#Words & Actions: Linus || ((musing))

[herousanimarum-moved]

[herousanimarum-moved]

baddeleyite‌:

lycanthropanic‌: 

Im ok with the lack of context but at the same time I desperately want the context

@chinasaviour​

[thinkgloriathink]

Semester 3 Reflections

This will actually be more like a personal check-in/ annual letter, rather than a post about living the “College Experience”. During my freshman year, a huge chunk of my personal development revolved around my adjustment process. I thought a lot about campus culture and social navigation, and took liberties to explore my philosophical side. As I sit down to write this post about my second year at Brown so far, it’s clear to me that, for the last three months, I’ve turned my lens of attention inwards this time. So there.

Lesson learned: Stop being so easily intimidated by people — there’s usually no reason to be. By a lot of standards, I should have the smarts and clout to be a fully competent adult by now. Though I know it’s true, I can’t help but find myself yielding to other, perhaps more accomplished, or simply older, adults. Fancy titles and prestige are things I’ve never questioned before, but a few experiences this semester made me wonder if conceding to authority for free was doing me a disservice. I should probably trust myself more than I do now, that I’d be able to hold my own when it comes to work or grownup business. There’s nothing insolent about being able to look at someone in the eye. No one’s invincible, no one actually has all the shit in their life sorted out, and no one without huge veiny muscles and weapons should be that intimidating, I think.

I’ve become a little more skeptical about sensational things, and I’m trying to eat more knowledge vegetables. I’m not gonna lie: TED talks have rocked my world since middle school (Susan Cain’s talk about the power of introverts was the first one I’ve ever watched). Those, and books by neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran had me weak in the knees with wonder back then. Each 17 minute sound bite, each espresso shot of science I’d find on the news, made me hungry for more ideas and musings about the future. Today, I still get giddy after watching that stuff. But a TED interview with Linus Torvalds I watched in November made me question things. “I am not a visionary. I do not have a five-year plan, I don’t have a moon shot. I’m an engineer. I’m perfectly happy with all the people who are walking around and just staring at the clouds and looking at the stars and saying, “I want to go there,” but I’m looking at the ground and I want to fix the pothole that’s right in front of me before I fall in.” Here’s a guy who made cool stuff happen, and let the results do most of the talking for him. That’s pretty admirable, I think.

Family troubles and bodily injury really puncture the bubble of invincibility you feel as a college student, since you are used to seeing nothing else but a future full of potential and limitless exploration. Before this semester, I don’t think I’ve properly appreciated how precious and fragile my current lifestyle is. This past semester, I had a few brief encounters with worrying family news, a knee injury, and some sobering realities here and there that yanked the rug of contentedness right from under my feet, when I least expected it. This was a stern reminder to me to not take the rest of my awesomely sheltered and warm (albeit short-lived) years at Brown for granted :)

It was pretty upsetting to see certain people complain about being jaded and being existentially bored all the time. All of that made me want to hug my hobbies closer to me and always make time for a little good-old fun in my life. There’s something magical about doing the things that excite you and gazing at the world with fresh-eyed wonder that I don’t want to lose when I get older.

I realized that I filter my words a lot when I speak to people. It makes me wonder if that makes me less authentic, or compromise my self-respect?

Not a lot of things make me angry, but I’ve discovered one that does get me pretty fired up: idleness. I don’t judge people for the ways they choose to live out their lives. After all, I acknowledge that everybody’s different, and the world needs people who do life differently. But I do take issue with people who are patently dissatisfied with what they’re doing in life, have full agency and ability to take action and change things for the better, but choose to continue on living dysfunctionally and in denial. I hope I’m not the only one who feels this way…

It feels so good to be self-assured about where I am socially. I have a close group of friends who I care about and who care about me, and it makes me feel so much more comfortable in my own skin. This definitely was not the case last year. I’ve also realized how important it is to surround myself with people who make me a better person. It surprises me sometimes how large of an influence one’s close friends have on one’s personal development. Borrowing a very appropriate quote from a friend: “Your friends are a reflection of yourself.”

It takes work to stay curious and inspired. Last year, personal growth felt effortless to me, as I was constantly buffeted by new environments and new people, with Gloria-needs-to-grow-up experiences being constantly shoved down my throat whether I wanted them to or not. The stimulus overloading has since cooled, but sometimes I miss the richness of that crazy time. Going forward, it looks like it will take a little more effort on my part to keep the virtuous momentum going.

[herousanimarum-moved]

it’s a fudgin tag dump

[herousanimarum-moved]

statures‌:

#mood

[fangedjustice]

Logically, it was best to smooth out internal and external issues. And, logically speaking, he knew that. Though it wasn't always within his capacity to help someone else sort things out, he didn't often hesitate to lend an ear or a shoulder -- he'd played the role plenty with Linus. But left to his own devices, if it was something that concerned his emotions, he almost always needed a push from someone else to really get to the heart of it.

You need time to mourn.

The words in his mother's letter crept back into the forefront of his mind again, and there's an almost sardonic tint to the grimace they elicited in him now.

Igrene was bringing up some very similar threads, and the irony was not lost on him.

Ever since leaving his mother's home, Elibe's shores, he had been avoiding the bleeding wound of what had happened to the Black Fang. It was still fresh to him, even after this time, and he'd done little in the way of helping it heal. He picked at it every night -- every action he could have taken and did not, every passive order taken and given that had only ended in another bad turn and the loss of good people.

For as much as he did not address it in a manner to move beyond it, he could not seem to leave it alone either.

Lloyd lets out a breathy sort of laugh, resignation clinging stickily to the sound. "You've got me on that, Lady Igrene." She did not shove his face in her correction, but she did not let his avoidance go unchallenged either. She was not doing this to heap accusation or punishment, and for her patience, Lloyd was unwaveringly grateful. He sucks in another lungful of air, holds it until it burns slightly in his chest, releasing it in a streak of cloudy condensation.

"A stubborn, prideful man aware of his flaws and yet unwilling to account for them when they inevitably cause a problem," he muses, gaze shifting from the tree before them and to the woman beside him; how her hand, gentle looking in the light, belied the immense strength and willpower he had experienced firsthand on several occasions now.

There were facets to all things, and some were easier to look at than others.

These words and their tone, he understands without knowing the context. It is a connection, made deeply and without judgment. The how and why did not need to be voiced in this moment. She knew a pain all her own, parallel to his own. That was more than enough.

"...I see."

He thought he'd been moving forward. Lied to himself about what he was doing here and why. There could be no solid foundation built upon sand. Running away from things, chasing others -- he moved nowhere if he did not cut himself free of what weighed him down, and gave it a proper burial. Put it to rest, so that he could actually move passed it and do better in the here and now.

Dear friends and family had been lost, but his brother and sister still lived. He had comrades he was learning to get close to here. Mistakes that had been made could not be undone, but they could be learned from.

He had caused Igrene harm in his weakness, but it had not destroyed her trust in him. She was giving him the space to reorient himself, and stubborn and foolish as he could be, he wasn't ignorant to what she was giving him.

A pep talk wasn't needed, but the understanding of someone who had gone through something similar. It made a surprising difference.

The Saints had given him another chance, his mother said. He'd been adamantly against it at the time, and while he was still unsure in this moment -- why him, with all the blood on his hands? -- but perhaps...

"I feel as though I've been given more than a second chance at this point," Lloyd admits, running the pads of his fingers along the polished grain of the wood Igrene's hand rested against, "And I'm still unsure if it's a gift I am deserving of. And...perhaps, right now, I am not. But I would like to be worthy of whatever the higher powers see in me. Worthy of whatever has you shaking me out of my melancholy when you are not obligated to."

A smaller but genuine smile this time. "Something I have yet to thank you for. I realize I've been...a fair bit of trouble, but thank you for bearing my barking and my biting, Igrene. I owe you quite a bit, now."

And so the dam broke. It had taken little enough – just the mere acknowledgement, just the facing of the thing, pointing it out and calling it by name – and it seemed as though all of the weight of shame, the heavy guilt which had bowed his shoulders, came forth, filling the air between them that had previously been so strained. 

Igrene let him speak, quiet and listening, her head cocked to one side as she regarded him, and after a point she could not help as the faintness of a smile in her eyes finally traveled downward and curved at her lips. 

Even now, the stone's hold on Sir Lloyd has turned him into a boy, unsure and fumbling, and helpless. Beneath all of his posturing, the coat of shame that he wore just as closely as though it were his own ever-present coat, he was still afraid. Afraid of the control that had been wrenched from him, despite that he had fought tooth and nail to secure it back – afraid of the dark impulse within him, which perhaps her had not even fully grappled with, before or after the stone's influence. 

Perhaps even, in a way, afraid of her. 

"For the animals, yes, but also for the unnatural," she corrected gently, pointedly, when he had given up on his skittishness, relented in coming to stand beside her. "You have the right to your shame, Sir Lloyd, and any other emotion you might be feeling, which I suspect may be quite a bit more than you let on. You may have your shame, your sorrow – even, yes, your rage and your fear, for it's as you said, you're but a man, and all that comes with that. None can begrudge you that. 

"But because you're but a man, perhaps you should not begrudge yourself your weakness." 

Perhaps it was her upbringing, the lessons instilled into her from childhood to grow into something meant to be larger than life, the protector for things of legends, but a weakness hidden in the dark was a dangerous weakness, and she'd had no dearth of facing her own inconsequence in the grand scale of the universe. The desert could swallow her whole without a second thought, and she was thankful every day it elected to show her grace – it was the respect due, she thought, of something so much greater than her, to acknowledge that she is but a grain of sand in its dunes. 

And at the end of the day, to come home to those who would outlive her by millennia. Her charges, her neighbors, dearest friends and those she might have called family saw her existence in a singular blink of their ancient eyes. 

Perhaps they might even remember her fondly, their pet protector, one of many. She could hope. 

For hope was all she had, at the end of the day. Hope was what brought her such strength. 

Igrene sighed, and she allowed her eyes to shut for a moment, inclining her head as her hand came to rest on the wooden partition separating them from the plants. Gently, her fingers curled into a fist, then released as she continued; "You aren't the only one who has felt loss at their own powerless hands, through their own stupid inaction, Sir Lloyd." 

Vaguely, faraway, tucked in a corner of her mind that she rarely visited but could not force herself to turn her back on, she heard the screaming, echoing and desperate and ragged and drowned out by the wind, of a young woman, on her knees in the sand, begging for the gods to have taken her instead, for it was what she was there for. 

Opening her eyes, she turned to face him, regarding him carefully, expression soft, smile bitter. "The only direction a person can move is forward, Sir Lloyd. Not by leaving those mistakes behind, but by building overtop of them to prevent them, as much as one can, for the future. There are so few second chances we get in this life," she added softly, "that they must be treated as the gifts they are."