When I was four I played with army men and dirt.

When I was four I played with army men and dirt. The dirt was for protection. I would spend hours forming the dirt into trenches and fortifications. Little fox-holes dotted my lawn, little green men stood ready. At this tender age I knew not what I was defending against. But I knew it was important to be wary. I knew how to make walls and defenses against the possibility of attack. I was a good little boy.

At 30, a slightly less tender age, I spend hours trying to dismantle these walls. The walls keep others out and me safe, safe and alone. Over the past few years a sobering thought has steadily dawned on me. I am guarded. My soul has walls around it. I have plenty of psychic fox-holes, and if a situation is uncomfortable for me I go underground and close the hatch. Nothing may change outwardly, but my energy becomes closed and I’m no longer open to giving and receiving.  No longer open to sharing with others.  

Furthermore, I have an image of who I would like to be.  I expend a tremendous amount of energy trying to project that image. If this image is reinforced again and again nobody will know its made of dirt, not even me.  So it is that our contingency plans are formed. Some people more then others, but we all have these emergency evacuation plans. They are learned at a time when our emotional survival depended on these crude defensives. And they stay with us until a situation seems threatening.

Someone I care about questions my integrity? Deploy tank unit 84 and slip into the western trench complex. Troop movement is detected in the opponent’s front lines? “I need more space. You’re not understanding me.”

Such is the state of my internal nation. The socialists are trying to decrease military spending. But the conservatives are building more bombers. And in moments like these I yearn to be naked.  Stripped of armor skin. But that’s not the real world, is it?  Bullets fly in the real world. Preemptive strikes. Negotiations sometimes fail. Factions within the mind lobby for protection and isolation.

Yet, I can feel the peace of the un-defended and the strength of the truly free.
‘If your brother strikes you on one cheek turn to him the other also.’

'You have heard it said to love your neighbor and hate your enemy but I tell you love your enemy, bless those that curse you, do good to those that hate you.’

Safety is a strange drug, and I’m trying to kick the habit. Determined to, even if it takes lifetimes.