The Dalcassian
The Strong Arm Uppermost!
Dalcassian Blog
Some Things Stay the Same
Posted on Jan 11, 2012Filed Under: musingsTime changes people, but some things stay the same. Memories, like portals to another dimension, make the past come alive again. It is part of being human. To recall is not merely to compute that a memory, like a stick of computer RAM, is still present. It is to re-envision oneself alive and moving in an environment of bliss or pain (we instinctively forget all the in-between).
Things we would have changed, things we should have done, echo like the mourning of a funeral dirge. The voices of friends drown us like the ocean washing upon a shore. The taste of a kiss pulls us back to an intimate embrace, like a magnet through time. Regrets are the hardest and strongest of all memories.
We can only hope that God, and the people he puts in our lives, allow us to build up new memories that do not erase, but do shine brighter with time.
The First Rite - The Beginning - The Seed Germinates with Distant Hope - The Litanies of Scorning
Posted on Jul 13, 2011Filed Under: religiousWhat follows below is a reflection of mine. Original intent was for it to follow a series of trials and ordeals and be a rite of initiation for a lay order of Catholic Knights...essentially like the Knights of Columbus but on steroids...an idea of mine i've thought about for years.
My storytelling side came out pretty fast though and it kind of turned into a much shorter, Catholic version of Pilgrim's Progress with a touch of Psalm 23 haha
Anyway, I just wanted to share some of my reflections, for whatever it's worth, with some good Catholic men out there
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The First Rite – The Beginning – The Seed Germinates with Distant Hope – The Litanies of Scorning
(To begin in complete darkness while kneeling)
Darkness veils our mortal flesh.
Blackness assails our immortal souls.
We have been steeped in the filth.
Led by the blind into the pit of corruption,
Where the stench of eternal death forever consumes.
Leading others in arrogance to the open grave,
Where demons gnaw on exposed wounds.
Our souls have bled dry in a desert of broken promises.
Our intentions twisted to foul actions,
As rusted scrap metal bent to form a trap.
Behold, there is a single light (light 1 candle, beside the Eucharist or a catholic altar if possible)
A glimmer of hope in a world of darkness.
Behold, it is a man who carries burdens on his back.
Woe to him, for the burdens are many.
Dark hearts bleeding dry,
A thousand faces ashamed and consumed, writhing in agony.
The mass grows as big as this world.
And it weighs upon his shoulders.
His back is hunched, his knees bent.
His arms are uplifted and cling to the weight.
His muscles are taut and shake with exhaustion.
Though the burden is awful and foul to behold,
He holds firm as though it were something precious.
As if it were a small child he would save from a mortal fall.
But demons protrude from the burden’s depths,
Gnawing on faces within and devouring flesh.
A foul pestilence they leave behind:
Theft and rape. Murder and lies.
Pornography, emotional abuse, sexual abuse,
abandonment, greed, prostitution,
slavery, hate, destruction, death.
Death.
Your heart slows to a dying murmur as the pestilence chokes.
You look up and search for the man through the clouds of filth.
You glance his hands, his grip still holds.
His face looks down without a word of regret,
Though he grimaces with the pain.
As you peer up at him while you are splayed on the ground,
A horrid realization strikes your mind.
Blood drips into the eyes of the colossus man who stands above you.
And you see that this noble hero lifts up the massive burden
Only because it is aimed to smash you,
And you are enchained beneath the shadow of its crushing weight.
You cry out in desperate fear and try to break free,
But the tumultuous storm of pestilence muffles your voice,
And the cold iron chains tighten of their own will.
Just when the poison vapor will let you see no more,
Just when the howling of the burden-demons has nearly blotted out all sound.
There is a loud crack.
(Use the sound of thunder if available)
A drop of moisture lightly falls upon your brow.
A feeling of horror strikes you, for you know it is His blood!
Yet the feeling subsides and is replaced with an unmistakable peace.
A comforting silence warms your heart
And the malformed burden-thing above has disappeared.
Darkness still veils the land, but a soft glow emanates from above your eyes,
Where the blood of this God-man fell onto your skin.
With this light, you can see.
(Each Neophyte lights 1 candle and holds it)
Your chains lie scattered and bent,
As though a steel industrial machine has tore them to pieces.
And so you stand. (Each Neophyte stands)
A loud voice calls out your name.
(Loudly and emphatically read off the names of each Neophyte. Read their saints name followed by their parental first name. If the Neophyte does not have a saints name, he must be confirmed and choose one prior)
“Follow,” commands the God-man with a voice at once thunder and gentle spring.
You see that he is full of light and the darkness recedes before him.
And so you follow in his footsteps.
Days pass. Weeks perhaps. It is a tiresome journey.
Your eyes grow tired, your limbs full of pain.
You stumble off the God-man’s path.
To your horror, the burden demons are there,
And they grasp onto you with flesh tearing thorns.
They have been there all along,
Waiting for one wrong step.
For a moment, you believe you are lost once more.
But a voice seems to speak, “I will not abandon you as an orphan.”
You know that it is the God-man who somehow speaks.
At once you see that the light from his blood has not faded, but grown stronger.
Reaching out and touching the demon spawned thorns,
The light moves from your forehead through your heart, and out your fingertips.
With that, the burden demons cry out and depart!
Yet beneath where they had trampled lies a woman,
She shields her face from the weight of the burdens that had been there.
Crumpled into the fetal position is her frail body.
With tender care you lift her on high,
Her sobs are soaked into your shoulders strong.
You walk.
“My yoke is easy, my burden Light,”
Speaks the voice that you know now to be the very Spirit of the God-man.
You smile, for your limbs feel strengthened for the extra weight,
And the narrow path is lain out before you once more.
The demons cannot hide from your recognizing gaze,
They swarm all around the edges of the God-man’s path.
But you no longer fear the terror of the night.
His voice speaks within your bounding heart,
“Love the Fallen, scorn the Dark.
Forget not the ensnarement from which you came,
So you may detest its foul trap.
Wicked you were found, clean you have become.
Powerless you were bound, anointed you have become.
Lost you wandered, now the path is lighted before you.
Purposeless you waited, now you carry a precious treasure within and without.
I am the good shepherd.
Follow me.”
The Beginning & Ends of Marines
Posted on May 10, 2011Filed Under: musingsI thought today was just another tuesday night in "The Mansion," the three story domicile three blocks from a warm North Carolina beach where myself and three other single Marine Officers live like kings. Home around 1715 today. Work days are shorter since I began handing off duties to prepare for when i leave the active duty Marine Corps. I take a quick nap and then head to the third floor, where you can see a golden sunset over the bayside of the island while you cook. I prepare for my usual Iron Chef routine: throw some cheese on a tortilla, zap it in microwave, dinner in 30 seconds...but I am dissapointed...no cheese left. After taking an inordinate amount of time to cook and eat some eggs, I head downstairs to unwind to some music, reading and perhaps 1 or 2 more job applications.
It is then that I remember, with some discontent, that I need to finish preparing my "Blues." Our company of around (a bare-bones) 150 Marines is hosting a traditional Mess Night formal dinner event tomorrow! There is drying, ironing, shining, aligning, and the clipping of "Irish pendants," known to the rest of the world as stray stitches or unkempt tiny fabric pieces sticking out. I run a finger along my white pants as I carefully put them back onto a hanger. With that, I am suddenly bolted out of my routine and down memory lane.
I can remember like it was yesterday standing in an auditorium in 2006 looking up with intense longing to a stage where an assortment of Marine Corps uniforms were displayed on mannequins in gleaming glory. Those were dark days for me. It was my first time at Officer Candidate School and civilians were measuring us so that they could prepare our uniforms for when we made it through...if we ever made it through. A Gunnery Sergeant instructor came up to me at that moment and whispered, "Don't bother going up there O'Brien, you'll never wear them." Only a few times in my life have I felt that I would give all that I had for something, yet it still was beyond reach. This was one of those times.
6 weeks. "Bulldog" course they called it. May seem nothing compared to over double that for enlisted bootcamp. Every enlisted person I met in there said it was more intense. 10 weekers who go to OCS after college or working in the civilian world will say the same. I'd argue that the 4 Staff Non-Commissioned Officer Instructors who mentally destroyed each platoon made up for missed time by not being there long enough for themselves to be worn out, making it harder for us. All in all it doesn't matter though. It's bloody tough for everyone who tries to be a Marine.
The rest of that summer of 2006 is a wash of memories...nearly passing out in the shower from heat exhaustion and dehydration, holding up rifles til arms gave out, screaming at the top of my lungs every other second, writing essays and orders in the dark, getting 3-4 hours of sleep a night, and otherwise being totally humiliated and ridiculed by instructors. Two memories stick out above others though. One, a certain mean, fire-pissing Staff Sergeant screaming at the top of his lungs an inch from my ear that he was not going to let me skate by. Two, a Captain telling me before I walked out the door to go home before the rest of the platoon that, one day, I would be an officer.
As we left, one kid told me he had realized he was doing this for his dad and he had no desire to be a Marine. But a tear, which I quickly hid, dripped down my face as we drove away. I would've given anything to stay in that sh&%-hole. Around 35% of my platoon also ended that summer in the same predicament as me. But deep in my heart, i knew the staff sergeant had been right.
I trained harder than I ever had up to that point in the year of 2007. Which included changing my workout routine from 70% biceps/triceps, 30% running, to 70% running, 30% biceps and triceps :D I remember running on the college track with a bench on my back for extra weight late Friday night while the rest of the campus partied. I remember Captain Sea Thomas, my ROTC instructor, the best mentor as a Marine and family man that I could have asked for, teaching me to have a bias for action. I remember field exercises and land navigation. And I remember imagining every time I trained myself saying "screw you" or some other pejorative statement to the Staff Sergeant who had screamed in my ear telling me I couldn't skate by and make it.
One year later, and $40,000 poorer for having lost my scholarship, I went to OCS again. Long story short, I went through the same ordeal again all the way to the finish and graduated. One, now comical moment, I like to reflect on from this time around: my platoon commander, Captain Fleming, telling me in regard to the highly resistant cellulitis bacteria that had swollen up my entire left calf and put me on bedrest per the doctor's orders, "If they have to cut off your leg, then that's what they have to do. That may be what it takes." I got the message: ignore the corpsmen and doctors, pretend you have no pain, and train with everybody else if you want to be a Marine....and hope you recover
My story really is nothing special. It is typical. Every Marine sacrifices so much just to become a Marine. Yet that is only the beginning. What of back to back deployments overseas? What is the cost to families and friends? 3 of my Marines faced divorce during or after just 1 deployment in 2009. 2 of those had kids. What is the cost to them? That is just one platoon gone for one year. It takes so much more effort, faith and sacrifice for a Marine or servicemember to maintain a relationship of any kind while on active duty. I too have experienced this.
But above all, what of those who have met their end on this world at a young age? Each one a tragedy. Each one causing a thousand fractures in their respective families. I'll never forget the time I stood at attention in salute as three flag draped caskets were loaded onto a plane late at night in Camp Bastion, wondering what families this horror would arrive to in the States. Despite this, what the civilian world doesn't understand is that most Marines are eager to deploy and most Marines at one time or another are, were or wanted to be in the infantry battalions on the front line. That's what it means to be a Marine: to be the best, to be the most daring, to give it all up and then some more.
The "Mess Night" I will attend tomorrow is a formal dinner for servicemembers only (unlike our well known balls). It is a conglomeration of hundreds of years of Naval tradition packed into an evening of comraderie and fun. The ceremonies even contain throwbacks to the days of Old England. For instance, the pre-determined request for the mess guests to take a restroom break is worded, "I request to shed a tear for Lord Admiral Nelson." The event will be bittersweet for me, since I will hang my Blues up for good shortly after. I will always be a Marine, but I am moving on to a new stage of life. And so I find it fitting to reflect at this time on my brothers in arms, many who would have been about my age, who never got the chance to move on to a new stage of life. We will never forget you. May Jesus lead your souls to heaven.
The most moving part of the Mess Night ceremony by far is the toasts. Below I have quoted the toast for those who were killed in action:
“Marines, I too have a toast. I would direct your attention to the rear where there is an empty chair and a single lone table draped in black. The military way of life is filled with much symbolism. The table provides a way to tell us that members of our profession, whom we call “brothers,” are unable to be with us this evening. It is set for one, yet there are many represented by that single chair. The table is draped in black, symbolizing the color of mourning; the ultimate sacrifice, a table set in honor of our fallen comrades. The single lighted candle reminds us of the flame of eternal life and that the memory of our fallen comrades will be with us always. The Purple Heart medal displayed to reflect the infliction of wounds and the ebb of life in battle. The identification tags blank, yet they could bear the name of Marines of every creed and color, and from every state in the Union. The dinner setting inverted, they dine with us in spirit only. Those who have died so that we may live, our former comrades who have earned the glory and have given to us the respect and pride that we, as Marines, hold so dear.” ...(pause)... “Marines and honored guests, let us honor our fellow Marines, who have gone before. Mr. Vice, a toast to all Marines who have died for our beloved Corps.”
Out of Control
Posted on Mar 6, 2011Filed Under: musingsA personal reflection on trusting in a living God
In Apocalypto, when Jaguar Paw stares through the Mayan altar stained with human blood and we see his trapped pregnant wife and son far away desperately calling him back, chills run up and down my spine! His fellow tribesman tells him to journey well after death but he answers "No, I can't go, not now." As if, despite his imminent death, nothing will stop him from returning to his family to protect and preserve them. Those who have seen the movie know that he doesn't fail in this either... This primal urge to provide for and protect a soul-mate and family strikes a chord deep in my being.
Yet here I am, on the closer end to 30yrs, with no wife, or girlfriend anymore for that matter, about to change careers and move to who knows what state. I feel directionless. Purposeless. It is not that i'm simply anxious to live a married life. Much more than that: I desire a person whom I can serve and love and share a unique connection and all of my inner self with. With love, everything is made new again, everything is a gift. (Example: a quick stop to the grocery store b/c i've been living off peanut butter turns into deciding what creative meal to make to please the other, and stopping and getting ice cream and walking along the boardwalk just because.)
Lately i could just scream with how the things I want from life seem totally out of my control! Thoughts of despair and anger have plauged me at every waking moment. I must seem like an angry toddler to God. Yet parents feed even impatient toddlers. Why do I feel like i'm starving? Perhaps I am. We are coming into Lent, a time for fasting and denying oneself. A time when we remember that "Man does not live by bread alone." Coincidence? Does God have a greater plan that I don't see? Of course I believe in that idea, but do I live it?
This afternoon, one of my pre-confirmation students interrupted a small group discussion on what they can do to better serve God and neighbor in Lent. He angrily asked, "Why does this even matter? Isn't God just an idea anyway?" After overcoming my shock that one of my students didn't even believe all this time...i tried to explain how God is more than a mere idea. I know that that conversation was worth more than any lesson I ever gave him. Yet do I truly live out what it means to trust in a living Lord who heals and raises us from the dead? Not just bodily death, but the death of despair and loneliness and hurt?
And so my reflection comes full circle. What does it mean to trust in a living God? Not an abstract higher being. Not a soda machine that pops out what we want. What does it mean to trust in a God who performs miracles, and yet also allows hardship in creation? A Being who hears our every word and thought and desires our joy and happiness, yet sometimes allows suffering, though it pains Him?
Every Sunday, we Christians "worship" our God. But what does it mean to worship? I would answer that to worship is to place someone/something at the heart of your being. To put all else below it, to make everything else revolve around it, as a lover's world revolves around their beloved. Every person has primal instincts and basic, essential desires that are mapped out to their personality and humanity. But to worship God is to place Him, not as an abstract idea, but as a living Saviour, at the heart of all these desires.
So I have learned that yes, my life is out of control. Desires that are fundamental to my being are unfulfilled and some wounds are not healed. But I've learned that that is alright. God knows my heart's desires and sometimes you have to be out of control in order to put God in control. It is impossible to truly worship, or to allow God to raise us from the dead without doing this.
I Want to Know What Love Is?
Posted on Dec 21, 2009Filed Under: musingsThe 25th draws near and soon people all over this rock floating in the galaxy will light a candle, open a package, read a card, sit around vegetation, and spend extra time with family and friends. What is the motivation, I ask myself? …For some it’s just a routine, for many the heart of the holiday is deep seated religious belief: that God somehow became man. As a philosophical melancholic prone to thinking too deeply about everything, the thought sparks a fire of emotion deep inside me and I ask myself, why? The answer is of course that if God became man, then somehow our suffering has meaning, somehow, in a dark and cold universe, the fire of Love reigns supreme. But I (like Foreigner) want to know what Love is. Does anyone understand what the crap it actually means to love something? And why are people infected with trying to capture things outside of their human shells in order to find Meaning?
At face value, love seems simple, and I suppose the execution is the simplest thing in the world. One might say: To love is to care deeply about and commit fully to somebody, and to have them reciprocate equally back to you. But what is to care? Do I not care for and commit to my clothes and my house? Can I call that love? Certainly not in the same measure! So there are varying degrees of love.
The Bible says to love is to lay down one’s life for a friend. Supreme sacrifice seems sufficient as evidence of love to us. I might hesitate before laying my life on the line for a complete stranger, but I certainly would not hesitate in protecting my sisters or brothers or cousins. Therefore, it seems the deeper love is, the more its object approaches infinite value in our minds. Yet how is this logical? How is it that one person could be worth more than the universe? Emotionally, I completely identify. Mathematically and rationally it makes no sense. The only answer is that Love itself is Meaning. Love implies Value.
Take sexual love between a man and a woman: Why should one mortal be satisfied with another mortal for a lifetime? Why should I place infinite value on one mortal as opposed to another in respect to marriage? It is illogical, yet it is ingrained into nearly all modern cultures. Western culture has become more promiscuous, but by and large people everywhere still dream of marrying their ideal mate. Even the most “free loving” players will usually admit they see themselves marrying before they get too old. Why? Because people are terrified of being alone! They need to attain a relationship with some depth before they are abandoned by all humanity. If we are alone, we feel that we have no value, and we see no value in any other thing outside ourselves either. Why is it that the Music Man (ok, I grew up on musicals) knew there were birds in the sky, but never heard them singing (no, never heard them at all) “until there was you?” Why is it that we are so terribly inadequate on our own?
While most people would not call a promiscuous lifestyle of love making with multiple (and constantly new) partners True Love, perhaps it is indeed a lesser, corrupted form. I’m willing to bet the best of “players” seek their prizes largely because of the mental process of self affirmation each produces. Essentially, they too are trying to attain value and it can only be attained by looking through someone else’s eyes.
Are these impulses mere evolutionary mechanics? Are the needs of our being illogical wirings that force us to cling to another person until we have produced little versions of ourselves? If they are evolutionary, then the evolutionary process is flawed. Just the other day a Marine out here took his own life because he couldn’t endure the anguish. Our common Need is more than a drive to reproduce; it is a gaping hole that sucks in all existence. Our beings are tainted with Black Holes. Just like the invisible, star crushing, light consuming phenomena that astronomers spot only by what it blots out, we know the holes in our hearts by how the value of all things in existence is so easily voided deep within us.
The paradox is Value is not to be found in any object. Value is found in Love, an inter-action between beings. When we stop looking for Value in mere objects, the gaping hole in us seems to be less a wound and more a fuel to the flames of that (illogical) inter-action. Just as scientists have recently discovered that the black holes of the universe actually seem to hold solar systems and possibly even galaxies in balance, so then our Need must make the inter-action of Love burn bright.
We have seen that there are varying degrees of love, but the truest form seems to make its respective objects approach infinite value. If Love implies Value, the question becomes: at what point is Love great enough to turn the gaping Need in us completely on its head? At what point does loneliness no longer exist at all? Here’s where Christmas comes in. As enormously incomplete as Adam must’ve been without Eve, the love of two mortals can still never actually reach infinite value. This is why we thirst for Christmas. This is why there will always be religions and why Christianity will always be pre-eminent. Christianity gives us the hope that God himself is Love for us in all its infinite perfection. And if Love is inter-action, then God’s love was acted out by Him becoming a wretched Man. Finally, if one mortal praising another mortal above all others in marriage or an act of self sacrifice is paradoxical, then God becoming a mortal and dying for mortals is the most paradoxical of all paradoxes.
Love, and Christmas, seem illogical…but I’m okay with that. If there is a Supreme God, it is necessary that he be a Mystery. So, I guess I’ll never fully know what Love is. But I do know that, as with the Music Man, it makes me hear the birds sing. It puts a smile on my face when kids open gifts and when people huddle near a fire on a cold, New England, winter night.
While I can’t spend this Christmas with the loved ones that bring so much joy to my life, I can (and will) stare up at the same stars twinkling above you, and kindle a hope that Love itself did come into the world, enabling me to appreciate the value of an entire universe!
The Coliseum Generation
Posted on Oct 26, 2009Filed Under: politicalOur President recently said, “I have two daughters…first off I’m going to teach them morals…but if they make a mistake, I’m not going to punish them with a baby.” I have respect for the position of Mr. Obama. I am sworn first to the Constitution, and then to obey his orders and all lawful orders of my superiors. I intend to do so. As a citzen, however, I must say those words sicken me.
Glen Beck (we finally got Fox news up from a new satellite, only had CNN out here in Helmand province before) is right on when he talks about the “Me” generation. Usually I think Glen Beck is a little over the top…He tries too hard with his witty criticisms and ends up seeming like an angry nerd who is a little uncomfortable on camera. Tonight, when i saw a little of him on the late hours of watch, I thought he was right on. I identify less and less with today’s generation. Its heroes are not my heroes. Its dreams are not my dreams. From a historian’s perspective, I feel like a Roman soldier clinging to the Republic’s past as the Empire crumbles.
My generation wants it all and wants it now. No consequences. No accountability. No first place winners in school, everybody gets a trophy. No winners. No losers. We won’t punish bullies. “Play nice” we say. We don’t believe in “violence” (we proclaim peace with a spine of jelly). A quick spank is a crime, but it’s ok to scream and curse at children instead when they refuse to obey (until we hit them with our hands or worse). What we don’t believe in is discipline, and it makes sense that so many of our children are selfish and demanding, because they learned it from their parents.
We’re all starving for love. Most of our popular music is still centered around this. Yet we poison ourselves into degrading love-making into a detached fix after a good night of drinking. On top of that we say: I deserve the pill and the forceps to kill my baby so I can continue an easy life. Our generation demands a right to have sex whenever they want, with whoever they want, and to go on living like singles (read: like children). Babies are a punishment to us because we don’t believe in family, and because babies demand money, time and care. All those dollars and minutes should go to myself. I deserve your money. I deserve everything. I will sue you if I fall and break my leg in your yard. I deserve free medicine. I deserve all the money of all the rich people. I vote for my officials based on whether they give me big bucks. I worship hollywood stars, but laugh and jeer when they fall. I am the audience in the Coliseum: the mob cheering for their hero, and then two minutes later gawking at the bloody mess of his corpse. And give me free bread while i’m watching! In the end, another’s death matters little, because it’s all about me.
I, the author here, am far from perfect. I’ve made as many mistakes as the next man, but I believe in something more than myself. I don’t hate America. I love my country. I joined the Marines to protect it, and to lead and care for its sons and daughters. But the war in Afghanistan is not the only one being fought. There is a constant political, cultural and spiritual war on the homefront, and this one will ultimately decide the fate of the Great Experiment for another generation’s history books.
Movies that make me believe it's not all lost
Posted on Feb 18, 2009Filed Under: musings
It’s movies like Fireproof that make me believe our culture is not totally lost. After having the movie recommended by members of my family, I saw the cover on a rack in the Marine Corps Exchange and decided to pick it up. I’m surprised, but very glad, that a movie like this is readily available for purchase to the general public.In Fireproof, we see the war for an all but lost marriage unfold. In the daily struggles, the protagonist realizes that the values he holds to as a fireman apply to his whole life. Courage, fortitude and care are required no less in a marriage than in the flames of a burning inferno.
Perhaps the most outrageously true part of the film, however, is its argument that a couple cannot
possibly have the latter without God. The protagonist reaches a point where it is no longer worth it for him to try. This is when he realizes his need for Christ. Without God to give purpose to your life, and without a Christ-like love of your spouse, (which becomes stronger even when there is no longer any benefit to trying), any marriage will fail.I wish I could say the acting quality was phenomenal. With the exception of the two main characters, none of the parts are played by professional actors/actresses. Ironically, I thought the best acting work was done by a supporting part, played by a Captain in the Marine Corps.
Despite this shortcoming, I think more movies should be made with the less well known. I’m of the opinion that Hollywood actor’s and actresses are overused. We are so familiar with them that our culture almost cares more about their personal lives than their performance in films.
All in all, Fireproof is a must see. It has a unique story which speaks to the heart of America’s problems. Check it out:
http://www.fireproofthemovie.com/
and
http://www.fireproofmymarriage.com/Peace,
JonoThe "Paradox" of the Perfect Man
Posted on Jan 19, 2009Filed Under: musingsAs I browsed a popular catholic dating site I came across the profile of a woman who desired a man of "paradox." This searching female wanted a man of seeming opposites. She claimed to espouse these traits already in being "vixenly yet virtuous." I was inspired to write this after a few letters between us.
What she called a paradox, I merely call an ideal. From a historical perspective the chivalric knight comes closest to the ideal…although this is often romanticized beyond the actual. He is terrible to his enemies, but suddenly kind and tolerant to captives and the weak. He has a virtuous heart, yet passionately adores his lady, and desires to protect womankind as a whole. The brutish fury in man is balanced with idealistic compassion.
We no longer teach ideals, religion or morals. Therefore there is no balance and the ideal man is lost. We have gangsters who are nicknamed "solda’s" because they are tough, but they have no mercy, compassion or self-control. Moreover, their best known form of combat is the drive by shooting, which is cowardly when compared to the brutal duels of old.
On the other hand there is the light hearted modern man who is not tempered by the fury that comes from a sense of purpose. He is the wimp who fears to stand up for anything.
I think the same principle applies to relationships and the love life…although perhaps differently. The unbalanced man is still one of two extremes, the dominating, abusing tyrant; or the passive, un-passionate.When man is balanced, he is the ideal. This is a "paradox" only because the balanced man, the knight, is all but extinct in modernity.
-Jonathan
