Dialectic Journal Book 8

"The answer is, they were my kin and country. I set down my life with gladness, and would do it again a hundred times, for Leonidas, for Dienekes and Alexandros and Polynikes, for Rooster and Suicide, for Arete and Diomache, Bruxious and my own mother and father, my wife and children. I and every man there were never more free then when we gave freely obedience to those harsh laws which take life and give it back again." page: 413 12/3/08

I can relate to this thought. I see my friends as my "kin" I suppose. I cannot describe how grateful and lucky I feel to have them with me. I'd die for them but do not get me wrong. I'd live for them too. :) They are the people I look forward to seeing everyday, the people that know me well. I guess in a funny sort of way they are the family I got to pick!!! Also I could understand him through this quote. These people have become his precious people, the people he wishes to protect. Just as I have mine he has his. By now he has seen many fall and now they are all he has. They are what he must live for now. We as humans find comfort in other and we so often seem to forget that without the people we love life has no meaning. To live you need a reason and we take for granted our reasons to live. It's sad but true. We forget because we are so wrapped up in our lives to notice. Maybe he and I do share some of the same thoughts. I never thought I could relate to a boy. Well, there's a first for everything right!?

"Tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie."

Can. You. Say. DEEP. This quote fascinated me mainly because of the thoughts it provoked in this little brain of mine! To me it seemed to say that even though the Spartans fell they were never forgotten. That is an epic way to be remembered!!! In all seriousness though, this quote made me think of all the things I believe in that were originally found long ago. It's crazy to think that many of the things we say and use in our society today are influenced by things or races in the past. It is also amazing that we are still telling stories that were originally spoken so long ago as well. As cheesy as this may sound I felt that after reading this the story of the battle of Thermopylae lives on in everyone aware of this book. It was a fitting end to a book such as this. I'm rather curious to know how Pressfield managed to end it all so smoothly after telling the story with a new light though. Maybe one day I'll come to understand how and why he ended his story in this way. The guess I'm making now is that he wanted us to finish this book and still be thinking of the Spartans. If there is one thing I can tell you for sure it's this, if that was his goal he has succeeded.

Dialectic Journal Book 7

"His priestess mother taught him, Suicide said, that nothing beneath the sun is real. The earth and everything upon it is but a forestander, the material embodiment of a finer and more profound reality which exists immediately behind it, invisible to mortal sense. Everything we call real is sustained by this subtler fundament which underlies it, indestructible, unglimpsed beyond the curtain." page: 377, 12/2/08

This quote immediately grabbed my attention because I have thought similar things to this teaching. I constantly wonder if any of this is real, my life, the people I love, the things I comprehend, what I see, hear, and feel. To me, all of this seems so unreal and I can't help but to be frightened of this possible reality. What if I wake up tomorrow and discover everything I've done has been an illusion and nothing more? Imagine the world you thought you knew was actually nonexistent. That everything that ever mattered was a lie and nothing more, a hopeless dream that can never be? Even if there is somewhere else to go beyond death how can we be sure that everyone we care about will make it there alright? What would keep us sane? Would sanity simply be nonexistent as well? Maybe Mr. Pressfield thinks of this alternate reality as well. It is difficult to go on living with this thought looming over your mind like a dark cloud ready to swallow you up. Maybe the realization that everything is make believe is hell. Pay back for the evil deeds one commits. Doomed to walk this nonexistent reality forever more. An empty world that you know is a lie. This world that never existed and never will exist as your home. While some find this belief comforting I find it terrifying. What could be so happy about believe you live in a lie. How can you know what is reality and what is not. It seems that everything we know is reversed. Reality is fiction. Fiction is reality. Life is death and death is life. Blindness is sight and sight is blindness. Darkness is light and Light is darkness. We are contradictions and nothing more in this teaching. Nothing but figments of the imagination that disappear over time. Lost and forgotten creations.

"'Am I dying?' he asked Dienekes in that sad detached tone so like a child's, the voice of one who seems to stand already at his own shoulder. 'You'll die when I say you can,' Dienekes answered." page: 390 12/2/08

This small conversation made me cry. Somewhere inside Dienekes knew Alexandros would die but he continued to tell himself he would be saved. Why is it that we as humans always try and control death? Why do we even try to convince ourselves that the people we care about will not die when we can see death is inevitable? I cannot say I am not this naive because I am. No one wants to give into the thought that death is closing in on someone they hold dear. To tell you the truth as soon as I read the passage where Alexandros dies my heart ached because I thought of someone I care for deeply dying. It was horrible but it struck me most in this particular section. I wondered throughout the book how Spartans could be immune to the pain death brings but now I see the truth. It is not that they do not feel it, they have just mastered masking their true feelings. They have learned to block all emotion about their comrades in death. Even they have their limits it seems. I could not do this, I know that all too well. Suppressing pain comes at an awful price in the end, a break down. This man, Dienekes, is curious to me. He is more complex then he lets on and we see that though Alexandros' death. As much as men try to be free of emotion it is an impossible feat. Sorrow cannot be willed away.