There are those out there whose brains are focused in on happy things. There are also amongst them whose minds are fraught with worry or depression because the hardships and trials of this world are too much to bear; Or their brain chemistry plays tricks on them so doctor's pump them full of pills but I believe in another brand. A brand of person whose mind, no matter what they set it to always turns everything into a battle.
Sometimes they come off as disciplined but war is chaotic so there are some bred for it who come off as chaos. The chaos is only intensified no matter how much they run from it.
I have always been fascinated with war and the duty that befits a soldier. In youth, I played soldiers with my friends and built military dictatorships in the woods in cities made from sticks.
As I got older, I dabbled in the social hierarchy of an animalistic group of boys but was never so satisfied as when they went to war with each other and I got to serve as a soldier for either side.
My father thought wrestling would scratch the itch but he was wrong. Wrestling was just a fool's errand because it involved no strategy, just me (a little fat kid) getting his butt kicked; most likely because I was severely underpowered going against a much larger force in the midst of a testosterone fueled tank battle. Not that a suicide mission frightened me. On the contrary, I went in the ring every time and fought my hardest against unwinnable odds. I came out beaten and torn and not once shed a tear for myself. At my last match, I got so angry that I lost by points but I never let him put me on the ground. No, although it was physical battle, it was no war.
In highschool I dropped a bunch of weight and found delight in things like our Jewish fraternity which made use of a militant leadership structure with gubernatorial rewards that would have made the Roman Senate green with envy. Soldiers who fought to be the best chapter in the league were venerated with women and prizes the same way a Roman legion would have been.
Ironically, this was around the time that I first thought about joining the military and my parents discouraged it as they insisted that we were in the middle of a war and they would not watch their son go to his death.
More to the irony, later in life, after I had finished highschool, a friend in that same Jewish youth group did go off to war and was killed by a roadside bomb. I still remember driving in a procession to the graveyard and seeing the people lining the streets as we went by and crying because no finer a soldier had I ever met then my friend Jeremy Kane.
Back to highschool, however, my parents were delighted in my involvement with theater, however, I played Rolf and Herr Zeller in The Sound of Music and delighted that both were soldiers; Comberferre in Les Miserables who I delighted that he was the philosophy behind the revolution in the books and in real life as I read the story, an actual person fought and died just as he did in the June Rebellion in Paris. Oliver was not so much a war but there was a struggle of penniless orphans fighting to survive by any means necessary and Guys and Dolls was Gangsters vs. Police. I just happened to be on the side of the bad guys. So theater was all about actually living war for me.
In my dreams, I have often dreamed about the struggle between heaven and hell and great winged creatures vs. Demons or humanity is a running theme in my writing.
I get great pleasure from standing with the soldiers at monument terrace in Lynchburg these days because although I've never fought in a war or been enlisted, I still fight battles in my life and mind. I still think with duty and honor and what would the soldier do? I have followed orders to the letter and when I haven't I have always thought of the end goal as a general would and sought to win a battle for the majority of people with the least amount of casualties (however they represent themselves). When someone gives me kudos for anything I've done I continue to use the same phrase to say "your welcome;" I tell them simply, "it's an honor to serve."
As we all go down the path of life, we will all fight our own battles and although there may not be many people as entrenched in battle in their minds as I am, we all seek to serve. The Bible says we cannot serve two masters so above all serve God first; but in service to him, serve his creation: your fellow man and woman as best you can. For each one of us is a soldier and until the lay us down to rest, welcome to the war recruits...
