Battlefield Casualties
Posted on July 8, 2010 with 0 comments
Battlefield Casualties
Perhaps this is a guy thing or a schmaltzy predictable metaphor, but life with its invariable challenges is sort of like a battlefield. We jump out and start marching and before we know it something or someone gets in the way, tossing pop shots at you trying to dissuade your course. It could be a health issue, an economic issue, a relationship issue; it could be any number of things.
Now I’m not saying life is a drag, far from that, I think life is absolutely fantastic, that is important to remember as you read further. But we do have our battles from time to time which are not all bad really, they build character and also help strengthen the soldier and toughen up the skin under the uniform.
Sometimes as a soldier in life we are fired upon with unfriendly fire, the company of men, your team of compatriots, have all run for cover and suddenly you find yourself on the battlefield alone. You sort of look around and no one else is in sight. There’s a strong smell of powder in the air, a smokey haze washes the horizon with the rolling echo from the gunfire that just took place, but the barrage of gunfire has stopped. Standing there vulnerable wondering what to do, you ease forward carefully. Suddenly out of almost nowhere the shots ring out again. You duck for cover to miss being hit but you look down and you’ve been hit. Not fatally, but its enough to slow you down some for sure. You wait it out and again it’s silent. “They must have assumed they got me and left.” So you get up, start walking and proceed on with your plans, your goal. Again suddenly a few shots ring out and “bam” you are hit again. Again not fatally, just winged. As you proceed to your goal you find you are fired upon again and again by an unseen enemy. Sometimes near misses, sometimes just grazed and sometimes it’s left you limping pretty good until one day… something is different. This time… this time you managed to see where the shots came from. You are shocked to notice it. You’d never in am million years expected him to be taking shots at you. As you look open mouthed down the barrel that is pointed at you,, you recognize the hand that grips the firearm. You hear yourself shouting… “You? You! It’s been you shooting at me the whole while! Why?” Staring down the barrel there is a faceless arm aimed at you, and you are shocked to see it is your own.
Now remember I said it was important to note that I feel life is fantastic. This is not a Freudian post of conscious self-infliction or suicide. What I’m getting to is sometimes out on the battlefields of our plans, goals, aspirations and life dreams… we are our worst enemy.
What do I mean? Sometimes we hear ourselves say things like” What makes you think you can succeed in your goal… who do you think you are anyhow?” Or maybe “That compliment that person just gave you? That’s awesome but they’re just trying to be encouraging, they’d probably tell anyone that just to be a supportive person. They don’t really understand what is needed to succeed in this field.” Or maybe it’s… “See the role model you have? You know where you want to be someday? They are so far ahead of you, they started when they were young, you are a late bloomer, and they are so much better in what you do than you, how in the world do you expect to hang with them or be seen as their peers?” These thoughts are bullets that will wound any goal or aspiration… fatally if one takes enough of them beyond the skin.
Recently I watched an old movie, the old comedy classic “Blazing Saddles”. There is a scene where the newly appointed sheriff, a man of color, rode into town and all the white folks had him cornered out in the street and ready to pull their triggers. The Sheriff snapped his own gun from the holster, held it out in front pointing it at himself and started to spout stuff like “OK y’all! Put your guns down or I’m gonna shoot this man dead! I mean it now put ‘em down or he’s a goner!” The people looked incredulous at him and a couple of them said “Better do as he says… he’s not kidding… he’ll do it!”. The sheriff then walked himself to his own office at gun point while the town folks worriedly looked on , walked in the door, shut it, put the gun away, sat down and said to himself “Brother, you are soooo smart… and they are sooooo dumb”.
As long as you have the gun aimed at yourself, wouldn’t it be more productive to hold yourself hostage like this sheriff did and bring yourself to safety from those voices? After all they really are pretty dumb anyway. Remove all those voices and replace them with ones that encourage. Sometime ago I started a Word doc file I call Dumps Buster, the name itself would imply that I’m not a stranger to self-inflicted wounds on the battlefield of goals… I am not. In this file I’ve pasted emails I’ve gotten from people. Unsolicited encouragements. Everything from folks who’ve attended a gig and wrote to me, to others who’ve shared the mike with me and commented on my music, to someone I regard highly as a folk legend in my region who asked to cover one of my songs, to professional hit writers who have really complimented me and gave awesome comparisons to songs I’ve heard on the radio for years. Why do I need to be reminded of this on occasion? Probably because often times with artistic types comes perfectionism, and no one is perfect and things begin to turn inward. I’ve seen over confident people who are totally oblivious to what others think outside their presence and soooo do not want to go there that I tend to over compensate. As the journey goes along there will be less need I’d suppose. I know I’ve made distinctions in the past which before that time, certain things would bother me and I’d be self-conscious of them. Post-distinction I can see a more accurate representation of a rejection or even compliment.
The battle begins when one enjoys some form of artistic acknowledgment and a voice inside will say “Yeah but…” and it is right then, right there you can hear the cocking of the hammer and it needs to stop right then and there because nothing constructive will come after that point.
A friend of mine pointed out recently that I would in no way let someone tell my son, daughter, wife, or any of my friends the things I tell myself… as I’d likely be performing a little unlicensed dentistry on those voices. He then asked why are you letting them talk to you that way?
I don’t think we can go through life without making some point of reference or measurement of where we are in our efforts. I once read where Bob Dylan said about his music “I really don’t care what people think about it, if they like it fine if not fine”. While there is some benefit to that, being your own genuine unique individual not letting the rest of the world form you… I don’t really think he’d have left Minnesota, changed his name, hung out with artists and musicians and toured and etc. if he didn’t want people to listen and appreciate his music. I think for him it was a tool to combat or even his way of over compensating internally second guessing himself, but that would never be an admission.
So its time to holster the pistol, gag the voices, and as the good book says “let others sing your praises” but then also accept them face value and not second guess them, and yes even cop a little of Dylan’s mentality where needed.
One awesome distinction to realize if you have any such battles on your way to your goals, is honestly look how far you’ve come by dragging baggage of a second negative “you” all the while, just think how far you’ll spring forward if you shake him off and let him lay on the battlefield?
I’ve heard it said time and time and time over by artists and industry pros… “No one will believe in your music like you do, if you don’t believe in it, it’ll go nowhere.”
It’s time to believe!
Perhaps this is a guy thing or a schmaltzy predictable metaphor, but life with its invariable challenges is sort of like a battlefield. We jump out and start marching and before we know it something or someone gets in the way, tossing pop shots at you trying to dissuade your course. It could be a health issue, an economic issue, a relationship issue; it could be any number of things.
Now I’m not saying life is a drag, far from that, I think life is absolutely fantastic, that is important to remember as you read further. But we do have our battles from time to time which are not all bad really, they build character and also help strengthen the soldier and toughen up the skin under the uniform.
Sometimes as a soldier in life we are fired upon with unfriendly fire, the company of men, your team of compatriots, have all run for cover and suddenly you find yourself on the battlefield alone. You sort of look around and no one else is in sight. There’s a strong smell of powder in the air, a smokey haze washes the horizon with the rolling echo from the gunfire that just took place, but the barrage of gunfire has stopped. Standing there vulnerable wondering what to do, you ease forward carefully. Suddenly out of almost nowhere the shots ring out again. You duck for cover to miss being hit but you look down and you’ve been hit. Not fatally, but its enough to slow you down some for sure. You wait it out and again it’s silent. “They must have assumed they got me and left.” So you get up, start walking and proceed on with your plans, your goal. Again suddenly a few shots ring out and “bam” you are hit again. Again not fatally, just winged. As you proceed to your goal you find you are fired upon again and again by an unseen enemy. Sometimes near misses, sometimes just grazed and sometimes it’s left you limping pretty good until one day… something is different. This time… this time you managed to see where the shots came from. You are shocked to notice it. You’d never in am million years expected him to be taking shots at you. As you look open mouthed down the barrel that is pointed at you,, you recognize the hand that grips the firearm. You hear yourself shouting… “You? You! It’s been you shooting at me the whole while! Why?” Staring down the barrel there is a faceless arm aimed at you, and you are shocked to see it is your own.
Now remember I said it was important to note that I feel life is fantastic. This is not a Freudian post of conscious self-infliction or suicide. What I’m getting to is sometimes out on the battlefields of our plans, goals, aspirations and life dreams… we are our worst enemy.
What do I mean? Sometimes we hear ourselves say things like” What makes you think you can succeed in your goal… who do you think you are anyhow?” Or maybe “That compliment that person just gave you? That’s awesome but they’re just trying to be encouraging, they’d probably tell anyone that just to be a supportive person. They don’t really understand what is needed to succeed in this field.” Or maybe it’s… “See the role model you have? You know where you want to be someday? They are so far ahead of you, they started when they were young, you are a late bloomer, and they are so much better in what you do than you, how in the world do you expect to hang with them or be seen as their peers?” These thoughts are bullets that will wound any goal or aspiration… fatally if one takes enough of them beyond the skin.
Recently I watched an old movie, the old comedy classic “Blazing Saddles”. There is a scene where the newly appointed sheriff, a man of color, rode into town and all the white folks had him cornered out in the street and ready to pull their triggers. The Sheriff snapped his own gun from the holster, held it out in front pointing it at himself and started to spout stuff like “OK y’all! Put your guns down or I’m gonna shoot this man dead! I mean it now put ‘em down or he’s a goner!” The people looked incredulous at him and a couple of them said “Better do as he says… he’s not kidding… he’ll do it!”. The sheriff then walked himself to his own office at gun point while the town folks worriedly looked on , walked in the door, shut it, put the gun away, sat down and said to himself “Brother, you are soooo smart… and they are sooooo dumb”.
As long as you have the gun aimed at yourself, wouldn’t it be more productive to hold yourself hostage like this sheriff did and bring yourself to safety from those voices? After all they really are pretty dumb anyway. Remove all those voices and replace them with ones that encourage. Sometime ago I started a Word doc file I call Dumps Buster, the name itself would imply that I’m not a stranger to self-inflicted wounds on the battlefield of goals… I am not. In this file I’ve pasted emails I’ve gotten from people. Unsolicited encouragements. Everything from folks who’ve attended a gig and wrote to me, to others who’ve shared the mike with me and commented on my music, to someone I regard highly as a folk legend in my region who asked to cover one of my songs, to professional hit writers who have really complimented me and gave awesome comparisons to songs I’ve heard on the radio for years. Why do I need to be reminded of this on occasion? Probably because often times with artistic types comes perfectionism, and no one is perfect and things begin to turn inward. I’ve seen over confident people who are totally oblivious to what others think outside their presence and soooo do not want to go there that I tend to over compensate. As the journey goes along there will be less need I’d suppose. I know I’ve made distinctions in the past which before that time, certain things would bother me and I’d be self-conscious of them. Post-distinction I can see a more accurate representation of a rejection or even compliment.
The battle begins when one enjoys some form of artistic acknowledgment and a voice inside will say “Yeah but…” and it is right then, right there you can hear the cocking of the hammer and it needs to stop right then and there because nothing constructive will come after that point.
A friend of mine pointed out recently that I would in no way let someone tell my son, daughter, wife, or any of my friends the things I tell myself… as I’d likely be performing a little unlicensed dentistry on those voices. He then asked why are you letting them talk to you that way?
I don’t think we can go through life without making some point of reference or measurement of where we are in our efforts. I once read where Bob Dylan said about his music “I really don’t care what people think about it, if they like it fine if not fine”. While there is some benefit to that, being your own genuine unique individual not letting the rest of the world form you… I don’t really think he’d have left Minnesota, changed his name, hung out with artists and musicians and toured and etc. if he didn’t want people to listen and appreciate his music. I think for him it was a tool to combat or even his way of over compensating internally second guessing himself, but that would never be an admission.
So its time to holster the pistol, gag the voices, and as the good book says “let others sing your praises” but then also accept them face value and not second guess them, and yes even cop a little of Dylan’s mentality where needed.
One awesome distinction to realize if you have any such battles on your way to your goals, is honestly look how far you’ve come by dragging baggage of a second negative “you” all the while, just think how far you’ll spring forward if you shake him off and let him lay on the battlefield?
I’ve heard it said time and time and time over by artists and industry pros… “No one will believe in your music like you do, if you don’t believe in it, it’ll go nowhere.”
It’s time to believe!