Duty, Loyalty, Integrity, and Courage.

What are you loyal to above all else?

I received a lovely Secret Santa gift yesterday, a writer's prompt book. Today, I rolled some random numbers to decide which prompt to write on and this is what the universe came up with. I laughed, because this question is so relevant in my life right now, considering the things that are happening to me at work, the time of year, and the hardships I can’t seem to shake.

Now, when I say hardships, I mean 1st world problem hardships. I don’t have to worry about food, shelter, clothing, or the loneliness that can come from being isolated with one's own thoughts. I am very thankful that I have been granted these blessings in my life, especially on days like today when the snow falls in clouds across the Toronto skyline and the air is chilling. I am thankful that I can sit here in front of my old computator, with a fireplace and oldies Christmas songs playing on the other screen while my 2 bedroom apartment warms itself with central heat.

When you think about it, I, and most likely some of the people who are reading this, have it well considering the state of the rest of the world. Even in other places in my own country of Canada, where people don't get clean water, and can't afford to buy food from the grocery stores because of exorbitant pricing.

It’s strange to say that we have hardships when things like wars in Ukraine and the world around us seem to be falling apart. It feels like we shouldn’t, it feels like we should be happy with what we have, but that is the curious affliction of humanity, it seems. We always want more, want better. A new car, a new house, more money. It seems there is always something going wrong in a human's life; even those of us who are in privileged millionaire and billionaire brackets.

Everyone has problems, they just take different forms. I find it odd that sometimes those of us below minimize the problems of those above because the humans' lives above seem to be easier. There is that old cliched saying "Money can't buy happiness", I think it's accurate to some degree because with money comes a new set of issues you have to work through.

Hell, I was pricing out a new computer tonight, even though this one is working fine, for the most part, and as I sit here and write thinking about this prompt, fingers tippity tapping my keyboard keys whose strokes seem to echo mechanically through this temporarily empty home, painting words on this page I do wonder what I am truly loyal to above all else.

The easy answer would be my wife, my family, and myself, but there is more to it than that, isn’t there?

Justice, equality, integrity?

The military rewired me in 2010 to believe the 4 tenents: Duty, Loyalty, Integrity, and Courage- in that order- are the pinnacle of what an ex-soldier like me should be loyal to above all; and I guess that's true in most respects of my life nowadays. These tenets are things I’ve tried to live by since I joined the Canadian Armed Forces all those years ago, even when I left and pursued other careers in 2013.

To be fair, these tenets have gotten me in my fair share of trouble. In the last few years, I have had a few incidents where I have pushed back against people who are much higher on the food chain than I am and have gotten myself into tough spots because of it.

Currently, I am having to do it again with, if I may use a Dungeons and Dragons reference, a few black dragons which prowl the top-floor offices of sky-high buildings and wield caustic breath weapons of status and power over me, but that hasn't stopped me from being true to who I am and what I believe.

What do I believe I am loyal to above all else?

Well, what we are all loyal to above all else, I think. We are loyal to ourselves, our beliefs, our wants, our needs, and our desires. If you ask any person on the street, regardless of status and circumstance they will all say something that can be traced back to the self. We are loyal to things that make us feel a part of something, that make us feel not so empty inside. I am loyal, above all else, to things that make me who I am.

My wife, my Gods and Goddesses, my family, my friends, my writing, and my drive. All these things work in tandem to make me feel not so empty, scarred, or broken in my heart and my soul. Duty, Loyalty, Integrity, and Courage all make me who I am today.

Duty to those things that give my life meaning, Loyalty to those things that stoke a fire inside my broken self, Integrity in all things in my life, both in the light and within the darkness, all the way down to that the caged monster which I have had inside me since I was destroyed, broken down, and rebuilt so many years ago.

Courage in facing the hard things, courage in standing up for yourself and others, courage to fight against inequality and mistreatment in all things that surround us. Finally, courage to know that I would fight to the end to protect those I care about and the things that make me whole.

I find it funny that the things which I am loyal to above all else are things I had been programmed to live my life around when I was 20-something years old, those things I hold above all else are the things that were ingrained in me when I was reborn as a soldier. Though I'm older, wiser, and life seems to be flying forward at a blistering pace, I am still that person that I had been made into so many years ago.

The person I was before that, that person doesn’t exist anymore, that person held the wrong things above all else and that person is dead now. To be honest, I think that was probably the best thing that could have happened to me in my life.

Not so bad for my first memoir piece, huh.

Velox Versutus Vigilans…