Wisdom of Salvatore 1
As I have no wisdom of my own today...or this week...or this fortnight. Something I am happy to blame on having a sparrow fly into my head.
Yeah, you read that right.
So instead I will have another random segment called the Wisdom of Salvatore. Who is R.A. Salvatore, who offers some lovely insights through the journals of his characters. I will share it with ye all.
I watched the descent of Obould's sword.
With my heart undefended, risking friends once more, I watched, and again my heart was severed.
All is a swirl of confusion again, punctuated by pinpricks of pain that find my most vulnerable and sensitive areas, stinging and burning, flashing images of falling friends. I can build the stone wall to block them, I know, in the form of anger. To hide my eyes and hide my heart - yet I am not sure if the relief is worth the price.
That is my dilemma.
The death of Tarathiel was about Tarathiel. That is obvious, I know, but I must often remind myself of that truth. The world is not my playground, not a performance for my pleasure and my pain, not an abstract thought in the mind of Drizzt Do'Urden.
Bruenor's fall was more poignant to Bruenor than it was to me. So was Zaknafein's to Zaknafein, and all the others. Aside from that truth, though, there is my own sensibility, my own perception of events, my own pain and confusion. We can only view the world through our own eyes, I think. There are empathy and sympathy; there is often a conscious effort to see as a friend of even an enemy might - this is an important element in the concept of truth and justice, of greater community than our own wants and needs. But in the end, it all, for each of us, come back to us each individually, and everything we witness rings more important to each of us than to others, even if what we witness is a critical moment for another.
There is an undeniable selfishness in that realisation, but I do not run away from that trith because there is nothing I, or anyone, can do about that truth. When we lose a loved one, the agony is ours as well. A parent watching his or her child suffer is in as much pain, or even more, I am sure, than the suffering child.
And so, embracing that selfishness at this moment, I ask myself if tarathiel's fall was a warning or a test. I dared to open my heart, and it was torn asunder. Do I fall back into that other being once more, encase my spirit in stone to make it impervious to such pain? Or is this sudden and unexpected loss a test of my spirit, to show that I can accept the cruelty of fate and press on, that I can hold fast to my beliefs and my principles and my hopes against the pain of those images?
I think that we all make this choice all the time, in varying degrees. Every day, every tenday, when we face some adversity, we find options that usually run along two roads. Either we hold our course - the one we set in better and more hopeful times, based on principle and faith - or we fall to the seemingly easier and more expedient road of defensive posture, both emotional and physical. People and often societies sometimes react to pain and fear by closing up, by sacrificing freedoms and placing practicality above principle.
Is that what I have been doing since the fall of Bruenor? Is this hunting creature I have become merely a tactic to forgo the pain?
…
I lose myself.
I see Innovindil across the way, crying still for the loss of her dear Tarathiel. She is not running away from the grief and the loss. She is embracing it and incorporating it into her being, to make it a part of herself, to own it so that it cannot own her.
Have I the strength to do the same?
I pray that I do, for I understand now that only in going through the pain can I be saved.
Drizzt Do'Urden
- Salvatore, R.A. The Lone Drow
Much of how a learned to see the world as an adult was through the lens of the heroes journey and those authors who know how to write real characters with real wisdom.
Yeah, you read that right.
So instead I will have another random segment called the Wisdom of Salvatore. Who is R.A. Salvatore, who offers some lovely insights through the journals of his characters. I will share it with ye all.
I watched the descent of Obould's sword.
With my heart undefended, risking friends once more, I watched, and again my heart was severed.
All is a swirl of confusion again, punctuated by pinpricks of pain that find my most vulnerable and sensitive areas, stinging and burning, flashing images of falling friends. I can build the stone wall to block them, I know, in the form of anger. To hide my eyes and hide my heart - yet I am not sure if the relief is worth the price.
That is my dilemma.
The death of Tarathiel was about Tarathiel. That is obvious, I know, but I must often remind myself of that truth. The world is not my playground, not a performance for my pleasure and my pain, not an abstract thought in the mind of Drizzt Do'Urden.
Bruenor's fall was more poignant to Bruenor than it was to me. So was Zaknafein's to Zaknafein, and all the others. Aside from that truth, though, there is my own sensibility, my own perception of events, my own pain and confusion. We can only view the world through our own eyes, I think. There are empathy and sympathy; there is often a conscious effort to see as a friend of even an enemy might - this is an important element in the concept of truth and justice, of greater community than our own wants and needs. But in the end, it all, for each of us, come back to us each individually, and everything we witness rings more important to each of us than to others, even if what we witness is a critical moment for another.
There is an undeniable selfishness in that realisation, but I do not run away from that trith because there is nothing I, or anyone, can do about that truth. When we lose a loved one, the agony is ours as well. A parent watching his or her child suffer is in as much pain, or even more, I am sure, than the suffering child.
And so, embracing that selfishness at this moment, I ask myself if tarathiel's fall was a warning or a test. I dared to open my heart, and it was torn asunder. Do I fall back into that other being once more, encase my spirit in stone to make it impervious to such pain? Or is this sudden and unexpected loss a test of my spirit, to show that I can accept the cruelty of fate and press on, that I can hold fast to my beliefs and my principles and my hopes against the pain of those images?
I think that we all make this choice all the time, in varying degrees. Every day, every tenday, when we face some adversity, we find options that usually run along two roads. Either we hold our course - the one we set in better and more hopeful times, based on principle and faith - or we fall to the seemingly easier and more expedient road of defensive posture, both emotional and physical. People and often societies sometimes react to pain and fear by closing up, by sacrificing freedoms and placing practicality above principle.
Is that what I have been doing since the fall of Bruenor? Is this hunting creature I have become merely a tactic to forgo the pain?
…
I lose myself.
I see Innovindil across the way, crying still for the loss of her dear Tarathiel. She is not running away from the grief and the loss. She is embracing it and incorporating it into her being, to make it a part of herself, to own it so that it cannot own her.
Have I the strength to do the same?
I pray that I do, for I understand now that only in going through the pain can I be saved.
Drizzt Do'Urden
- Salvatore, R.A. The Lone Drow
Much of how a learned to see the world as an adult was through the lens of the heroes journey and those authors who know how to write real characters with real wisdom.