Just Be There Blog

Promises and Great Starts

January 2, 2017 at 4:17am

I've got Monday off as the first paid holiday of 2017. A great start to a new year.

I will be back later to do a free write.

at 4:04pm

"Do not handicap your children by making their life easy." (?) (Lazarus Long: Robert A. Heinlein's "Time enough for Love")


"If a liar tells you that they are a liar then tells you they are not lying. Do you believe them? Why or why not?"


"When I was a child I just wanted to be loved.
All my adult life I just want the pain of my childhood to go away."

"I cannot ever remember not being angry."

"If a movie were made of my childhood it would be rated triple X adult for violence, language, and sexual content."


When real life is a horror story, fictional horror becomes mundane...(or so I have discovered from my personal experience). As a character in a story, I'm sure the child I was would evoke sympathy from an audience not acquainted with the darker side of what some adults enjoy doing to children, even their own child. I've wondered what it was that I did in a previous life to incur the abuses in my life. Was I a reincarnate Nazi degenerate who died without seeing the error of my malicious ways? Maybe, I was an inquisitor during the medieval dark ages. Maybe, I committed infanticide and child slavery as a rule of religion in ancient history...There must have been some behavior in a past life to warrant the payment exacted from the childhood of this life. Well, if I deserved to walk in the shoes because of past life transgressions, what are the lessons learned from such painful experiences in this life?

But first, another question, what has evoked this particular topic for this free write?


I've watched a movie that spans several life times of several characters tied together through the ages. Sort of a window into what Hindu and Buddhist reincarnations might look like. The evolution of the 'souls' from strong and meek, from kind and cruel, and from blind and enlightened made an unconscious connection for me. This movie has a fascinating (to me) premise. Some of you reading this may have seen it. Tom Hanks is a main character and starts out his narration as an enlightened man recounting the cruel and greedy beginnings of his first remembered incarnation. The movie is "Cloud Atlas".

Now to answer the question, what lessons I've learned in this lifetime? At first glance, especially when my ire is up and energized, I haven't learned the lesson of temperance...although, I know intellectually the value of containing my rage and making the conscious choice of not acting out my anger. Maybe, the beginnings of temperance are taking hold. My negative views of everyday life are counter productive and I try to catch myself and divert the negative observances I'm so used to spouting. I do have more smiling and laughing days than ugly tantrum 'the world is against me' unfair days. (The Charlie Brown days.) So I suppose I'm making some progress toward a kinder expression of everyday life.

Yes, I'm telling ya I'm still a long ways from actually learning the lessons required to not repeat a painful incarnation...

Now, if I were to write myself as a fictional character, what learned lessons would Deb display at this time in her story? Temperance would be the most important...stop bragging about how violent and out of control her temper can be; in this way stop setting the scene for future tantrums. Living in the moment and maintaining a cognizant control over what is said and what actions are taken while incensed is the lesson of temperance.

See, I have learned what temperance is, now I just need to learn how to practice temperance. The problem for me is when I'm angry I have a surge of energy (adrenaline) and my mental state is focused on what is wrong with everyone else and Not what is wrong with me...My fictional character Malyn has this same rage response, albeit, more controlled and coolly delivered. I throw tantrums, Malyn simply reaches out and picks up the offending, insulting individual by the throat and tells them to leave her alone...

Malyn is close to 6' and I'm barely 5' tall. However, later in the story, Malyn's rage is diverted into lycanthropy after she embibes a potion during a life and death situation; the potion allows her to survive and the lycanthropic transformation becomes the physical representation of her internal out of control anger, fear, and self hatred. (The self hatred being learned from the prejudice and mistreatment by others when she was incapable of protecting herself.) Regardless, Malyn lives a code of ethics to which she adheres. This code is her religion, and if she strays from the ethics of honor she has set for herself she would lose face in the Samurai sense of losing face. Unlike the Samurai tradition, however, there is no ritual suicide to alleviate her unforgivable humiliation. As it is, when she lost her honor through a grievous accident she finds herself honor bound through blood price (weir-gild) to exchange her life for the friend she accidentally killed in battle. However, she discovers upon the Great Tree Sporsmalfaru that she cannot die.

Cowardice works into my characters as well. Malyn doesn't feel fear as a paralyzing shrinking away of danger, instead when placed in a fearful situation she becomes angry...and acts according to her life and death situation incensed with rage. Sort of an 'Incredible Hulk' transformation, only she doesn't turn green and grow muscular and shred her clothing. In my own past, I have responded likewise. Not the wisest reaction in some situations which demanded quiet passivity...I've received my worst 'punishments' from both mother and father from responding in anger rather than shrinking away in fear. Malyn too has her moments when silence would have been better suited for her survival. Her life and death fight with Strykaar is one such occasion. If she hadn't gained the friendship of her comrades, Strykaar's superb swordsmanship would have killed her.

Malyn isn't a bully as she defends herself from bullies. She meets the transgressions against her with just enough force for the transgressor to stop their behavior. If the bully is beyond learning, they die.

In the later stories, Malyn experiences fear as fear. She becomes afraid to react in anger, because when anger surfaces she transforms into the lycanthropic beast which her rage feeds. The only time she cannot control the were-beast is when unexpected triggers incite instant rage. Yet, the Elven Captain Emmerlain, who gave her the potion that made her a lycanthrope, teaches Malyn how to control the rage which enacts the transformation. Emmerlain teaches Malyn the value of temperance and self control and these lessons eventually allow Malyn to accept her immortality as a duty bound obligation for good rather than a curse to be suffered.