Dragon Clans Bk 02 Pt 00

Book 2 - Prologue

Pain and Fear. Inexorably linked at opposite poles of an eternal figure eight.

All of us, no matter what path our lives take, find pain and fear along the way.

They can define how we live our lives or they can challenge us to actually live.

The choice, as in all things, is ours.

People run from pain because they fear it. Believing that if they run far enough, dodge quickly enough, hide well enough, then pain will not touch their lives.

Those who define their life's path by the compass point of fear, who use fear as the driving force behind their life, never understand what it means to truly live.

And what is it that we fear, what incalculable force could make hiding away from life a better option than taking the rudder of own lives in our hands?

Pain of course.

None of us (well... mostly none of us) like pain. It is another common denominator of the universe, that pain is something to be avoided at all costs.

Why?

Our physical response to pain, mired in the primordial ooze of our creation, is what stokes the fires of our fears.

Our desire for one more breath, one more sunrise, one more beat of our heart, provides us with a natural aversion to pain

Our ancestors needed the fear of pain to continue living. Our 'fight or flight' response is there for one reason, to keep us breathing.

When, over the next ridge, you may find a pride of saber tooth tigers that you will have to battle with your bare hands, or a bear sleeping in what just this morning was your home; having a healthy fear of the world around you helped to keep you alive, and kept the forces of evolution moving forward.

The 'modern' world holds few such dire threats.

And yet, more so today than ever, most people find fear to be a heavier burden than any of our forbearers ever dreamed.

We are, on the whole, a rational society. We logically understand that a panther is not going to spring forth from the bushes and devour us on our morning jog to Buckstars to get our double mocha crapuccino. But fear makes the journey with us just the same.

What will the boss think of my proposal?

Will Sally say yes if I ask her out for dinner?

How will I make the mortgage payment?

Did she really cum three times, or was she just being kind.

Jimmy must be using drugs.

I really can't afford this vacation.

On and on it goes. These are the building blocks of desperation, and the foundation for the walls we build around ourselves out of fear.

Does anything we fear today carry the weight it truly should? How many of us face our imminent death from an unknown quarter, even once in the long stretch of our lives, let alone on a daily basis.

There are those of us who do.

Those men and women who wake up each morning, and put themselves in harms way by choice, are those who stand between us and the true horrors that still lurk in our world. In doing so, they free us up to fear our next car payment, the supposed slight of a lover, the impression we will make at the company picnic.

We cloak ourselves in the fear of living our lives. We see our lives not as magical gifts to be treasured, taken, emptied of every last drop of sustenance. Oh no. We see our lives as something to be endured, gotten through, to get even with.

The path of most people's lives, leaves a trail of unopened doors, behind which lay the magic of life never released because of our fear.

My life was easy in comparison to most... up until the summer I have described in the previous volume of my tale.

Easy isn't even the right word for it. Blessed is a better one.

By the end of that summer I thought I knew true pain.

The loss of Sasha.

The loss of my child.

The loss of my path.

These losses brought me pain the likes of which I had never known existed, let alone felt.

All that pain provided me with a new respect for fear.

As with everyone, I had felt fear in the past. But this new fear, brought on by actual loss, actual pain... this was fear on steroids.

I let it consume me for a time.

I almost let it take me.

My fear of death palled in comparison to the looming shadow of my fear of living.

Aoife saved me that night on my knees, next to the bed Sasha and I had shared. She pressed an unseen pause button, which allowed me the opportunity to get a glimpse of my fear from a different perspective. It allowed me the opportunity to face, understand and finally make peace with my pain, instead of blindly running from it in fear.

I thought I understood fear and pain. How one fed off the other. The dynamic between the two.

That summer was the hardest of my life, up until that point.

Little did I know that it was merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

What follows is my true education in pain and fear. The lessons learned from them, and the opportunities lost because of them.

My desire is that by continuing this story someone will find a bit of solace, a bit of understanding, or perhaps a bit of hope.

As the bard has said, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Both are true of this time for me.

I invite you to pull up a chair, and to lay your pain and fear aside for a time.

Perhaps traveling through the coming fall and winter with me, pressing this particular pause button, will help you gain a different perspective on whatever pain and fear lurks faceless behind your own life's unopened doors.

Edited By TeNderLoin