The Lessons Never Learned (The War Eternal, #2)

by Rob J. Hayes

"The truth is like power. Many claim to have it, but few really know what it even means."

The first way to deal with grief is to confront it, to meet it head on and accept it as a part of yourself. It is, by far, the hardest thing to do, but also the only way to truly move past it.

The second way is to wallow in it. At first it might seem a lot like a confrontation. Both forms certainly contain a lot of spilt tears and even more spilt booze. But the key difference is those who confront their grief move on; eventually they make it out the other side and put the pain, sorrow, and tears behind them. Those who wallow don't even try to move on. Maybe it's the pity that they heap upon themselves, and that which they take from others. Maybe the attention is addictive, or maybe they just don't have the strength needed to pull themselves out of their misery. I don't know. I've never been able to stand people who wallow in grief for very long; their pain and tears soon become annoying. Or even worse, they clamp down and refuse to feel anything. At that point they are little more than golems made of flesh. I cannot abide wallowers. The third way of dealing with grief, and I count myself as one of the great followers of this belief, is to run from it. Rather than allow myself to feel the pain and heartache, I throw myself into activity. I use the desire to escape my grief to drive me. Some of the most successful periods of my life have come about because I needed to run from my feelings.

"The mind is what we make of it. Too sharp and it cuts, too dull and it rusts. Bends too far and it can break. Shattered, like a mirror. Have you ever tried to put a mirror back together?"

"Any fight is a trade. The combat is merely the act of haggling for how many lives are lost.

"Crimes are for the losing side, Aspect. The winning side calls them heroic deeds."

And the screams! Why do you terrans always scream when you die? It's not like that will stop it. The noise doesn't ward off death, you'll still die. You just annoy those around you on the way out."

Families know best how to hurt each other. Brothers and sisters knowing their weaknesses, exploiting them.

I have heard people say that the truth can set you free. Somewhat ironically, that's a bloody lie. The truth locks you in, determines a set way of thinking, of feeling, of believing. The truth is the opposite of freedom. Lies, on the other hand, can be whatever we want them to be. Lies can free us from a burden that truth would bury us with. Lies can ease a pain that truth would cause to rot and fester. Lies can make a point, where truth would just expose us for the hypocrites we are, a lesson all parents know well. The world is founded on lie, upon lie, upon lie. But the truth is always there, just waiting for an opportunity to tear down everything we have built.

Our actions may be what defines us, but it is our names that bear the consequences.