What about Higher Powers? Are they real?

 

Well, by now you should probably have some idea of how I’ll approach this question. If you are religious, you have your own answers to this that will depend on your religion. But they aren’t necessary for other Paladins to share.

 

 

Each individual person, in life, is moment by moment faced with choices to make. We are in a dance with reality. A game. We make a move, reality makes a move. Each move a response to the previous. Moment by moment I am presented with a reality, with -my- reality. This life here and now in this moment. And this reality, this moment, demands a response from me.

 

 

There are consistent patterns in the realities I’m faced with throughout my life. Where do these patterns come from? Well, from God. Or a mix of physics and genetics and culture. Or karma. Or they aren’t real, they’re a product of a mind predisposed to see patterns in all things.

 

 

To examine these questions can certainly help me grow, but fundamentally it doesn’t matter where the patterns come from. My response matters, because my response shapes the world around me. Each response makes the world better or worse.

 

 

So when I say my life is guided by higher powers, what I mean is this: I see repetitive patterns in the situations I encounter. Over and over I face similar challenges and problems, that push me to grow in consistent directions, where I have tremendous opportunities to make things better. That’s all I need to know. I am serving a higher power of good, because I keep being given opportunities to make things better, and I try to meet those opportunities. I try to respond well.

 

 

Now, so far, everything I’ve said can apply to every human on the planet. So why am I a Paladin, specifically?

 

 

It comes back to the flavor of the patterns our lives take. Most of my friends and family try to make the world a better place through their actions. Are they all Paladins? No, just good people. Indeed, isn’t that what defines a good person? One who tries to make the world a better place through their actions?

 

 

So what is the flavor of my life?

 

 

I have never managed to build a stable home/family/career. I fail at most things I want to accomplish. I have romantic relationships that fall apart, jobs that don’t take off, homes that change every few years. By many standards, I am a failure. From the point of view of a Paladin, though, I’m succeeding. For example - I started a romantic relationship some years ago that didn’t go remotely how I wanted it to or thought it would. It turned out to be vastly more painful and difficult that I could have imagined. But looking back on it, my partner for those years absolutely needed me to be there. Her life would have turned out much, much worse without me. Specifically me - the challenges she faced needed someone with precisely my virtues. And even with my flaws. And I was forced to grow in ways I never would have voluntarily chosen. So my own character would be much, much worse without having gone through those difficulties.

 

 

From the point of view of what she or I wanted, things went terribly. But from the point of view of making the world a better place, it was a wild success. And when the relationship ended, it freed me up to go somewhere else. When I got there, within a few months I discovered that several friends, both old and new, benefitted in truly unique ways from my presence. They needed exactly me to be there. This happens over and over. I go somewhere, engage in projects or relationships or jobs, soon find that there are difficulties that would have gone much, much worse without someone with my very unique skills. After some time, I’m no longer needed and things “fail”. This frees me to go somewhere else, where I soon discover a difficulty that needs combatting or a treasure that needs earning. Every step of the way, I am forced to grow, and each step would go poorly without having learned the lessons of the previous step. Sometimes it’s quite dramatic to watch, sometimes subtler.

 

 

But it was such a clear pattern that I wondered… why is my life like this? Why do I fail at everything, have no stability, and have a life that constantly forces me to grow? Why do I keep encountering problems that in retrospect needed exactly me?

 

 

That is exactly what a Paladin is. You are given quests by a higher power. You are chosen for battle, not for safety and comfort. You go where you are needed, not where you want to go. Anytime you get too rooted in responsibilities or your personal life, the rug can get swept out from under you, because it specifically is your job to be able to respond to the call. You live a life of doubt and fear and pain and loneliness and failure and struggle and instability. You also live a life of beauty, contribution, growth, courage, connection, and deep worth. You never know how long your current quest will last. You don’t know how things will go, and you don’t know what challenge you’ll be asked to face next. It is rarely easy. It is -always- worth it.

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It's perhaps important to note that the consistent pattern of 'failure' in my life isn't necessary to be a Paladin. Indeed, I hope it's unique to me. And temporary. Instead, what matters is the pattern of having little control over my life, while simultaneously finding myself pushed where I'm needed, often into challenges others wouldn't or couldn't take on.

 

 

This is also why you cannot choose to be a Paladin. Your job, honored reader, is simple: be a good person. Make things better by being here. There are many ways to do this, many paths. The worlds would be a terrible place if everyone was wandering off on quests into danger and problems. We need stable parents for our children, honest and hardworking businesspeople building our communities, spiritual leaders helping us learn to be better people. If you find yourself in those positions, do a good job. I’m not a Paladin because I want to be. I actually spent some difficult, stubborn years fighting against it. But the situations and patterns reality keeps presenting me with are clear.

 

 

I never imagined writing this Handbook until a few weeks ago. Now it’s a clear duty. Why am I doing this? I have no idea. Will it be worth it? You tell me. What will you do with it?