Once a warrior, always a warrior… there is deep truth in that. It’s an identity that lives in your bones, one you’re born with into a lifetime. It’s who you are and who you have been before. But does there come a time when a warrior has the right to choose….to live a story of peace? And if so, what does that look like?
Fighting for something is inherent in who you are. It’s so natural that you keep at it even when your days of deployment are years behind you and you’re now a civilian. There seems to always be something to fight for and something to fight against — internal conflicts, relationship dynamics, political causes, religious perspectives, differences of belief about every major area of life. There are endless causes to fight for, some genuinely good, some rooted in difference of opinion, but always something to call us into battle.
(I’m not talking about being argumentative or popping off at someone, I’m talking about actually putting your energy toward something you deeply believe in.)
Living like this can be a state of being. We take a fighting approach even if our outward lives look peaceful, even if we don’t say out loud what we’re really thinking. It’s how we approach things.
If you identity as a warrior — being vigilant, being ready to fight, being guarded, and fighting — all feel natural. The general purpose of existing to fight for something or to fight against something feels normal, because it is. Those who fight for or against something protect, safeguard, liberate. If you’re fighting for someone else’s wellbeing, safety, or freedom — in any realm or capacity — you’re living this out.
A lot of good gets done in this world because some people are willing to fight on behalf of others’ blessing.
But there’s a downside to this, too.
The downside is that we can keep fighting long after the battle is done. We keep fighting when the threats are gone. We keep fighting when circumstances have changed but our nervous systems haven’t gotten the message. We stay in fight mode — on guard, defensive, vigilant — when the enemy is long gone.
If you’ve been to combat, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You can be home for years, decades, after the war has ended, and it hasn’t ended in you. Your nervous system is still poised, still at war. You’re still fighting when the war is being read about in history books.
locked down by the past that feels like the present
But we also keep fighting to survive.
Inside our minds, inside our hearts. We’re poised. We’re on guard. We’re vigilant against … anything that triggers the emotions and fears that feel like familiar threats. Anything that feels like how we felt when we were deep in the thick of surviving. Anything that reminds our nervous systems that we’re not safe here, and we need to be on guard, sword drawn. Anything that puts us energetically back in a place where we weren’t safe, where someone or something needed protecting, needed defending.
Let’s zoom out a bit farther. Because while warriors identity wholeheartedly with this stance, you don’t have to have been in combat to do so. You don’t even have to have been in the military at all. This is a human experience — and what we’re really doing is living in the energy of trauma.
why we linger with the ghosts
Our nervous systems get trained to fight, to protect, to be on guard against what was trying to destroy us or destroy what or who we love… and we can stay locked in that energy for years, even the rest of our lives, if we don’t realize it.
We keep fighting. We keep being vigilant. We are guarded and triggered by anything that comes anywhere close to resembling what felt threatening before — and we live from that reactive energy. I know, I do it, too, and I’m just waking up to some of the impact of this myself.
We know that PTSD and trauma reshape our nervous systems so that hypervigilance becomes a way of being. What I want to get at in this article is not how to treat PTSD and trauma-induced anxiety.
What I want to get at is the power of a decision.
And the right to make it.
when does a warrior have the right to choose to live a story of peace?
Being in fight mode is a warrior’s natural way of being. The question I want to pose is this: when does a warrior have the right to choose to live a story of peace?
When does prioritizing our peace become the right thing to do?
When do you get to a place where you decide that it’s time to melt your sword into a bowl that holds life-giving water?
And from now on, you’ll be offering life-giving water to those who come your way?
When do we get to decide that we’re done fighting? Done being on guard? Done being vigilant?
When do we get to decide that peace is our way of being?
You get to a place where you’re tired of being in constant fight mode. And rather than give up and die, you give up your familiar way of being instead. You give up fighting. You give up war. You even give up having a cause.
And you realize that prioritizing your peace is a right you’ve earned.
The reward for having been a warrior all this time.
your heart matters, too
We need to ask the same question for our own hearts, too. Where in us are are still holding vigilance even though the threat is long gone? What are we constantly on guard against, sword drawn, reacting to try to keep our hearts safe from circumstances that have now changed? Where are we still fighting when the war has been over years?
What are we still carrying that we need to set down?
Where do we need to understand that we’re safe now? If you’re not sure, take a good look at the facts of your life to really see if the threats are still present or if it’s your hypervigilance that makes you feel unsafe now.
does peace mean surrender? (and what good will you be then?)
You’re not going to get to this point unless you’re ready to be here. If your soul still has a mission to fight for on this earth, you won’t resonate with this article. Because you’re still meant to fight for something. If there are still active threats to your heart’s wellbeing, then you need to be real about that. (Including if you and your ways of being are the threat.)
But if you are here and this all resonates like a huge wake-up call toward relief, then melting your sword may be exactly what your soul needs to do next.
What if it’s time that your peace IS the safety?
What if it’s time that your peace IS how others find their own way to freedom?
What if it’s time that your peace IS the hope for others to anchor in?
We humans are always going to have something to fight for and something to fight against. And we will always have warriors who hear the call in their bones and pick up their swords and battle.
But it may be time for you to melt your sword, to make that bowl that holds life-giving water (including for your Self), and to embody peace in the midst of the perpetual chaos and clamor the world engages in.
It may be that in choosing peace as a way of being, we hold something deeper: that humans are humans, no matter what label or cause or perspective or story they sew into their skin. That at the end of the day, we are all related. That everything we destroy each other for on this earth, falls away when we return to the Spirit World and remember that we all made of the same Love.
That being a warrior is ultimately about holding peace.
I’m melting my sword. I’m shaping it into that bowl of life-giving water. For myself, for my heart, and for others. I will live a different way.
I’m prioritizing peace.