In each man is a warrior. Don’t be confused with the trend, with societal shifts, with angry disillusioned people. Just stop paying attention to the emasculating of men that has risen in the past fifty years.
Inside of every man, anywhere is the warrior.
But, before I tell you the story of the warrior man, before you complain that my point of view is a threat, pause a moment. Pause, because I respect your life and your point of view; pause, because this topic affects both men and women, and developing youth.
My commitment to you is to share with you a unique and, although a bit batter, prospective, or insight that has taken me 50 years to learn. Out of my sharing my wish for you is to that you have learned something from me that will apply in your life.
Why do I pick this topic?
To start, I have received requests to talk about men and warriors and how to mentor men. Secondly, I personally am bombarded with media, both TV and social media, calling for the literal extinction of the warrior and of men in general.
And, finally, I have two sons and a daughter, who are trying to explore who they are and where they fit in.
How do I define the warrior within?
Just as a brief distinction of war and warriors; war is the condition of conflict of struggle and often involves force and with the tools of war. A warrior is one who is equipped and trained to deal, thrive, and exist in war.
Furthermore, as pointed out, there is a warrior in each man. There is a state of being in each man that makes him available to war, and to conflict. That is what I want to talk about today. That condition inside of man that is there; like it or not it is there.
So I am going to share with you three stories. If you are a man, either read to it from the point of view as the actual male in the story or the parent of the male in the story. If you are a woman, listen to it from the point of view as a woman wanting to learn more about men or the mother raising a warrior.
There are two kids playing in the back yard. The grass is newly cut and you can smell that earthy smell. The sun in out. A nice stream flows through the back end of the yard. You can hear the constant ripple of the water as it rolls up over the big rock in the middle and drops into the pool behind.
One of the kids is throwing rocks into that pool and watching the splash that each oddly shaped rock makes. The other kid is walking in the grass along the edge of the woods. You sit on the porch watching and listening.
After some time the kid throwing the rocks into the pool challenges the other kid to see who can hit the branch directly over the pool. The other kid merely says, “no I don’t want to.” And you all of a sudden pay closer attention.
I want to stop the story here. The point is now made. All three people are now tapping into that undiscovered, currently taboo, warrior within.
To clarify, the kid throwing rocks is engaged with something that wanted to be shared and was rejected. The kid walking around, also, was disrupted from an action and didn’t want to be disrupted. And, you the parent, having been in this situation immediately recognized the conflict that happened.
Conflict, or the dealing with conflict, begins just like this for everyone. What we do with this inside of us is that this lesson is about. Because every person has this warrior within. We all have this embedded warrior. Eons of life have created the need to have the capacity to deal with conflict. The warrior is always there either waiting to grow and mature, or will be distorted and perverted into a disgusting creature or will be totally deflated into a whimpering blame machine.
Each of those people in the first scenario is at a T-intersection and maturing the warrior within. Each will select to turn toward maturity, or turn toward distortion, or try to turn around. This is real life, you cannot go back or undo things.
If the choice is to go to the right, then a deeper reflection and discovery and understanding and training of the warrior within happens. On this path there is no blame for the awakening of the warrior, for the stirring of the conflict. There is only ownership and realization.
If your choice is to go left, you don’t want to look at it, you don’t reflect or talk about it, you don’t openly see what is going on. You hide from it. On this path is blame. On this path is denial.
On the final path, the person tries to turn back. Turn back from feeling, turn back from experiencing what the conflict causes within.
That is just the first of the three stories; the scratching of the surface of the warrior within; the warrior within who arises in the face of conflict. Conflict, adversity, threat conditions and the warrior within are twins. They come together, they cannot ever, ever, ever arrive separately.
The circumstance around the second of the three stories comes years later. Real conflict, real adversity is felt at some point in life by every human being. Real conflict is the risk of life or limb. That is real conflict. There is no degree of real conflict as some can suggest.
Storyline two is a real threat of injury or death or harm. Imagine an 18 year old young adult. The 18 year old is fishing in the stream. The day is perfect. The fishing rod is resting to the 18 year old’s right side. The anticipation of the catch is imminent. Everything just feels perfect.
The other 17 year old is sitting on a chair some distance away reading about something interesting. Every now and then you can hear a chuckle or sigh leaving the 17 year old’s mouth. This scene has gone on for about an hour.
Up on the porch is a 55 year old parent. The parent is watching and cleaning the porch and thinking of past times and is happy. All is good in the world.
Then all of a sudden the parent falls. The two kids look up. They can barely see, but they distinctly heard a fall on the porch and wonder about their parent. One asks if everything is ok.
Now we are in conflict and the warrior within has arrived too. Obviously for the parent, they are in immediate conflict. Life, pain, reality. And the warrior arrives to help them deal with all of this. If the parent has spent time and years learning about conflict and about the warrior, then they are immediately reacting to and adjusting to the reality of the situation. They allow the hormonal surges to be channeled, they stay composed, they fight to solve the problem at hand.
If the parent had, earlier in life, chosen to not look at conflict and the warrior within and had gotten on the “blame others train,” I can assure you they will be frozen and rather unsure of what to do in this reality of real conflict. The feel pain and no amount of blame in real conflict can solve the real pain they face. Since they didn’t learn about their warrior within, they don’t know how to deal with real conflict now.
If they had chosen to retreat from reality, their reaction will be very distorted and not real. Over reaction, under reaction, and virtual and parallel reactions happen with people have tried to constantly turn back from the reality they face. One way of understanding this effect is the warrior within comes with the conflict but arrives carrying a feather and eleven unicorn treats to feed the virtual ducks in the mind of the person who cannot deal with reality.
The 17 year old, who has chosen self discover and has learned about conflict and the warrior within feels the surge and the heightened senses. The 17 year old stands up and moves, immediately assesses with smell, sight, hearing, and feel what is going on. They bound up the stairs and ask what happened. They are in action, they are solving the real issue at hand.
The 18 year old, in this storyline, never wanted to discover the warrior within. The 18 year old has spent years blaming other people for situations or conflicts they have experienced. So now, as you can imagine, they are looking for an excuse or a person or thing to blame. They do stand and run up but have no real idea of what to do or how to deal with their own internal battle. They freeze, they panic, they simply cannot deal with the reality because they have not learned to use their warrior within.
That story is clearly simplistic. Yet the story points out the various ways people, actually everyone, even me, comes to various T-intersections in awakening the warrior within. The effect that the choice at each T-intersection has on each of us is so dramatic and important.
Turn right means to embrace, learn, discover and grow with the warrior within.
Turn left means to deny, to not learn, to blame and to take a static position and push away the million years of development that gave you the warrior within.
Turn around and go back is distortion, drugged down, twisted existence of the failed effort to change the warrior within.
I always think it is a funny idea that you or anyone for that matter can avoid conflict. Conflict happens on the back porches of our lives, doesn’t it? Most just don’t recognize the abundance of conflicts, so they rarely turn on and engage the training of the warrior within.
The final of the three stories is simply the three choices of the adult life. These three choices are embrace with warrior within; or deny the warrior within, or distort the warrior within. There are only three. Each three choices leads you to very different places in your life. Each of these choices, by the way, YOU MADE THEM. No one else makes your choices to deal with conflict in one way or the other. Just you.
The first path chosen is the retreat. To pick this path you have to literally drug down the impulses you have. You have to artificially distort your perceptions; you have to force round life patterns into square life events. You have to force yourself to be surrounded by other people who are distorted to enable this path or choice to exist. The warrior within you so much wants to change and reconfigure, still comes back with the original way it was designed to arrive to help you face conflict. It comes to you twisted and distorted and cracked and fractured, but it still comes.
The second path, I think is the worst of all ways to handle and deal with the warrior within. The second path is denial and blame. On this path, conflict is denied and when the warrior within arrives, it is as if you cried wolf and all the reactions come but you push them back. Conflict happens and you blame others for the conflict and learning stops. Each conflict, each threat is always something that gets denied or lied about and the warrior arrives and cannot adjust or grow and develop. I personally wonder what this life of blame feels like. What it must be like to have denied the growth of this wonder conflict resolution experience? I see blame every where but I cannot fathom that life. It looks disgusting but hey all I can say is good luck there buddy.
The final one is to embrace and train the warrior within. Train yourself to learn about conflict and what the resolver of conflict brings to you. Take ownership of you being the person responsible to resolving your conflicts. Practice how to deal with being a warrior. Do it.
Go to a fight. Take on a chore that is difficult. If there is a conflict in your life, look inside of you first. The solution to conflict is within you. You stubbed your toe. The chair didn’t do it. You got the D in chemistry not someone else. You also won that race, it wasn’t a fluke. You got in the argument, so you take responsibility and resolve it. You have a job, it is yours, so get to work. Don’t blame others for your condition.
Cut grass like it is as important as life or death. Go on a date or take your spouse out like it matters. Keep rising to the reality you face, be all in all the time. Own your life.
Go to the sound of the guns, make situations better than they were before you got there. Solve every issue from within first.
When you embrace this you are a warrior. Don’t let people sell you blame. Fight when you must and if you must, fight like it counts. Don’t be ashamed of it. When you can walk away then that too is embracing the warrior and solving the problem.
Be bold, Be Brave, Be Unbreakable.
Listen to the audio version of this post on Unbreakable Podcast episode 63.
Be brave and commit to the Unbreakable Lessons, an online curriculum designed to guide you to measurable results in all areas of your life — Physical, Relationship, Wealth, Intellectual, and Spiritual. The curriculum is adapted from Thom Shea’s book Unbreakable: A Navy SEAL’s Way of Life.
