The souls of heroes who perish in battle are received, with all due honour, in the Halls of Asgard, as is well known, as is very well known, but what of the souls of those who die an unworthy, cowardly death, whilst trying their best to avoid trouble? What of them? Where are their souls received?
No one ever seems to be particularly interested in this however. To be perfectly blunt about it – aside perhaps from the occasional twinge of morbid curiosity – no one gives a shit. No one has any sympathy for the plight of the unworthy and the cowardly. Empathy is definitely in short supply here! We only want to hear about the heroes…
Blame comes in here, not sympathy, as you already know only too well. Lots of blame. Mountains of blame, blotting out all your horizons, blotting out the sun even. You stand in the shadow of that monumental blame. ‘Blaming is wrong’, you shout out in that whiney, irritating voice of yours, ‘why are you all blaming me?’ But even as you come out with this question you can’t help realizing that you know the answer perfectly well. How could you not? How could you not know?
Mountains of blame, mountains of blame, pressing down on you from all sides! ‘It’s so unfair,’ you blurt out again, only it isn’t. It’s not unfair at all. ‘What of the other souls’, you cry out, ‘what of the unfortunate souls who died a cowardly death whilst trying to betray their comrades in exchange for their own pathetic worthless lives, but who were killed nonetheless? What of them? Where is their place in mythology? Why do they go? What have you to say about those other souls?’
You’re distracting, of course. You are directing the attention somewhere else, somewhere relatively harmless. You’re feeling uncomfortable – you’ve over-exposed yourself and that doesn’t feel good. If only you had had the wits to keep your big stupid mouth shut, right? If only, if only… Those two little words. This is where the old self-recrimination sets in of course. This is where the inner critic really gets going. This is where things start to get very, very dark…
You wanted to be a hero alright, but somehow it just never turned out that way. It just never happened. Don’t get me wrong – don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not trying to be sarcastic or anything like that – on the contrary, I’m trying to have an intelligent, sensitive and open-minded discussion about what happens to be a very genuine human experience – the experience of letting oneself down in a big way. That’s something all of us can claim experience of, after all. Being an armchair-hero, being a hero in your own imagination. Being in total denial of the reality. We’re all like that, of course. It’s very normal so don’t be ashamed. Own it. Be OK about it. Speak your truth and don’t try to hide it…
