We Should Be Soldiers || Love Is Light, War-k.
Of all the random guesses to my profession — a waiter because of my adornment, a member of the licensing board because I was the only one present in a movie theater in the middle of a work day, even an illicit lover because (wo)men sometimes jump to conclusions — right up there among my favorites is when I’m mistaken to have some form of military background. I get it, something in the training of service personnel helps understand the things that are important quicker than most — less in the skills learned, more in the discipline and the assuredness in making decisions and this, has a telling aura — and even though I understand why it’s a FAQ, it makes me chuckle because the most experience I have is a stint with the National Youth Service Corp, a paramilitary of the Nigerian army. I do know people who are serving and served — both in the real world and in fictional worlds created by those who in some form fought a war— and thus I have a template to understanding the aura, thoughts and soul of what it means to be a soldier, as example presents opportunities to learn without the need of experience and though I don’t have the data to prove it, I believe because soldiers understand life more than most, they luck out when it comes to love.
I also think of relationships, and I like the idea of courting with a carriage, wild flowers picked on a sunny day spent horse riding; I have no memories of my past lives but it seems like in the days before a gigabyte of storage could fit into pockets, they may have had an environment that allowed to (be) love(d) more deeply, as they were not as ‘distracted’ — read as held responsible by knowledge — as we are now. There’s no scientific way to quantify or measure this (that I know of) but it seems even though we have millions of relationships to learn from to make the experience of love better than a 100 years ago, for some reason there are less ‘fairy tales’ these days. The term itself is often thought of as something for fiction because “real life doesn’t work that way”. Admittedly no one ever just finds their prince(ess), lives in a white castle and lives happily ever after — this isn’t a failure of love, it’s simply because our young minds believed those words to mean a life without tests and life does not work that way, we know this now. There’s also the popular saying “love is just a feeling, and love isn’t enough” and thinking like a soldier, I disagree.
Very often the burden of knowledge (un)consciously denies us the pleasure of experiencing things, unaffected by bias. A storyteller once phrased it as “the importance of a sterile field” — ‘magic’ should obliterate the rules of ‘normaly’, it’s what qualifies it as magical but most fantasy worlds speak of rules that govern until a ‘special one — often unaware of these rules — comes and defies it all. While knowledge from examples of love — both failed and thrived — has been important to making better decisions and growth, I fear we’ve made these knowledges less than guidelines and more like rules to be strictly followed. We choose to define love as “just a feeling” because we erroneously believe it to mean something it’s not — a projection of an ideal that’s usually defined by limited experiences and valid as this — feelings — is, we don’t quickly reconcile that “happily ever after” may be the end for us but for it to remain so for our heroes, deliberateness and commitment have to become one with love — the feeling has to evolve (read as grow). But we’re not privy to the experience of every reality and so we (un)consciously burden the outcome on a feeling we choose not to experience firsthand and this choice renders it — love — insufficient to be the magic it is and so it cannot be enough. We focus so much on the feeling, we forget that’s just a spark — there’s only so much light when a match flares and to let it illuminate more, we have to protect and feed the flame — and we have to want to burn, and put in the effort to keep it burning. Like the flame of the match brought to life when people strike a connection so strong it emits light, to keep it lit we have to protect the flame because no matter how still the air is in a moment, knowledge of the birthplace of the wind proves as elusive as its product and so we cup our hand to protect the flame, and let it feed, breathe, grow. Like every match — fueled by the burning of feelings evoked — left unchecked eventually burns out, but love is light not the match or flame. While the match burns a lamp (another fuel source) has to be found so when it burns out the light remains, love remains.
The journey to constant illumination is not dependent on just the first flare, but also on the choice to let the light lead, and a dogged commitment to keep the light on. The heat from the flame warming our soul could be a (welcome) distraction but we need to focus — it’s easy to mistake warmth for light, forgetting that warmth comes from light and not the other way around — if the flame goes out more than the cold, returning to the dark after light, is hard. Knowing the threats to the flame, how to keep it burning from the examples all around us is nice — knowledge is power — but every inferno starts from a focused effort to protect, fuel and grow that first flare. “love is just a feeling” — like feelings are not the very makeup of our souls, and that makes them very powerful. Love is a feeling that starts from a simple flare and with a commitment to protect and keep working the bellows, can become a sun.
Love is a feeling, a choice and a commitment.
And that’s the thing about soldiers — maybe because few things teach to appreciate life as succinctly as being a tool to death, maybe because to be one choice and commitment are ironically non-negotiable. They understand how unimportant a lot of the fail safes/hurdles we protect our hearts with are because they really are blinds that keep us from seeing and focusing on the things that should truly matter. Maybe there’s more to the saying “all is fair in love and war” than we realize.
