What An Edgy Name

Thursday, Sept 28, 2023

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So. What’s with the edgy name for the blog?

Big spoiler alert for Oathbringer, book 3 of the Stormlight Archive.

I’ve been posting for a while now, and am pleasantly surprised that I have more than one reader. Welcome. Please excuse the predominantly gloomy atmosphere. I hope you find something useful or encouraging while you’re here.

The name of my blog ( youcanthavemypain.blogspot.com ) and the tagline I use both come from one of my favorite fantasy series, Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive.

In book 3, Oathbringer, one of the characters is wrestling with his past. Manipulated by an evil being, they did some horrible things. The same being later gives him an opportunity: to acknowledge that he was being controlled, made to do the unthinkable, and give his pain and suffering over. He would then be free of guilt. The pain would end, and he could move on. How could he have done any different, with a god pulling the strings behind the scenes, steering him into catastrophe after catastrophe.

Instead, the character says, “You. Cannot. Have. My. Pain.”

Sorry. Chills, every time.

The person making the offer asks, “What do you hope to gain, keeping this burden?”

The character answers, “Journey before destination. It cannot be a journey if it doesn’t have a beginning. I will take responsibility for what I have done. If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.”

Now, I’m not guilty of the atrocities that this character had committed by any stretch of the imagination. Nor am I interested in self flagellation over my mistakes. That’s part of what I’m trying to accomplish, a more understanding and gentle approach to my own past. But what this quote means to me is facing the truth about the past - taking responsibility for your part in it - so that we can strive to be better. For ourselves, and the people we love.

Don’t push your responsibility onto someone else. Don’t stand back and say it wasn’t your fault. Sure, you may not be the only one in the wrong. It’s not healthy to shoulder blame for things you didn’t do. But don’t try to push it off on someone else, either.

We can’t grow unless we own our mistakes. We can’t move forward unless we know where we stand.

Now, if you read my first couple of blog posts, you’ll see that I was in a lot of pain. I grabbed the title of this blog because of that pain, and because I had hope that with time and hard work I would be able to 

Later in the book, the same character is thinking about his past, and how it is marred and ugly with mistakes. But he comes back to the same conclusion. “The most important step a man can take? It's not the first one, is it? It's the next one. Always the next step.”

The tagline is something else important to me. They are the oath of the first ideal for the knights radiant: “Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.” They are surprising layers to those three lines that I am still unpacking. Maybe I’ll unpack them here.

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Life before death

Strength before weakness

Journey before destination