This post is about the movie How To Train Your Dragon, directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois. Starring Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, and America Ferrera. You can watch the film here on Amazon Prime Video.
All That is Uniquely You
Home is the perfect hodgepodge of persistent pests and inescapable expectations of who you are and what you can be, more so not what you make of it but what it makes of you. Machinations and unction’s of spirit are all you have, to do what others won’t. It’s often not about forsaking where or who you are, but embracing and applying all that is uniquely you.
Finding what you had yet to build, was all that separated you, from the heights you had yet to reach.
Prefer to listen? Hear my reading of the reflection aloud.
12 Degrees North of Hopeless
A “meridian of misery,” a fairly accurate description of life when in the depth of youth. In the wake of socialization and the inauguration of adulthood, there comes the wanting to fit in and to be nothing else but one of them. Those at the front line of upkeep and responsibility; who guard the homes, cast the nets, take the shots, and feed the village. It’s an admiration, and all you really want to do is try, but mess up enough and they won’t even give you the freedom to do that.
No better is the situation when the person you look up to most of all, the one who’s supposed to be there for you, is not even there to give you a fighting chance, nor do they even believe that you have one. Being different is somehow a bad thing, and a hope in knowing who you are to become is at its last breath. They say it’s better you not try anything at all, it’s “for your own good,” an antiquated and ineffectual form of protection. What they don’t realize is it’s only a matter of when, not if, you’re going to get out there and try again, as it’s the only you know to do.
Why Don’t You Fly Away?
Soon it comes, the moment you longed for finally arrives, yet you come to find out, it was never really what you wanted at all. No longer can you go on trying to be something you’re not. Better to let it go, then go on to do what was never really you to begin with.
Only now it’s too late. At the close of the door you’re in the thick of it. What you longed for, for so long now stands right in front of you. You can finally walk like them, talk like them, think like them, but only problem is – you’re not really like them.
So why don’t you just fly away? Well, there’s more to the picture. It’s not just something you can sniff out or make up. It starts with a chance and one where you warm up to it, or they to you, and the very same thing you sought to kill, now brings a life long in the making, one you are now just coming to know. In the weight of your reality and what you don’t want, comes the fire to go after what you do.
It’s Go Time
Off you go, bring it to life. Picture it, draw it out, create from nothing with the very tools you know so well. Soar high into the depths of possibility and close the cage to all you were scared of before. It’s a trial and error situation that proves useful in more ways than one. Home starts to kind of feel like…home, but only for the reasons you never thought it would. It’s the tale as old as time: out with the old, and in with the new.
Then there you are, above it all. In flight amongst the once hopeless outlook you have long since put behind to make way for what you had yet to ascend. Scary? Yes. Risky? Absolutely. Yet, it’s better you latch on and trust what got you here, than to not try at all. It’s in the stillness in discovery you come to see that all you thought you knew has been wrong. With a new understanding, no way can you go back.
At first they don’t understand. In the face of their greatest misconception, how can they? It’s not something to talk them through, but to show firsthand. Let skepticism and fear have its way, but very soon comes the settling calm after the ease of realization. The almost serene experience comes from truly seeing and knowing. It’s more than just pretty cool, it’s amazing.
You Just Gestured All of Me
Head first you’re now a passenger into a world adjacent, one you never knew. They weren’t stealing to survive, but stealing to live. The control of one vice brought the need for another. Now two sides are at odds when really there is another to blame. So quickly can we attack what is misunderstood. To lock up without reason, not even a single moment to just listen.
Anger at its peak leaves little room for empathy, and wrong at the head of the sail, forgoes what is right. Yet light will always make its way, and to do good, is to do for others because of the lapse we see in ourselves. Quickly can we see just how wrong we are and how very right the other person is. In the depth of the two, comes a heart transformed and a new beginning. As it’s more than just surviving it’s living. In the onset of trouble, it is what’s right that comes to the rescue. No matter the size of the feat or what must be given for the task, to make alive a good to long lost, matters more than anything.
From the courage, is the wake of a new beginning. One where worlds emerge all the better, faculties made whole. So take heed to what has been there from the start and don’t stop there. Sky’s the limit when you listen, trust, and when you have a pet dragon.
To The Believer
“They’ve killed hundreds of us. And we’ve killed thousands of them! They defend themselves, that’s all. They raid us, because they have to. If they don’t bring enough food back, they’ll be eaten themselves…”
We leave no room for the recognition of vices; the control of sin on one, often times does not diffuse its stronghold when met with others, rather does it beget the birth to something else entirely. To what end will we allow the enemies to greatest weapon to work strongly amongst us?
To the weary soul battered by the replication of such darkness, there leaves room for only One to lead him away from such a path. Saddening is it to see our nature in full effect, and no better are we to say we are any different. May we yield ourselves to something more. As for darkness is not of its own existence, but the lack of light and the goodness thereof.
“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.”
Ephesians 5:8
Credit: Script and select imagery used in this post are from How To Train Your Dragon (©Dream Well Studio, Sacrebleu Productions and Take Five). Included for reflective commentary and thematic analysis.
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This post was all about the movie How To Train Your Dragon.
