During My Insanity...

Since I quit smoking, (almost 7 months), things have been pretty crazy. Blood/brain chemistry is nicotine free for the first time in 46 years. And it's just plain weird.

So, part of what I've been doing is enjoying fiction. Crazy, romantic fiction. The kind where heroes save the world in exotic ways and, of course, everyone is beautiful.

Lord of the Rings....Supernatural.....that kind of thing.

And here I am being depressed because our fight...our war...our "saving the world" is so mundane. So boringly, tiresomely banal. Arguing with idiots whose war banners are their hatred of George Bush or Sarah Palin, or Christians.

Sigh...

I get so tired of the sheer mediocrity of our opponents. Unfortunately, even the mediocre can win if there're enough of them, as we know too well.

But...and you'll think this is silly...but I had a strange thought that actually made me feel better.

It occurred to me that inside the story, the heroes didn't see their quests as romantic or exotic. They saw them as hard, serious, gritty, annoying, exhausting...entirely too real-world and commonplace. If you live in a world where monsters exist...fighting them isn't special or exotic, is it?

It just seems so to us.

If you live in a world where magic exists, hanging with wizards isn't much of a stretch.

It's only in the retelling that real-world campaigns become the quests of heroes.

Why does this make me feel better? Because from the point of view of Aragorn or Dean, the heroes of the Sagas, their lives look rather a lot like mine...filled with duty and responsibility that they don't necessarily want...but that somebody has to do because it's important, and it's somehow devolved to them, while so many of those around them live in blissful ignorance.

When we read about the heroes we admire, don't we always imagine they feel the greatness of their actions, the romantic grandness of the meaning of their lives?

And don't we wish we felt like that as we grind away trying to make America safe from Liberals and Progressives?

But I finally realized that for the heroes themselves, their exploits are just plain hard work.

And I see that my life is, in that, a whole lot like theirs.

And while it doesn't make my exploits any more romantic...it's still kinda cool and a little comforting to know that maybe, just maybe...we too are doing the work of heroes!

The Gunslinger