Awareness.
To be aware of one’s self, flaws and strengths both, is one of those gifts that comes with age. I am intimately aware of my own, and while conventional wisdom states that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, I am not one given to following adages. Ever do I strive to repair my flaws and temper my strengths, and from time to time, I succeed.
To be aware of someone else’s self, and particularly when that self is one that I am in love with, is an exercise in learning to see anew. Once again there is an ancient precept that applies: love is blind. I know that she is neither more nor less perfect than any other living thing; I know that she struggles to balance who she is, and who she wishes to be, with who she has been. I understand this only in that way with which any man of my age can identify with harbouring regrets and fears that, perhaps, life has not been lived to its fullest.
Am I the man I was supposed to be? Certainly I have chosen to tread the only path in my life that has made sense, no matter how, as a young man, I loathed the thought of walking it. My hands are calloused, my grip is powerful, my body is strong; I am a soldier, a tactician, and a Centurion. I have even rejoined the Farstriders, an initiative I identified with strongly many decades ago, until the defense of the world became more pressing than that of the homeland. And how much further do I have to go? I am not ready to retire, not so long as I can stand tall and wield my blade, but neither am I inclined to throw myself into the face of dangers quite so readily as I once was.
All we will say to one another is be careful. There is so much left unsaid beyond that phrase: because I cannot lose you, because you are the ribbon keeping the pieces of me together, because I have not had enough of you, I will never have enough of you, and I do not want to be alone again. Yet those words imply doubt in one’s strengths, and a dependency so deep that it is a flaw we can ill afford to expose, so they remain on our tongues and are shared only silently, in the intimacy of a kiss.
She bears burdens on her shoulders that I cannot help with. All I am able to do is stand at her side and offer my guardianship, for her to deny or accept.
She is the sword. I am the shield.
To be aware of someone else’s self, and particularly when that self is one that I am in love with, is an exercise in learning to see anew. Once again there is an ancient precept that applies: love is blind. I know that she is neither more nor less perfect than any other living thing; I know that she struggles to balance who she is, and who she wishes to be, with who she has been. I understand this only in that way with which any man of my age can identify with harbouring regrets and fears that, perhaps, life has not been lived to its fullest.
Am I the man I was supposed to be? Certainly I have chosen to tread the only path in my life that has made sense, no matter how, as a young man, I loathed the thought of walking it. My hands are calloused, my grip is powerful, my body is strong; I am a soldier, a tactician, and a Centurion. I have even rejoined the Farstriders, an initiative I identified with strongly many decades ago, until the defense of the world became more pressing than that of the homeland. And how much further do I have to go? I am not ready to retire, not so long as I can stand tall and wield my blade, but neither am I inclined to throw myself into the face of dangers quite so readily as I once was.
All we will say to one another is be careful. There is so much left unsaid beyond that phrase: because I cannot lose you, because you are the ribbon keeping the pieces of me together, because I have not had enough of you, I will never have enough of you, and I do not want to be alone again. Yet those words imply doubt in one’s strengths, and a dependency so deep that it is a flaw we can ill afford to expose, so they remain on our tongues and are shared only silently, in the intimacy of a kiss.
She bears burdens on her shoulders that I cannot help with. All I am able to do is stand at her side and offer my guardianship, for her to deny or accept.
She is the sword. I am the shield.