Armour

In the older editions of D&D, you get slower and less agile as you don more armour. This intuitively makes sense as someone clanking around in full plate probably isn't going to be the best runner or swimmer in the party. On the other hand, that shifty-looking chap in black leather armour (which always seem to have bright metal studding despite its stealth-negation properties) is probably someone you'd send to walk along that tightrope to grab that McGuffin inexplicably hovering over the chasm.

In these modern times, we don't have too many armoured knights or stealthy rogues around any longer. However, each and every one of us do still don armour, just armour of a different sort. Our weapons are no longer swords and knives but words. As such, we all harden our soul against them to survive.

In my previous life, I had very thick emotional armour on, which also made me rather thick to what was going on around me - but that was exactly what it was meant to do. I survived many conflicts, some of them I didn't even notice. But now,  I don't have as much armour on, partly because I chose to trade security for flexibility and partly because I can't fight biological imperatives.

I can honestly say that I have experienced more pain and heartache in the past few years than I have had in my entire lifetime. But I have also experienced more joy and laughter in the past few years than I have had in my entire lifetime too.

Now, I am at a crossroads once more. I have the option of hardening my soul again, to protect myself so I feel less pain but at the cost of feeling less, period, in life. Or, I could continue down this vulnerable path I'm already on, braving whatever harm existence chooses to incur on me.

I've pondered this for quite a while. In the end, it came down to family, deciding which of the two would bring me closer to them, to comfort them, to laugh, to cry, to share in their lives. In that light, there can be only one choice.

Having emotional armour is great as it stops you from being hurt. But it also stops you from feeling the hugs from those who love you. And for one hug from the kids, I would willingly suffer a thousand unkind words.