Songs of Experience

BEST. BIRTHDAY. EVER.

CAFIOD???

CAFIO’D. Hahaha. You just got CAFIO’d.

(Increasingly elaborate and ridiculous designs for sumptuous cloaks are sketched here, including one made entirely of purple-dyed fur over which is written VANDAGAN WHITE BEAR??)

Birthday’s approaching again. Every year they seem to come a little faster. Is that how one becomes old? The subtle shortening of the weeks and months adding up to a subtle shortening of the years? Unremarked increases in the speed of things? Well, I am young enough yet to not fear age. And there are more immediate and brutal dangers at hand, always.

More than anything, these days, I find myself thinking how important it is to know yourself if you want to survive and flourish. To know your values, your virtues, and your flaws. Lord, I pray that I never lose sight of which of my problems are my own creation; I pray that I never make a habit of blaming others for my mistakes.

But perhaps I do that already? The devil of such things is that it’s far easier to see others’ faults than one’s own. Well.

I am hot-tempered, suspicious, paranoid, self-righteous, stubborn, sharp-tongued, mercurial and sardonic. I hold others to nigh-impossible standards… the same standards I hold myself to, but without recognition of the fact that people are all different, and may not be able to live their lives the way I have. I have grown accustomed to the respect nobles receive and chafe without it. I allow my pain to override my better self on bad days. I either trust too easily or not enough, and place said trust in all the wrong people.

Marisa would say I’m reckless, but that one I actually must dispute. I always know what it is I’m putting on the line. I always make a conscious decision about costs and benefits before I act. It’s just that I would rather be dead than be the man who didn’t give everything that he could. That kind of operating principle skews your decisions a little past the commonly subscribed-to borders of rationality.

But I get tired. Of giving, I mean. Giving time, money and blood. Lithmore will greedily imbibe everything you throw at it, and at best you stop the madness for a season before it arises again in new form.

Is that a fault? From an objective perspective, it’s only human nature, no doubt. No one is built to live this way without wearing out. So why do I hold myself to these kind of expectations? It’s the one standard I apply to myself and not to others.

Oh, aye, I’m angry when Reeves don’t uphold the law, or Knights don’t stop mages, or individuals who are perfectly capable of addressing need with which they’re confronted simply let it go unanswered. But if someone else lived the kind of insane life that I do and wanted to retire, I’d shake their hand for what they’ve done and tell them they deserve a nice, peaceful vacation for the rest of their days. So I guess if there’s anything wrong with me in that regard, it’s the guilt I feel for even thinking of leaving all the madness behind. As if I don’t deserve these kind of human weaknesses.

I found it amusing when Savann talked of self-flagellation, she who simply likes to flagellate others. She who pretends she will not achieve her hollow ambitions because she is *too* clever, not ‘vapid’ enough. She who so casually comes from a place of assumptions that I know nothing about being a commoner, that I know nothing about dreaming of raising my place in the world.

I want to ask her what she knows of suffering, what she knows of earning her way up, what she knows of actually being so desperate that you will do anything to survive let alone progress. Turning your nose up at cleaning inn rooms for money, Arien. I’d have been glad for that kind of honest work… if I’d been clean enough myself to be hired to clean anything else.

But it mirrors all my own flaws, doesn’t it? My vicious temper, enraged so badly because she happened to insult Marisa once. My self-righteous disdain for her flawed personality. The way I apply my own standards to her. I can argue that I was doing fine with the work of my own two hands, and that would be true. I was Marisa’s Court Bard. But then I came into my inheritence; without that benefit, there’s no way I would be a noble today. My misplaced trust – a good deal of why I’m so angry in the first place is that I thought much better of her, and foolishly invested so much trust in her before I actually got to know her.

I don’t think I can forgive her, even knowing all of this. For all that my reaction to her shows my own flaws, that doesn’t excuse hers. She has no interest in being a better person, either. She is perfectly content to think herself superior to all the world, and that individuals who do not seem sufficiently interesting to her are genuinely inferior people. And that… that I can’t abide.

There are certainly inferior people in this world; it would be foolish to deny it. But people are inferior or superior on a wide array of continua. How could I in good conscience say that it breaks down solely according to social class, when I myself was once as common as any other? Oh, I am sure one finds more superior people as one moves up the classes, but that is no sign that all commoners are necessarily inferior; gems in the rough, one might say. And these gems have a way of floating to the top. (Though I hesitate to characterize myself as a gem…)

So throwing out social class, how do we define inferiority? Should it be based on intelligence? Oh, why not; tis a very important element of a person, after all. Very well, then; show me how to measure such a thing. Show me the difference between an intelligent and unintelligent person, where the cutoff lies. But you say “It’s clear when a person is unintelligent!”, do you?  It’s clear to you, is it? Someone more intelligent than you may view it as clear that you are inferior, and are they then not equally right? (“You say” – arguing philosophy with myself, that’s a new low.)

If there is any way in which we can separate the superior from the inferior, it must solely be on moral fiber. Again we face the same distinctions, but at least there is one clear rule here: If one attempts to live by the word of Dav and the Lord, attempts in all good faith, then that is enough for me. You cannot truly be evil and be a servant of the Lord. Look at what He asks of us: to serve and protect our brethren, to uphold our community, and to save souls.

All acts that are morally wrong transgress the Church’s code; no acts that are morally right are forbidden by it.

…Arien, I’ve gone and written half a philosophical treatise here. Ultimately all that we are here for on Urth is to be good  to one another. It is the most difficult mission of all, but the most rewarding, even when we are called to harm others for their own salvation.

And somebody who doesn’t value that is somebody I can’t value, even if perhaps the Lord calls me to save them too. I’m only human.