Palespyder’s Web

I have now accepted that this is most likely not my path. I am unable to travel enough to ever even get Fyrded, let alone make it to Knighthood one day. I will be contented with learning to make armour, spending time with my wife, and working on my house.

Reality slapping you in the face is a sobering experience. I will strove to become Knightly, but my dream of one day being a Knight in the SCA, is just that.

So I have always had one. I kept myself from trying a good many things in my life due to an insane fear of failure. I could sit here and blame my bastard of a stepfather who beat it into my head that I was not good enough, not smart enough, not attractive enough, but that would just be a cop out. See, I am a believer that you have the choice to change that view, sometimes we don’t do it out of fear of the unknown or the fear of change, but the choice to change it is always there.

I am supposed to Herald this weekend, I will be doing a Knighting and 11 awards. Raven told me last night that everything is written down and God bless her, she gave me an out, a way to punk out and no do court if I so choose to do it. I cannot with good conscience do that. I would feel terrible and I think it would actually end up making me feel worse then I do now.

I do think I will step down as Caltrop. I thought I could do the job, I thought I could do the job well, but I truly believe their Excellencies would be better served by someone else. I was not as emotionally and mentally prepared for this as I thought I was and I need to just enjoy being in the SCA again, as a good, learning a nifty skill and showing up to fight a bit. Things like cleanup and setup/teardown are more my forte. Making things for the Barony is probably more where my strongpoints lie.

After Ren Faire I will be stepping down, I will work to get them a better replacement and then I will just spend some time working on my hobby and playing my game, I hope they understand.

I have been reading this book, Living the Martial Way, good read so far. I am currently on the chapter on Honor and was shocked to read the honor consists of three principles, Obligation, Justice, and Courage. While reading on these things, the author speaks about the three levels of what I call honor enlightenment. He uses the story that a man is killed after leaving a large sum of money with a friend for safe keeping. The friend knows no one but he and his dead friend knew of the arrangement. His honor comes down to three choices in decending order of enlightenment.

• He can return the money to the man’s family without ever thinking of keeping it himself as this is the right and just thing to do.
• He can think about keeping the money, but return it after shame and guilt set in.
• He can keep the money and never tell anyone what happened.

The most honorable of men would choose the  first because it is his Obligation to do so and his Giri is fulfilled to his friend. He would never consider keeping someone elses money for his own selfish game because that in turn hurts the man’s family and causes injustice. It takes courage to do these things and thus his honor is intact because he has fulfilled the three tenants of Honor.

There are men, I have known many in my time, who are unscrupulous and look for oppurtunities like this to profit off of the misery of others. I do not feel I have ever, nor will I ever be that man. Now, that being said, I am neither saint nor demon, I am a middle of the road man who would think out both sides of the coin before returning the money, does this make me dishonorable or less then honorable to the other man? I don’t think so, I think it makes me unenlightened and enlightenment is something to work toward until the end of your days.