Invulnerability: The "Trick"...

I was broken from a young age, Taking my soul into the masses, Write down my poems for the few

That looked at me took to me, shook to me, feeling me..."

Of all the things I could write about tonight this little revelatory piece of dialogue seems best to me.  It is from 1962's "Lawrence Of Arabia" starring the great Peter O' Toole.  I will admit to never having seen this great classic but this one particular scene was rehearsed by the android "David" in 2012's "Prometheus".  A prequel of sorts to the classic "Alien".  You see David was attempting to become more human so he took to studying movies and that one scene stood out as something he would never come to truly understand.

Potter: [trying to copy Lawrence's snuffing a match with his fingers] Oooh! It damn well hurts.

Lawrence: Certainly it hurts.

Potter: Well, what's the trick, then?

Lawrence: The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.

As an android, he had no sensation of pain so he could never truly understand the truth at the core of human endurance and by extension...human strength.  Study those lines and understand the "greats" you've encountered and what they've had to endure.  How they can take struggle, never seeming to flinch at loss or feel the sting of the punch.  As onlookers, we think them invulnerable to pain when the truth is far more elementary than some imbued super power.  The truth is they feel it all.  They experience grief, loss, fear and doubt just like anyone else.  The difference is found in their experience.  Either in the expectation of what awaits or in the fact that this pain has become so commonplace that it is no longer met with surprise.  They no longer "mind" the pain within the struggle.  It no longer slows them down because as it has in so many times past...resolved itself over time.  They come to understand that the cliche is more than that...it is a truism.  Where there is life, there is in fact...always tomorrow...

For anything a man will face or have to endure, so long as there is life...there is always the opportunity to keep pushing.  The very breath we breathe is reason enough to keep living.  There is a reason why I overuse the phrase "I ain't done yet"...I'm still alive.  Death, loss, pain, grief and failures are only setbacks to the soul that has his eyes fixed on the journey.  I never forget and I always forgive...learning that anything can and will happen along the way.  So what then is the "trick" to invulnerability?  Amongst all great expectation...expect the setback, the delay & the pain. You won't mind it so much when you come to realize an undeniable universal truth...that such things are commonplace for an ordinary life on it's way to becoming extraordinary.  Much love...

PS:  My house still stands as there will never be the need to burn it down ;-)