You see this meme floating around from time to time on Facebook. I’ve never questioned it until today. My response came as a simple question: What if she doesn’t want to be a warrior? This brought up all sorts of other questions. What exactly constitutes being raised as a warrior? Does everyone need to be raised as a warrior? Is there a downside to being a warrior? Must kids learn martial arts to be trained as a warrior? Some people enroll their kids in various martial arts. Most classes don’t offer training in weapons, let alone any firearms, so they wouldn’t be of much use in a battlefield. Many of the classes only train to a tap in a tournament, and the skills aren’t of much use in a street fight. In fact most dojos emphasize the self-discipline, exercise, and growth in self-confidence. But you can learn self discipline in many pursuits - piano lessons, sewing, painting, housekeeping, cooking and others. All of which are generally considered ladylike qualities. So being raised as a lady doesn’t necessarily mean you lack self discipline. What about courage? How much courage does it take to sew a button on? Maybe not much, but performing in public is down right intimidating for most folks. It does take some gumption to get up in front of even a small audience and perform Ode to Joy - even an arrangement simplified for an eight year old. Ladylike endeavors can teach the practitioner both courage and self discipline. Is there a downside to being a warrior? Do they become hammers and see every problem as a nail? Some people with power are bullies, taking anything they want. Others even enjoy inflicting pain. These people would still be called warriors. Modern people make jokes about the Vikings raiding monasteries, burning and raping and pillaging, but no one denies the Vikings aren’t warriors. Mongol warriors destroyed entire cities and enslaved thousands, if not millions. Crusaders killed every man, woman and child after storming Jerusalem during the First Crusade, because that’s what warriors did back then. Of course we would want to raise our kids to never inflict pain for pleasure and to see using force unjustly as bad. Both Frank Castle and Steve Rogers are warriors, but we’d want our kids to be the latter and not the former. Most people don’t consider this when they see the meme, though. You can probably see where I’m going with this. We want our kids - indeed ourselves - to have certain qualities such as courage, self discipline, temperance, justice and love (and I could include faith and hope as well). We assume these qualities from the meme, but in actuality, the word warrior doesn’t necessarily include them all. I don’t know what the resulting meme would look like, but we should focus on the seven virtues, both in the next generation and ourselves.
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September 2019
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