What you feel is life, what you live is another story.

Tag: challenge

Rise! Dear Heart…

The floodgates have opened. The writer is back, his heart in tune, his soul awakened, and his growl nestled firmly against her breast. He has survived for this moment, and in honor of his survival a prose is born for those who are fighting for their own. He is in this spot because he willed himself to live, and he will never let those he loves shrink from the battles they have at hand.

For those who are struggling, who are facing battles unparalleled in their existence, he hears their growls as well. Even if they can’t yet hear that sweet sound, he hears it echoing in his own past. He knows and he hears, and soon his heart beckons them onward.

“Rise, dear heart, for you are loved and you are needed.”

The rains pour on the battlefields of our existence, making slick, muddy work for warriors climbing to the summits of their lives. Yet they must climb. They can never quit. They may rest and they may crumble, but they will rise to meet the challenge.

We must be vigilant, for each other, and not fail to reach our destination for a lack of effort. We must find our tribe, those pure hearts in tune with our own, who will push us forward. Those beautiful souls who sing our song and give us shelter when we need to rest. Such love is not romance, it is human and such power is not fickle, it is divine.

“Rise, dear heart, for though I cannot walk this path for you, I can walk it with you.”

Push, and walk hard, but know that if you call I will come. If you ask, you will find my hand reaching through the smoke and it will not let you go. I dare not pretend you cannot do this on your own, but know that you need not be alone as you face the storm. No matter the distance, I am here. No matter the reason, I am beside you.

I am no stronger than you. I have no superpower. You are everything I am, maybe even more. Yet in the ebbs and flows of this life I will carry you when I am strong and your are not. As I am able, I will lay with you in your despair and hold your broken pieces until you are able to mend them. Perhaps each act of such love will be returned, and perhaps not. The gift is in the giving, and the gift and the giver are one. Life itself demands nothing less of warriors.

For now know that you are cherished, you are needed, and you are not alone. You will have us at your back and you will not face the demons alone. We are so blessed to watch you rise, dear heart…

 

Action Breeds Confidence (Warrior Prose)

We are, my friends, in scary times.

In my life I’ve noticed that there are two types of occurrences in each and every experience. One is what we can control and the other is what we can’t. In challenging time I’ve learned to focus intently on what is within my control and much less on what I can’t. I’ve learned that action breeds the confidence to relegate fear. Inaction allows the fear to fester and can render us useless. I’ve also found that fear is often nothing more than a lack of confidence.

Here are some examples of what I mean.

Boxer’s Dread

I used to box in my younger years and I feared losing and getting “beat up”. Rather than be hamstrung by fear, I would train harder and push my body and training beyond what I thought I could handle. I wanted to be better conditioned, better trained and better prepared than my opponent could ever be or, at a minimum, believe I was. That confidence not only rid me of fear, but had me actually stir crazy while waiting for the fight to happen.

I could see my opponent in my mind and see him working his ass off to beat me. That vision would cause me to increase my intensity. I could not imagine losing to anyone because I was not prepared. If they were better than me it was going to be a contest of skill, will and preparation. They were going to have to bring their “A” game.

Fear in the Fire

In my time as a firefighter, fear was an ever-present companion. Firefighters die and get severely injured doing their thing and it happens quite frequently. I’ve lost four friends in the line of duty and have never met a more courageous person than a firefighter. We all know what we’ve signed up for, so fear would be there as a constant companion. Our trick is we learn to use fear as another tool we carry and not as something that prevents us from action.

Fear drove me to constantly be educated on the methods, technology, and science of fire/rescue work. I would train, study, train, and respond. Those efforts bred great confidence. While I could not control everything on a fire/rescue scene, my end would not be due to a lack of preparation.

The fear was still there, but I was able to use it to hyper focus on the skill set I had developed. At no time was I limited by my fearful companion. Action had bred confidence and confidence put fear in its place.

A Stroke of Action

Fast forward a couple of decades when I found myself in an emergency room having an ischemic stroke. I believed I was going to die or, at the very least, be incapacitated. I had lost control and strength in my limbs and was blind. Swallowing was a challenge and I felt that nothing was ever going to be a same if I was able to survive.

While lying there on my gurney waiting for a CAT scan, I decided on settle down. I began to meditate. In that state I could feel the dizziness, the weakness, and the fear. I also could feel something else; a calm and it spoke to me. Not in English, but in a language that spoke directly to my inner intelligence.

“You are on this ride, and there is no getting off. Enjoy it, learn from it, and use it. You know what you need to do, so do it. The outcome is not guaranteed, but you can be an active participant in getting there.”

I did know what to do, and I decided to do it. I needed to trust my inner self and disregard what others told me.  In the process of healing, whatever that meant, I had to become an active participant and not just an observer.

So I employed everything I had always employed. I approached even the most menial work with joy and intensity.

The first mission was get my sight back. I would visualize my eyes working again and the neural pathways being rerouted. The pain was intense as I would open my eyes to check my progress but I even approached that with joy. Soon, I was able to see again and although I still have some trouble with my eyes, I am nearly fully recovered.

Learning to Walk Again

When it was time for me to learn to walk again, I would actually laugh at myself. This amazed my physical therapists and they would often ask me how I kept so positive.

“The last time I learned to walk I was too young to remember. I think its fun to act like a two-year old again. Besides, if I learned once I can learn again.”

I would visualize walking and work at it. Within a few weeks I went to walking with a walker, having two therapists holding onto a gait belt, to walking (then jogging) in the hallways. I would challenge myself in every way I could (I would walk endless laps in a pool, the waves challenging my balance). My balance took a while to recover, and I still have some issues, but I’ve learned to deal with them well.

In dealing with any issue I face I find that improvement always follows. If I approached them in fear, I could expect to do nothing but sit in my own swill.

The actions I took in this challenge kept me positive and out of the muck that fear would have created. Each time I would hear the voice of fear nibbling in my mind, I would do something to counter it. Action always was the antidote and it still is.

The question to ask yourself when in the presence of fear is “What can I do?” and never let the answer be “nothing”. Then do it and see what happens.

 

 

 

One Pane of Glass

Outside, a blizzard rages. Inside, I am comfortable, nestled nicely on a sofa beside her warm body, watching the driven flakes of snow head to meet others that have fallen before them. There is but one pane of glass that separates me from the wilds out there. Just one pane of glass between the me found in this comfortable place and the me begging to be in the place that calls me.

The slow drum and dribbles of the washing machine fills this space, a rhythmic, modern tune hummed inside while the wild, ancient song of winter whips outside. Still, in this comfort and safety my mind wonders out there, to the place where deep snow has buried the earth, where the winter winds blow hard in autumn, where the parts of me that existed well before my flesh was formed once played. I can feel the discomfort of the cold air on my skin. I can feel the challenge of moving in deep snow. I can feel the desire for survival well up inside me. It is a fire I’ve known well, built in the moments of darkness where no light was assured, kindled in those times when I was frozen to the bone.

The wild part of me wants to be challenged. The hunter in me wants to stalk his prey. The hunted in me wants to dare the hunter out from behind his tree. The beast in me wants to prove I can survive. The coward in me wants to push the beast out of his cave. Nothing brings me to life like answering the call of the wild, and nothing says home to me like the wilds themselves.

I once believed I had surrendered to fear. That was a lie told by fear itself. I had but given myself pause to regroup so that I could move forward a little bit more. Sometimes victories are not measured in miles but in inches, and sometimes victory looks like defeat. Defeat cannot, however, stain the soul that moves past the fear within him. Defeat cannot pierce the heart of the warrior who stands firm against the onslaught of the demonic hoards born inside his mind.

I fear heights, so I’ve climbed tall ladders to protect my brothers facing fire below. I’ve feared death, so life brought me to its doorstep to show me a truth. I feared sharing myself with others, so I tore off my veils and became a naked warrior ready to just be me. More fear comes, and I challenge it, often discovering what I will do and won’t do now has little to do with fear, but more with desire. While I fear skydiving, I answer less to that fear and more to the fact that I simply have little desire to jump out of an airplane.

If that desire grows, I will jump with a wild yell. That truth I learned, the one I mentioned before, was that a fear of death is a fear of life. I choose life, living as fully as I can in any moment even in those times when victory looks exactly like defeat. I will not let panes of glass get in my way, instead honoring the oath sworn on my lifebed. I will splinter any walls that get in my way, and step over the shards of windows shattered in answering the calls within.

I wonder if there are others, those intrepid souls who hear the calls of life lived before this one, and answer with all the might their hearts can muster. I wonder if there are souls out there now trudging through the deepest snow just for the challenge of it. I wonder if there are warriors out there who hear the call of hunter and prey, beast and coward, sinner and saint simultaneously and who, like me, feel at home in the forests that echo those calls. I wonder if we speak one voice, hear one song, and peer at hope through the same, lonely pane of glass.

Life is what we are given as a promise of our birth. Love helps us overcome the obstacles to life we are blessed to have fallen across our path. Truth is what binds life and love to a single, simple calling. Find life, discover love. Discover love, know truth. Love life in truth and never die again. Even as your final breath is drawn, it is the one who has discovered life who can never truly die.