Went for a the day before yesterday. Planned on making it a short run, I ended up doing sprints off and on for two miles. It was nice. Gave me much time to think, to physically burned off some stress. It was almost perfect weather outside for the kind of feel I was going for. It was a short break in a storm. The rain had stopped, it was evening, still cloudy out. You could feel the energy in the air. The storm wasn't over yet, but I wanted to go outside anyways. I haven't ran in over a month. Before the PFT I was scared of running because I knew I wouldn't be able to achieve what I wanted to. I loathe running for any other reason than for me. Being diagnosed with asthma was a halfhearted relief. I wonder if my pain really is asthma or if I just settled for that. Settled for any explanation that gives me something I can beat. When I was running yesterday I would sprint until I felt like my lungs would burst, until my body just stopped, but then I would just walk off the pain and then run again. I thought about how I'd like to just run away from everything. To be able to just let go of everything, and feel myself be lifted off the earth, the wings I always have in my dreams spread out and I can just take flight. When I was running it wasn't for physical training, it was to sweat out all the tears I can't cry.
During my slower jogging I would look up at the clouds rolling by and remember my childhood obsession with the elements, with nature. I'd always take those online quizzes of, 'Which Element Are You?'. In reality I knew which element I wanted to be. I always knew which one I wanted to be. Air, I wanted to be uncontainable, free, everywhere there is life, a day dreamer. Water was known for being able to slowly wear away its own path, adaptable,and healing. Earth is always well grounded, solid, nurturing, and full of strength and endurance. Fire was a burning passion, strong will, energy, creates and destroys. In paganism the elements are important, when drawing a sacred circle for workings you invoke the elements, you work with the elements, and it can feel as if they truly work with you. While running I felt slightly more in tune with them again, an energy about that I haven't felt in a long time.
Growing up I always tried to conform myself into what I wanted me to be, but in truth I didn't know anything about myself. To this day I don't. I know what I want, and what I need, but I don't know who I want to be. I don't know how I want to be. In a way I do, but the person I would like to think of myself as, is a person I don't think I'm capable of becoming. I feel as though I've tried this path before, and again and again it has burnt me. Being a good person and believing in those around me with out reason has only shown me how I can't trust the people around me, because as human beings we all carry corruptness within us, due to the society we will, the expectations the world burdens us with. We are forced to play the mind games of others. Especially in the military. You can never just believe that the marines around you are looking out for you. That only occurs if it interests them. If it is convenient for them.
Maybe it is just my personality type. Being an ISFJ apparently describes me to a tee. I never really knew it though. Most things I've come to realize about myself over the years had to be pointed out to me multiple times on different occasions. I don't think I trust people, but I do more than I'd like to admit.
"They are truly warm and kind-hearted, and want to believe the best of people. They value harmony and cooperation, and are likely to be very sensitive to other people's feelings. People value the ISFJ for their consideration and awareness, and their ability to bring out the best in others by their firm desire to believe the best."
I do that everyday, with every person. After talking to an individual I can see how they've come to the path they're on. How one can feel trapped in the choices they've made, how nothing is in their control, but yet everything is.
I tend to think to myself better than I express it to the world around me. I always feel as if I'm taking in information, even stuff I don't understand yet. But if it left an impression on me I will remember it years from when it occurred.
Like my startling realization while running that I may be more of a Leo than I realized. How I could represent a certain aspect of fire. How was long as I have something to burn on I will rage forth in my own way to cleanse what I feel is wrong. How I will remember all that has happened and I will let it fuel me in the future.
I won't let myself be forced to become a person I am not, even if it means I will be a Tier III marine. What I do, I do for myself, what I do for myself, I do for the people I love.
I am proud to be in the Marine Corps, but it is not a proudness I feel while I am there, it is when I look back and I see how I have impacted others, even in the slightest way and it helped them go on, to achieve what they wanted to do. Even if they don't realize it, if I don't even notice. I know that in small ways I make a difference.
Maybe one day I will be part of something largely impactful. I don't feel as if I ever will. But I will be proud that I made the decision to serve the country I was born in, that I went through the training, I dealt with the pain, and the people. And that I came out no worse of a human being for it. I was part of a mission, and maybe even though if I hadn't been there someone else would be...but it wasn't like that. I've never saved lives, I've never fought in battles, but perhaps because I was there, someone else wasn't. And through that chain of events maybe something good did come from it.
No one will ever know the extent of the butterfly effect or how deeply it is involved in everything we do.
But after my running meditational thoughts on the elements and following my thoughts back up the line I decided and single element isn't something that can represent me. The combination of them, put together into the storms that ravage the earth, or save it. Calm, or violent, but beautiful in every way. The energy in the air we all feel in different ways. The energy some ignore because they've lost touch with all that made them come to being. I will never become those people. I will never run through the calm during a storm and not notice the perfect interaction between nature that has caused something magnificent to come into being. Even though I know the science behind it all, I will never let the world lose its magic to me.
Ever.
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