Here be dragons

01/01/20

Reckless Rambles

By: Chase L. Currie

“Here be dragons to be slain, here be rich rewards to gain;
If we perish in the seeking, why, how small a thing is death!”
― Dorothy L. Sayers

I don’t too much like the idea of people saying, ‘this is going to be your year, all the good things are going to happen this year to you.’ I find it disheartening at best, and at worse a lie. This year (2020) will be the same as last year as long as you make it the same choices or mistakes. You can change the outcome of your year by doing everything different then what you did last year. But I understand why people say this, I get it is meant to be a good thing.

                Of course, maybe, they don’t see the underline beliefs in the statements. They wish you good luck. They hope fate smiles on you.

                I don’t believe either in fate or luck. I believe in God and His path in my life. I know God may open the doors for me, but it is I who must walk through those doors. Fate or luck has nothing to do with it.

                This year (2020) is going to have it’s up and downs as every year does. You will face joys and agonies like you have never believed, but when those dragons come roaring, remember you slew the dragons of yesteryear.

                But you should have goals for this year. You should sit down today or yesterday, maybe, tomorrow or on a long walk, come up with the list of goals. The steppingstones to tomorrow and the years come. I have …

                I have written a list in my journal of my goals for the upcoming year. (I will not show you the list, it is not for your eyes.) I will tell you one thing … tow things … on my list. The first, I’m in the works to going back to school; I want to teach. I want to stand in front of a classroom talking about all the things I have learned over my life. I want to share. I want to be a teacher, a professor one day. So, I’m heading back to school in the Fall, following the path God had laid before me, but I can already see the fires from the dragons in the caves ready to come out ahead of me.

                I need to be ready for the battles.

                (Do you ever wonder in the depths of the night where the idea of dragons came from? I do more than I should, I guess. I wonder if Carl Yung thought about how the writers of old made the troubles of life into the dragons in myths, do you think he did? I hope he did.)

                But this is not what I wish to tell you about …

                What I wanted to write about is something I was listening to the other day. I stumble over a podcast with Jocko and Dakota Meyer in it and spend most of the day with their voices plugged into my ears. Dakota Meyer was a Marine Sniper who won the Medal of Honor, I won’t give away too much, but he didn’t too much want the medal. He wrote a book called ‘Into the Fire,’ and I think you should read it.

                But near the end of the podcast, he started to talk about his PTSD which made my ears stand up even more. He said one of the things he learned how to combat PTSD was to be aware of his emotions. When he started to feel them, he needed to name them, and by naming them, he could step back from them or he had an enemy to fight.

                 Huh, I thought, that is a good idea. Even if you don’t have PTSD.

                In fact, I let the idea sit with me for a few days, wondering if it would work.

                Today I feel sad –

I shall name you, Loki, for you lie greatly to me.

                Right now, I feel hopeless –

                                                Your name shall be Cloak, for you are all around me.

                And then I would talk to Loki or Cloak like they were real people. I could speak to them the way I talk to my friends, work things out with them, and in the end, feel a sort of peace from it.

                It worked. Name your emotions, speak with them, and then overcome them. It is not a new idea; Yung believes in archetypes which we know call Jungian archetypes, but he also believes we all hold these archetypes within us. When I first heard about these archetypes, I thought it would be a fun idea to make up my own within my Internal Mythology (more on this later), name them as if they were characters in my story. It worked for a while. I have a few journals where they lived, but the practice died off for some reason.

                Now, with naming my emotions, the idea is coming back.

                Why? Why am I doing this?

                Not so much be happier, or to have deep joy in my life, but to simply be able to become stronger in the year to come. I have no idea what monsters are out there in the shadows of tomorrow. I shudder to think about the tragedies about to be laid at my feet, but I know I want to be able to face them. I don’t want to let Loki led me along for days, whispers dark lies to me.

                I don’t to be warp in Cloak’s arms for weeks at a time.

                I want to step up to the caves where the flames dance from the breathing dragons and face them when they come storming out. I don’t want my nihilism to be the core of my thoughts throughout the day. I no longer will let the sins of the past chaining me to a hopeless tomorrow. I don’t want to be free from this stuff, that would mean I would be dead, I simply to be able to face them in the armor of the Lord, and the strength He has given me. That is why I’m learning to be stronger this year, change my thoughts, and work on softening my heart.