see that now and I am able to see how it has governed and shaped my entire life.  I need to work on this understanding, to know that it is perfectly acceptable for someone not to like everything that I do or say, to accept that I cannot make everyone like me, that it is perfectly normal to fail sometimes, and perhaps most importantly of all, that it is okay to show weakness and vulnerability to others.  I cannot always be the rock, nor can I always be the shoulder on which others seek to lean.  If someone does not see me for who I am and all I can offer, that is not my failure, that is their failure to open their eyes fully and to see the person that stands before them.

I need to let things take their natural course.  I have to back off and allow situations to play out naturally and of their own free will.  There is no amount of force that I can bring to bear against another person's heart that could possibly alter what is written there.  Love either exists, or it does not.  There is either a desire to be with me, or there is not.  You can accept me, or you cannot.  Someone will either want to be part of my life, to know me, to understand the person that I am, or they will not.  What I have to be able to do is to find peace and acceptance with that, rather than perceiving it as a challenge, as another barrier to be overcome.  Perhaps this all sounds so simple and obvious, and I suppose it is now that I have written it down and thought it through, but when you live your own life, those things that you do out of pure instinct and old, rigid and habitual behaviours, are incredibly hard to see, let alone change.

Peace with love and peace with life.  It is for those things that I shall choose to seek and strive.  And it is my belief, that in so-doing, I will also find an inner peace within myself and most importantly, within my heart.  Perhaps it is the tormented soul that brings out the poet in me, perhaps I have not been alone in my struggles with life and how I have seen myself, perhaps I share that with other poets and tortured souls.  That does not necessarily justify that thinking, nor does it make it right.  So Walt, I say this to you.  You can keep your struggles against great odds, and you can indeed go alone to meet enemies undaunted, for I make this promise to myself: I will look for peace in love and peace in life and fight only for that next step which takes me just a little further along the path of my dreams.  If you want to walk with me, then do so because you truly wish to be there, for if not, I am done fighting to have you in my life and I bid you adieu.

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The Lull After The Storm

After a storm comes a time of tranquility.  The dark clouds roll away, the flashes of lightning and the rumbles of thunder seek out new horizons, new eyes and ears to torment.  The rain ceases, the sky clears, the winds calm, and a stillness settles over all of life.  Peace comes again to the land.  And it is no different with the heart.  At times, when we walk the one true path, we must battle through a raging storm, so that we may find the peace that exists on the other side.  But for how long does that peace last?  Does the voice of our heart ever cease its constant urging? 

When we seek out our dreams, we must do battle with many elements, with many foes.  During the battle, the heart must know when to defend and parry the blows of our enemies, and it must know when the time is right to strike, to swing the sword that will ultimately defeat them, and lay them by the wayside.  The heart suffers during the struggle for our dreams, but ultimately, if you persevere, you will succeed - always.  After the final battle, when the dream has been realised, so to do you enter into a time of tranquility and peace.  You have achieved all that you set out to achieve, you have your heart's desire, you have arrived at the end of your path.  You can sit down and relax, you can look back upon the trials and the tribulations, the times of sufferings, the moments when you thought you had failed, the times of victories that kept you pushing on, you see and feel the scars of battle that you know you will carry for the rest of your days, and you feel a deep satisfaction at having arrived at the place that you intended, of having achieved your dream.  You will live out the rest of your days with all of this knowledge and you will be content and happy.

This is how I thought it was going to be.  After I achieved my dreams, I would find peace and contentment within my heart.  It is true, that I did for a short while, for a time I was happy and I did bask in the glow of my success - actually, I still do - but there is always a feeling that will not, that cannot ever go away.  It sits in my heart, sometimes quietened by the joys of knowing all that I have achieved, by the flying of my soul as it soars on the wings of our successes, but the voice is never truly gone.  Even in the times of great elation, I can hear its whisper of gentle urging.  It tells me that we are not yet finished, that there is still more to be done.  This voice speaks to me of other dreams yet to be fulfilled, of other quests that are yet to be begun, it shows to me that the path is not ended, and I hear the truth of its words, nay, I know the truth of its words.  These words fall heavily, raining down like a hammer on the anvil, each one ringing out with chimes and the weight of truth.

There was a time when I would never have described myself as ambitious or driven.  I was content to follow, happy to be a nameless part of the herd, lost within the safety of the many, never seeking to stand out and to be different.  But I could not remain that way.  Always, there was a feeling inside of me that I could, that I should, do more, that more importantly, I should be me.  I struggled for many years to find my voice, to be able to stand with confidence and to show the world who I was.  Eventually, I did, it was inevitable, I only needed to find the right place and to channel my energy.  From that day forth, I realised that many things were achievable in life, that I could rise above the afflictions, that I could distance myself away from all that I had been and known before, that I could be my true self.  With this realisation came ambition and a drive to achieve.  All of the problems and the sufferings I had known for those many years and overcome, fuelled me.  I knew that if I could overcome all of those things, then I could overcome anything, and so I began my journey, my quest to see just how far I could take things.  I became driven to succeed in whatever I set my heart upon.

With this drive, came the realisation of my dreams.  I did not look on it as such at the time, but that is exactly what it was.  My drive brought to me opportunity, promotions, overseas business travel, and as each of these occurred, I thought I had reached my plateau, achieved what I had set out to achieve.  My heart always had different ideas.  I was happy for a short time and then I yearned for more.  I knew that I needed to keep on moving forward in order to grow, I was an unstoppable snowball rolling down the mountainside. 

Even now, in a different life, on a very different path, I am just the same.  My heart sets itself upon an idea, a dream that I wish to bring to reality within my waking world, and as soon as the seed is sown, I am unable to shake it.  Of course, I can choose to ignore it, I can turn my head away and refuse to listen to that quiet voice inside of my heart, to ignore its urges and its calls to arms.  But I am unable to ignore it for long.  I know that eventually, I must come back to it, to water the seed that has put out its small tendrils within the soils of my soul, that has gotten itself fixed around my heart, and I must tend to it, I must nurture it, for it is me and I am it.

You see, life is like that.  The storm may pass us by but the truth is that the next one is soon to arrive.  The peace and tranquility we find in between is our time for respite, a chance to recover our strength, an opportunity to internally digest and comprehend the lessons that our previous battle has shown to us, it is a time for contemplation, for recovery and it is a time to look to the future, to the next storm, the next battle that is coming.  For the storm will always come and when it does, you must be ready.  A heart that walks the path is a heart that can never lie dormant for long, it can never sleep.  It knows that path and it wants to keep on seeking, to keep on taking that next step.  And like it or not, you are going to go with it.  It is the way of the dreamers.  It is the way of the heart. 

We, we of the path, of the dream, of the light, of the heart.  We hear the call and we follow.  With shield and sword do we walk to the battle, to confront our enemies.  Our shield we call Faith, our sword we call Courage.  We shall never truly be defeated, for we are the walkers of light, on our one true path.  For we are the heartstrong, and always shall the light show us the way.

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Finding Peace

Have you ever drawn up a list of the attributes that you seek in a future life partner?  I have long known the attributes that I seek, that I want to find in the person that I love and will hopefully spend the rest of my life with.  I thought I had the list down pat, established a long time ago, no need to go back and make some changes, no need for any further editing.  Then only this morning, have I come to the realisation that I was missing one very crucial element.  One more important item that is needed if you are to find what you are seeking in a partner for life.  And that one thing of which I speak is peace.

When I speak of peace, I mean the kind of peace that you find when you look into the face of your partner.  The peace that exists when you look into their eyes and find yourself lost in a moment.  When you take their hand and grasp it in your own.  When you lie against each other naked on the bed, skin on skin.  When you wrap your arms around them, hold them tight and breath in their scent, as your nose nestles within their hair.  When you watch the slow rise and fall of their chest and stomach as they lie breathing.  When they smile at you, and you know that this special smile, a smile that radiates their entire face, was meant only for your eyes.  In all of these moments, this is when we find and know peace.

When I think of this peace, I think of it as a home-coming.  Being so utterly and completely comfortable with the other person, that you feel that you have found the place that you belong in them.  A place where every thing feels right, just as it should be.  A place where your heart can rest, secure in the knowledge that here is the person that it had long sought, here is the other heart for which it had longed to find, here is the other star within the vastness of all of the universe that it needed to behold.  With this peace, a calmness ensues, and you embrace that calmness and make it your own.

I have known this feeling before.  I have known it but never considered to add it to my list.  Only last year I discovered peace in another soul.  I would look into her eyes, I would hold her hand, let my lips touch hers and I found a place that I could call home.  And I did.  I recognised this feeling in her, only I did not express it as peace.  I expressed it as being at home.  It was a deeply heartfelt feeling, a feeling that resonated within every fibre of my being.  As I held her, I felt that I belonged, that my search was finally come to an end.  And then it was gone.  Wrenched away from me, or was it that I wrenched myself from her?  It matters not, since my home was gone in either case.  Now my search is begun all over again, except this time, I know of one more thing that I need to find, one more thing to add to the list. 

What is the list?  I am sure that everyone has different views, everyone will have their own opinion, but this is my own list:-

Passion
Spirit
Friendship
Companionship
Great conversation
Fun and laughter
Intelligence
Supportive
Compassion, understanding and empathy
Caring
Physical attraction
Amazing sex and high sex drive
Similar interests and pursuits
Articulate
Adventurous
Whacky and a little off beat
Must love dogs and cats and animals in general
Must want a family
Peace

I cannot tell you, nor can I teach you how to find this kind of peace.  All I can tell you is that when you do discover it, then you will just know it.  When you find it, please do not give it up easily, because it is a very special gift to behold.  It is a miracle.  It is love.  And love is every thing.

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