In a War -- a poem

In a War

by Susan 2009

You/I am/are in a war. Who will rule MY world? Each day - hour minute I we fight a new battle not in the world around us but in our minds. This is where the war will be won - or lost. Or the white flag thrown in.

Whatever your world looks like -whatever your label that you claim -own -take on whatever role you accept - whatever world you have chosen for yourself – this will determine if the battle is won…and you can now live in peace monitoring those outlying thoughts that can and will try to creep in to weaken your defenses, to plant the infiltrators ready to become insurgents at the right moment that moment of weakness when you are not prepared when you have rested on your laurels and said "I have won - there is no need to be on guard".

...for the first minor attack will not break your defenses or even cause you notice - but like the rain pelts the new paint on your home after a year - or two or twenty - your armor wears thin and cannot withstand when finally the enemy sees you are weak and the thoughts again overtake your days…and your nights.

No longer is it an occasional obsessive or depressive thought but now the floodgates are open and perhaps it is in this time that our defenses fail us… and we flounder.

Some of us won't survive this final battle for our soul...our being no longer can sit with the things of the past or the lost hopes of the future. Our minds become re-consumed with the ways of what is dead. Some die here in this battle. Some become wounded permanently a return to life in whatever it was before…or even worse. A few of us stumble and limp our way back saying boy that was close the battle we raged against the onslaught...ha! We got them!

A fewer of us slowly realize that it was not the world around us that had changed or even attacked us as it will - but it was our own self losing touch with the core values of our journey and our new chosen role in it to accept and let others to live of their own means and ways and to take care of the one thing I could manage and manage well - my own thoughts and actions.

Perhaps it was the sneaking nag of a voice that complained about the neighbors or the Bag boy at checkout at the market. Perhaps it was that voice of a childhood entertaining how it was my fault as that child believed in the magic of childhood. Or the bemoaning of the new shoes we couldn't buy because we wanted to or the meal and movie out - the old car we wanted to trade in.

Bottom line is - when we begin to accept those moanings and lose sight of being happy in this very moment - the only life that we have - we unwittingly opened the door to the Trojan horse to bring the battles to the war - we have given the front to the enemy and may not come out alive this time.

So. To be on guard. To protect your thoughts as though they were the fortress that held the thing dearest to you. This; this is the purpose for which we stand today. For this is the thing that can steal your today’s and murder your tomorrows as quickly as you can say …..”think”.

Protect your mind, guard your thoughts. Refuse to entertain the enemy or allow it, any ground. For you, I, we – are in a war and together we can stand facing the world as it is. Knowing the power to protect ourselves lies in the deepest trenches of our soul.