Personal Note: Turning It Off

We all have our "it."  For me, it appears to be work.  I am a worker born and bred.  I work a lot.  I work for money AND I work for self-satisfaction.  Because of this, I sometimes have a hard time "turning it off" and focusing on other things.  This can lead to dysfunction in other areas of my life, whether it be my relationships, my health, or my free time.

I was, of course, working today, looking up the relationship of Hector and Achilles from the Trojan War because there was a reference to it in my students' reading assignment. As a result of looking up these mythic heroes, I landed on a post on a Christian website by Gene Veith as he discussed the two heroes in relationship to an article by Mark Edmundson entitled "Do Sports Build Character?" The two men used the myth of Hector and Achilles to illuminate different aspects of character, different aspects of what it means to be human, and I found myself sliding down the internet rabbit hole and becoming obsessed with an idea that led to a click here, a website there, and eventually a detour into my own blog.

The point is this, and it comes from Mark Edmundson himself, "...what is most appealing about Hector—and about a certain kind of athlete and warrior. Hector can turn it off. He can stop being the manslayer that he needs to be out on the windy plains of Troy and become a humane husband and father. The scene shows him in his dual nature—warrior and man of thought and feeling. In a sense, he is the figure that every fighter and athlete should emulate. He is the Navy Seal or Green Beret who would never kill a prisoner, the fearless fighter who could never harm a woman or a child. In the symbolic world of sports, where the horrors and the triumphs of combat are only mimicked, he is the one who comports himself with extreme gentleness off the field, who never speaks ill of an opponent, who never complains, never whines."  

Much of what I obsess about in my personal life is this exact dynamic.  How do I ambitiously pursue the things I want in life while still being a "man of thought and feeling"?  How do I create a life that is stable and loving for my family and friends while still maintaining my teeth-bared, no-holds-barred, I'm-going-to-get-mine attitude toward my writing and my career?  The answer is simple.  I can be both things.  I am allowed to be both things.  These are not aspects that are necessarily in conflict with each other, but they are aspects of being a person that need to be "activated" in their appropriate times and places.  

I can be Hector the warrior and I can be Hector the father.  My daughter will learn from seeing both sides of me.  She will come to understand tenderness, but she will also understand strength, but, most importantly, she'll come to know that there is a time and a place for each of them.