Vulpine
Master Don Juan
Prologue:
I had heard something out in the real world regarding a castle analogy that prompted me to want to come back and read again what I had left here.
I had a bit of trouble sifting through all the "your princess is in another castle" references that came up with the search, which is, coincidentally, exactly what I had overheard. Eventually, I found the thread, but it wasn't it's own separate thread, it was attached to another post I made. Oops.
So, for my future reference (and for current reference of members who have joined since I have been active), I wanted to afford the two philosophies their own separate space.
Consider yourself living with your parent(s) as living in another person’s kingdom. All your life, you go about your day-to-day business, going to work, having some fun, meeting some people, and just getting by. Hanging out that Ye Olde Nightclub, shopping at the marketplace, attending some festivals and such... A pretty simple life, just getting by, like everyone else. Essentially, you are just a face in a crowd, doing what others seem to do, like an “extra” in the movie of life.
One day you happen to wonder: “How did this kingdom that I’m living in get established?” After researching the history, you find yourself somewhat envious of the king and think “What’s so special about that guy?” You might not make the connection or come to the right conclusion at that point, and perhaps you go back to the day-to-day life for a while.
As time passes, you see experience something in the kingdom that makes you happy and you start thinking again. “How can I experience this more? I bet the king gets to do this all the time! How did the king become ‘the king’?”
One day, you travel to another kingdom to pick up something at the market. After talking with some of the locals, you learn of that king and his kingdom’s history. There are things you like better about that kingdom and you decide to move. From kingdom to kingdom you move, you experience wars and losses, you take shelter in other people’s castles until finally one day someone does something so gracious that you feel ashamed and unworthy of such generosity.
“How do I deserve this, and, why do I need it in the first place? How did I get here, in this kingdom? In this castle? Is there some way that I could not depend on someone else and avoid feeling guilty?”
For a while, you might deal with some negativity and feelings of worthlessness. But then one afternoon you bump into someone at the market who explains that they live out in the countryside: not in anybody’s kingdom. You befriend this person and one day visit his humble little cottage. They tell you how they live, how they struggle, and how they came to build their cottage. “Wow, this person lives like a king!”
You come to realize that you yourself could potentially have a little kingdom of your own! You realize that you could build something lasting for yourself: you could design your own home, even build a CASTLE!!!
So, you stay in the countryside with the person and learn their lifestyle. You look around in the area, but you decide eventually that you just don’t like the terrain. You remember an area to the North that had some beautiful mountains and decide to scout that area out. There, you find someone living there in the countryside and ask about the lifestyle. “There’s a lot of bears and wolves” they explain. You were hoping to have some chickens and other livestock for meat, so you decide the area just won’t do. That person tells you about how they lived in the east and used to fish for a lot of their food. Since your path would be easy, and you fairly nearby, you go to see how that area to the east is.
Once in the east, you learn how to fish on the ocean and the lifestyle. You enjoy it for a while, but the people you live with aren’t very friendly and you become lonely. Miserable, you ask around about the south. “You won’t like it there, the people aren’t very open-minded.” Not taking another persons’ word, you go and see for yourself.
It’s pretty nice, and the people are friendly, albeit ignorant. But, it’s hot, and snakes and insects give you ye olde heeberie-jeeberies. By now, you’ve grown accustomed to relocating and decide to move out west to see what it’s about.
“Now HERE is where the festival is at!” You meet people, celebrate, and have a great time. After a few weeks of celebration, you sit one day with a hangover and realize that you don’t know what the celebration is about. “What’s with all the partying?” You ask around and the general consensus is that “it’s just how it is here”. Although fun, you realize that your body is tired and that the pace is too much. You haven’t slept enough, you are running out of gold, the cost of oats for your horse is really high, and the people are strange.
A messenger rides up to the Inn that you are staying with word that your mother is sick. Since your resources are about to run out, you decide it would be best to go back to the home kingdom to visit and regroup. A maiden you met in the west wants to travel with you, and you agree to her company.
Back at the home kingdom, the maiden can’t adjust to the new lifestyle and wants to instead celebrate all the time. She begins complaining and insulting you and you grow irritated by her, eventually asking her to leave the kingdom and return west.
With the loss, you become sad and again wonder about the king. “How is he so rich? How is he so powerful? I couldn’t be like him, he’s so GREAT! I’m jealous.”
So time passes, the day-to-day life occupies your mind, and you find little joys in the successes of your mundane existence. Maidens come and go, friends come and go, and family members die. But you get along, day by day, with no real purpose in mind: “Life is just living, I guess.”
Then, while hunting for stag in the king’s forest, you realize: “I really like it here, and I really enjoy hunting, I want to do it more!” You decide to see if there is any need for a royal hunter. For weeks you inquire amongst the town folk. From one reference to the next you inquire, until finally someone get you in touch with the king’s cook.
To your surprise, the king dislikes venison, so there is no need for a stag hunter. However, the king really enjoys fish, and he is also fond of mutton. But, you don’t know much about sheep, and you don’t know how to fish in the kingdom’s river, only in the ocean. It turns out that your efforts were for naught: “royal hunter” was a pipedream, a dead-end.
“What am I going to do now?”
Sitting in the courtyard, you look around at all the shopkeepers, stable hands, shepherds, knights, inn keepers and wonder if they like what they do. You wonder about their lives and ponder their struggles: “What did they do to get where they are? Was it easy?” The courtyard gets noisy and you just want to go away and think for a while, so you go out into the king’s forest with your bow to hunt in peace.
While in the woods, you realize that for all your travels you have nothing to show for them. All your efforts, all the struggles, and all the time you spent was wasted. All the maidens have left you for barons, lords, or princes: you are just a peasant.
Then everything becomes clear: you didn’t know what you wanted to be, you didn’t know what you wanted to do, you just didn’t know what the options were. All while, you had just been following other established paths, and you found yourself to be running around in a circle, you had been “chasing your tail”.
Instead of worrying about your wasted life, you began to see it as exploring your options and finding out what you might enjoy. You begin to see past failures as only learning experiences from which you learned that you either weren’t good at something, or you didn’t enjoy doing it. And, you began to look around.
...
......
This whole post doesn't seem to be going anywhere, does it?
If this seems to be a bunch of “blahblahblahblah” rambling, it’s MEANT to. “Blahblahblahblahblahget to the POINT!”
Exactly, what’s the point? What’s the point of life? What are we doing? Before you bother with even attempting to answer those questions, let me just ...get to the point.
I have been stuck in a life pattern, a loop, that I suspect (based on movies like Fight Club, The Matrix, and from shared experiences of peers) is not uncommon. Blahblahblahblah... just on and on with life: a life with no real meaning, no point.
I finally recognized my life pattern of failure as:
(Continued next post)
I had heard something out in the real world regarding a castle analogy that prompted me to want to come back and read again what I had left here.
I had a bit of trouble sifting through all the "your princess is in another castle" references that came up with the search, which is, coincidentally, exactly what I had overheard. Eventually, I found the thread, but it wasn't it's own separate thread, it was attached to another post I made. Oops.
So, for my future reference (and for current reference of members who have joined since I have been active), I wanted to afford the two philosophies their own separate space.
..............................
The Castle
The Castle
Consider yourself living with your parent(s) as living in another person’s kingdom. All your life, you go about your day-to-day business, going to work, having some fun, meeting some people, and just getting by. Hanging out that Ye Olde Nightclub, shopping at the marketplace, attending some festivals and such... A pretty simple life, just getting by, like everyone else. Essentially, you are just a face in a crowd, doing what others seem to do, like an “extra” in the movie of life.
One day you happen to wonder: “How did this kingdom that I’m living in get established?” After researching the history, you find yourself somewhat envious of the king and think “What’s so special about that guy?” You might not make the connection or come to the right conclusion at that point, and perhaps you go back to the day-to-day life for a while.
As time passes, you see experience something in the kingdom that makes you happy and you start thinking again. “How can I experience this more? I bet the king gets to do this all the time! How did the king become ‘the king’?”
One day, you travel to another kingdom to pick up something at the market. After talking with some of the locals, you learn of that king and his kingdom’s history. There are things you like better about that kingdom and you decide to move. From kingdom to kingdom you move, you experience wars and losses, you take shelter in other people’s castles until finally one day someone does something so gracious that you feel ashamed and unworthy of such generosity.
“How do I deserve this, and, why do I need it in the first place? How did I get here, in this kingdom? In this castle? Is there some way that I could not depend on someone else and avoid feeling guilty?”
For a while, you might deal with some negativity and feelings of worthlessness. But then one afternoon you bump into someone at the market who explains that they live out in the countryside: not in anybody’s kingdom. You befriend this person and one day visit his humble little cottage. They tell you how they live, how they struggle, and how they came to build their cottage. “Wow, this person lives like a king!”
You come to realize that you yourself could potentially have a little kingdom of your own! You realize that you could build something lasting for yourself: you could design your own home, even build a CASTLE!!!
So, you stay in the countryside with the person and learn their lifestyle. You look around in the area, but you decide eventually that you just don’t like the terrain. You remember an area to the North that had some beautiful mountains and decide to scout that area out. There, you find someone living there in the countryside and ask about the lifestyle. “There’s a lot of bears and wolves” they explain. You were hoping to have some chickens and other livestock for meat, so you decide the area just won’t do. That person tells you about how they lived in the east and used to fish for a lot of their food. Since your path would be easy, and you fairly nearby, you go to see how that area to the east is.
Once in the east, you learn how to fish on the ocean and the lifestyle. You enjoy it for a while, but the people you live with aren’t very friendly and you become lonely. Miserable, you ask around about the south. “You won’t like it there, the people aren’t very open-minded.” Not taking another persons’ word, you go and see for yourself.
It’s pretty nice, and the people are friendly, albeit ignorant. But, it’s hot, and snakes and insects give you ye olde heeberie-jeeberies. By now, you’ve grown accustomed to relocating and decide to move out west to see what it’s about.
“Now HERE is where the festival is at!” You meet people, celebrate, and have a great time. After a few weeks of celebration, you sit one day with a hangover and realize that you don’t know what the celebration is about. “What’s with all the partying?” You ask around and the general consensus is that “it’s just how it is here”. Although fun, you realize that your body is tired and that the pace is too much. You haven’t slept enough, you are running out of gold, the cost of oats for your horse is really high, and the people are strange.
A messenger rides up to the Inn that you are staying with word that your mother is sick. Since your resources are about to run out, you decide it would be best to go back to the home kingdom to visit and regroup. A maiden you met in the west wants to travel with you, and you agree to her company.
Back at the home kingdom, the maiden can’t adjust to the new lifestyle and wants to instead celebrate all the time. She begins complaining and insulting you and you grow irritated by her, eventually asking her to leave the kingdom and return west.
With the loss, you become sad and again wonder about the king. “How is he so rich? How is he so powerful? I couldn’t be like him, he’s so GREAT! I’m jealous.”
So time passes, the day-to-day life occupies your mind, and you find little joys in the successes of your mundane existence. Maidens come and go, friends come and go, and family members die. But you get along, day by day, with no real purpose in mind: “Life is just living, I guess.”
Then, while hunting for stag in the king’s forest, you realize: “I really like it here, and I really enjoy hunting, I want to do it more!” You decide to see if there is any need for a royal hunter. For weeks you inquire amongst the town folk. From one reference to the next you inquire, until finally someone get you in touch with the king’s cook.
To your surprise, the king dislikes venison, so there is no need for a stag hunter. However, the king really enjoys fish, and he is also fond of mutton. But, you don’t know much about sheep, and you don’t know how to fish in the kingdom’s river, only in the ocean. It turns out that your efforts were for naught: “royal hunter” was a pipedream, a dead-end.
“What am I going to do now?”
Sitting in the courtyard, you look around at all the shopkeepers, stable hands, shepherds, knights, inn keepers and wonder if they like what they do. You wonder about their lives and ponder their struggles: “What did they do to get where they are? Was it easy?” The courtyard gets noisy and you just want to go away and think for a while, so you go out into the king’s forest with your bow to hunt in peace.
While in the woods, you realize that for all your travels you have nothing to show for them. All your efforts, all the struggles, and all the time you spent was wasted. All the maidens have left you for barons, lords, or princes: you are just a peasant.
Then everything becomes clear: you didn’t know what you wanted to be, you didn’t know what you wanted to do, you just didn’t know what the options were. All while, you had just been following other established paths, and you found yourself to be running around in a circle, you had been “chasing your tail”.
Instead of worrying about your wasted life, you began to see it as exploring your options and finding out what you might enjoy. You begin to see past failures as only learning experiences from which you learned that you either weren’t good at something, or you didn’t enjoy doing it. And, you began to look around.
...
......
This whole post doesn't seem to be going anywhere, does it?
If this seems to be a bunch of “blahblahblahblah” rambling, it’s MEANT to. “Blahblahblahblahblahget to the POINT!”
Exactly, what’s the point? What’s the point of life? What are we doing? Before you bother with even attempting to answer those questions, let me just ...get to the point.
I have been stuck in a life pattern, a loop, that I suspect (based on movies like Fight Club, The Matrix, and from shared experiences of peers) is not uncommon. Blahblahblahblah... just on and on with life: a life with no real meaning, no point.
MID-LIFE CRISIS!
death of someone close
EPIPHANY!
I finally recognized my life pattern of failure as:
On and on it went. I would build up “my life”, then there would be an influence, and my house of cards, my “sandcastle”, would come crumbling down as if the tide came in and washed it away. I felt like a little kid; as if my function in life was to play in the sandbox making sandcastles. And, it felt pretty futile.
(Continued next post)
