SoCS: Resting is Not the Same as Giving Up and Why I Gave Up on The Rings of Power

Today’s prompt for #JusJoJan and Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “throw in the towel.” Use the phrase “throw in the towel” somewhere in your post. Enjoy!

To “throw in the towel” means to quit something, maybe give up on something, after having worked on it for a while. Where does this phrase come from? Is it a football term? Don’t those football guys carry towels around? lol. I’m not a big fan of football. Maybe that’s un-American to some folks. Okay, the sport itself is okay I guess, okay. Stop saying okay. But I never really got the huge national extravagant $$$ part of it. But I didn’t really want to go there.

In general, where does one throw the towel? In the laundry basket? If a towel is dirty, then you should throw it in. That brings me back to what I really wanted to write about, and that is that sometimes it’s okay to quit. If something is not healthy, if it’s not working, and you’ve tried to the point of insanity or toxicity, and the fate of the world does not depend on your endeavor, then throw in the towel.

As a side note, resting or taking a break is not the same as quitting. I made a meme for that a while ago.

But sometimes, you just need to throw in the towel. About a week ago, I made the decision to throw in the towel on Amazon Prime which I got for the sole purpose of watching The Rings of Power. This was not an easy decision, because I am a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings (like some people are huge fans of football.) I can watch those movies, and The Hobbit movies over and over again, usually while doing stuff on the computer and stopping to watch when my favorite parts come on, like the parts with the elves.

After much consideration, including the cost of Amazon Prime and that I still want to watch Season 2 of Picard and Star Trek, Strange New Worlds on Paramount which costs less by the way, I decided that The Rings of Power was too dark for me. There were some characters I liked okay, but the orcs seemed a lot scarier, and the series just felt continually heavy. The final decision was the episode (still in season 1) where things happen to horses. I will not go into details (except to say there is fire involved), and I know it’s just a movie and those things didn’t really happen to the horses, but when you love animals and have a good imagination, it can be traumatic. And sometimes horses do get hurt on movie sets. So there. It’s done. There are plenty of other things to watch and books to read, and when the old LOTR and Hobbit movies come on cable, I’ll watch them again.

I had to look up the origin of throwing in the towel. It comes from boxing. The trainer throws in the towel to save his boxer when it is clear he’s not going to win. That way, he can live to fight another day, which brings us back to the idea that it’s okay to take a break and rest a while before going back into the ring of life.

And now, a message from Gandalf.

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To learn more about Stream of Consciousness Saturday,

visit our host, Linda Hill

by clicking HERE.

SoCS: There’s Still Good in this World.

Our prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “opposites.” Use the word “opposites” or write about things that are opposites. Have fun!

It’s a good topic. Thanks, Linda. Though yes, I know, it’s a prompt, not really a topic in the SoC world. I don’t really believe in opposites. Oh, I know they exist – up/down, in/out, black/white…. But most things are somewhere in the middle. I don’t really like the opposite ends of the poles. We have enough polarization.

You might say, “but middle of the road is boring.” I don’t mean we all need to be smack dab in the middle. There are lots of colors in between black and white. Lots of places between up and down. It’s all relative. A person can be an antivaxer and still be a good person. Like maybe they like dogs for example. Dogs are a great uniter. I know people on the other end of the political spectrum from me who like dogs. It’s a bit baffling, but then, dogs are great. Unless you’re one of those people who don’t like dogs which I don’t understand. But maybe you have some good quality that I like or can relate to.

They say opposites attract. I’ve written about that before, about how David and I are opposite, or very different in some of our personality traits. But opposite isn’t the best word for that. We complement each other in that he is more of an extrovert, very practical, precise (except when he uses sarcasm which I kinda hate) and not very imaginative when it comes to seeing dogs in clouds. But he has a lot more energy than me, we both love dogs, and he’s learned to like Mama Cat. He’s a good guy. We have similar values when it comes to spirituality, politics and lifestyle.

Going back to in or out, maybe we want to sit on the fence, though that is not always comfortable. If Santa comes down the chimney, I hope he doesn’t get stuck in the spiderwebs. Yuck. That happened in the Hobbit movie. (Spiderwebs, not Santa coming down the chimney.) That’s one of the parts I don’t pay much attention to till the Elves come. I always watch the elf parts. What does that have to do with opposites? Are elves and dwarves opposites in LOTR? (The plural could also be dwarfs.) They are very different, but they fought together against the orcs. I don’t watch the orc parts either, until the elves come.

The point is, we can always find some kind of common ground whether it’s dogs, or fighting the dark side…. But what if someone is on the dark side? They probably don’t know it. Or maybe they do. Darth Vader was on the dark side, but there was still good in him, and the good won.

Speaking of good, I should rap this up and wish you peace on earth and good will to all, as in everyone being blessed. God bless us all, everyone!

Here’s Sam’s speech about there’s still good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for. Not fighting with violence, necessarily, but fighting to find the good, working for peace, or just putting one foot in front of the other, or giving a kind word of encouragement.

For more Streams of Consciousness, rules, and such, visit our good host, Linda Hill by clicking here.

SoCS: The Lord of the Rings and Letters from Vietnam

“Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check,

but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday

deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay…

small acts of kindness and love.”

Gandalf in The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

Today’s prompt is the word, “ring,” to be used in any form and to have fun with.

Fun comes in many forms. One way I have fun is to watch The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit movies. Being a huge fan, I can watch these movies over and over again, especially the parts with the elves.

LOTR is about heroism, good winning over evil, sacrifice, fellowship, loyalty, natural magic, and more set in a place that allows me to escape the things I want to escape from that I will not mention. But the qualities and messages are still relevant in reality.

There’s a scene toward the end of the trilogy when Sam and Frodo are exhausted and don’t know if they will survive. They reminisce about their sweet home, The Shire. Sam imagines the goldilocks girl, barmaid he would like to marry. The reminiscing starts at 1 minute. Be sure to watch til the end when the Eagles come!

Coincidentally, but not really, I’ve been reading about all these things in my dad’s letters from Vietnam since Veterans Day.

I’m reading them for research for the novel I’m writing for NaNoWriMo. Reading the letters is slowing me down, but it needs to be done this way. So what if I don’t write 50,000 words by Nov. 30? It will be okay.

My dad’s letters show how much he adored my mother. He writes of dreaming of her constantly while asleep and while awake in Vietnam. It almost seems like he puts her on a pedestal. The dreams and images of her keep him going, keep him sane, and give him hope to stay alive to come home to her.

I watched a video about another guy talking about doing this in Vietnam, dreaming about his girlfriend kept him going, sane, alive. Let see if I can find it…. The speaker, Dr. Earhart, was a high school teacher after he got back. Toward the end of the video, at around 13 minutes, he talks about the girlfriend that had sent him a “Dear John” letter. The whole video is eye opening.

My dad’s letters mention that a lot of guys got “Dear John,” letters. Maybe that’s why he expressed so much love for my mom in his letters and always signed them,

All My Love,

Your Husband Forever,

Jim

When things are going badly, when we don’t know what’s going to happen, even when it seems like we might not make it, dreaming of a better future, imagining holding our loved ones in our arms, being with family in our homeland, these are legitimate coping skills. Valuable survival skills. And so we keep on doing those small acts of kindness and love to keep the darkness at bay whenever and wherever we might be.

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For more Streams of Consciousness, rules, and such, please visit our host, Linda Hill at:

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS Nov. 14/2020

SoCS: A Different Kind of Courage

Today’s mission is to find a word that starts with or contains, “val,” to use it any way we like, and of course to enjoy.

The first word that came to me was, valiant.

When I was still a child, probably and older child, I used to read the comic strip, Prince Valiant in the Sunday newspaper. It was a series that started maybe in the 1930s, and I think it might still be going on. Prince Valiant was around in the times of King Arthur, so there was a lot about honor and swords, chivalry and horses. I had a thing for horses in my late childhood and beyond, even to this day, so horses might have been part of the draw.

It seems I got a little bored with reading Prince Valiant as I got into my teen years and just started looking at the pictures as my attention became focused more on basketball and eventually boys. I don’t remember much about Prince Valiant, but maybe it set the stage for my love of The Lord of the Rings which I’m watching as I type this on Friday night.

The word, valiant reminds me of courage. Sometimes, especially in today’s world, we need a different understanding of courage. Being valiant isn’t always about charging in with swords drawn or guns blazing. As Yoda said, it’s not wars that make one great. We are now fighting an enemy that will not be killed with arrogance or belligerence.

 

“Courage doesn’t always roar.

Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says

I’ll try again tomorrow.”

Mary Anne Radmacher

We now need the kind of courage that helps us stay put and wait. There’s a courage in patience, the courage to face what comes up when we are still – the demons and dreads that we may have been covering up with busyness. But we can have the courage to find healthy ways to wait. The courage to try new things, to be creative, to learn who we are deep down and not run away. We are finding the courage to love ourselves and others enough to wait and be wise, to wait until the coast is clear and learn from this time of quiet waiting, to trust the timing.

And then we will have the courage to be valiant in fighting for the health of the planet and her people. But first we must live to fight another day and in a new way.

I went looking for some visuals of Prince Valiant and found this cartoon from the early 90s which I don’t remember seeing, (I was pretty busy then) but now, I want to. Watching the intro, I remembered the characters. You can see LOTR similarities. There are some interesting names in the opening credits, like Tim Curry who was the voice of Sir Gawain. You can read more about the animated series, The Legend of Prince Valiant, here.

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For details on SoCS and more streams, visit our host, Linda G. Hill at:

https://lindaghill.com/2020/04/24/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-april-25-2020/

Here are the rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing (typos can be fixed), and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.

3. I will post the prompt here on my blog every Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” “Begin with the word ‘The,’” or will simply be a single word to get you started.

4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours.  Your link will show up in my comments for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top. NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, such as Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read all of them! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later or go to the previous week by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find below the “Like” button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. As a suggestion, tag your post “SoCS” and/or “#SoCS” for more exposure and more views.

8. Have fun!