Dragon slave or dragon master?
You choose.
You cannot remember a time when your dragon was not with you.
She has always been there for you, even when your family wasn’t, even when your friends ran away. The heat of her fiery breath, the gentle brush of her tail would tell you it’s time to cure your pain and you would reach out to feed her. Just like your friends did. Everyone you knew had dragons of their own. They knew exactly how you felt. It doesn’t really matter what you reached out to: a drink to give someone company, one last smoke, maybe a french fry or just a quick shag. You feed her — right away — every time she breathes fire: this is the only rule.
Once she’s fed, you feel so much better. Nothing gives you as much joy as she does. Until the inevitable crash. This is how it goes.
When she became the epicentre of your chaotic life, you don’t really know. Running circles around her takes all day. You are good for nothing else. You want to keep going, you want to tear away. How do you remain sane having her constantly with you, breathing fire, keeping you on a leash?
Through the haze of a hangover or the nuisance of a hacking cough or the occasional chlamydia — it’s not AIDS, right? — you wonder about your dragon and the dragons around you. At that very moment, she breathes her fire, you reach out and then — sweet oblivion.
You watch those who spend their lives thus, running circles around their dragons, shunning family, shunning love, shunning goodness. All for one’s dragon. You watch as you run. You don’t know how to stop.
If you keep your mind wide open even when she breathes her fire, if you keep your wits about you even as you run around her, you start to realise, you get a hint, you suspect, you are never sure but you start to wonder if something is wrong.
If you’re lucky, you learn to ask questions.
If you’re lucky, your questions are heard.
If you’re lucky, the Dragon Masters cross your path. If you’re lucky, if you can bear her fire-breathing while you’re with them, they will tell you the secret.
At first, you say no.
You go back to running circles around your dragon. You go back to your friends who do the same thing. You don’t care if no one else understands, she does.
But a time comes when you have been running ragged, a time comes when you have no recourse but to return to the Dragon Masters. You decide that maybe, just maybe, they are right.
You learn to accept that you are not the Boss, you never were. You accept the dragon, you learn to live with her but. You accept her, you learn to live with her, but you never feed her. No matter how she lashes at you, no matter how badly you get burnt by her fire. If you feed her, you are done for. This is the secret:
It begins with you.
Mastering your dragon begins with accepting that you are a slave.
You accept that she is what she is.
You learn to live with her fiery breath stoking you, goading you, every day. But you never feed her.
You learn to revel in the pain that gave birth to her.
You learn to tolerate the brush of her scales and her breath — hot and angry — and her lashing. One day at a time.
Every time you feel like falling to your knees, you find the Dragon Masters and unleash the magic spell they taught you:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
Courage to change the things I can and
Wisdom to know the difference.
Thank you Jake for the Creative Challenge:
https://thecreative.cafe/the-dragon-creative-challenge-db77a389d32b
I really enjoyed participating.
Here’s to dragons :)
