{"id":5522,"date":"2018-01-07T19:06:29","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T00:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/?p=5522"},"modified":"2018-01-07T19:06:29","modified_gmt":"2018-01-08T00:06:29","slug":"on-demons-and-angels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/general\/on-demons-and-angels\/","title":{"rendered":"on Demons and Angels"},"content":{"rendered":"

A tenet of my personal philosophy<\/a> is balance in all things.\u00a0 Throughout our lives we struggle to vanquish our demons, yet I’ve recently concluded we should do no such thing – for it is our demons that drive us and our angels that hold us back.\u00a0 Perhaps this poem will evoke the essence of my feelings.<\/p>\n

~ Demons and Angels<\/strong> ~<\/em>
\n ~<\/em>
\n It is our demons who spur us on<\/em>
\n and our angels who put on the brakes.<\/em>
\n It is our demons who press us to risk<\/em>
\n and our angels who whisper warning.<\/em>
\n It is our demons who force us to rise<\/em>
\n and our angels who calm us to rest.<\/em>
\n It is our demons who scream for excess<\/em>
\n and our angels who soothe us to caution.<\/em>
\n It is our demons who tell us we can<\/em>
\n and our angels who say we should not.<\/em>
\n Without our demons to press us onward<\/em>
\n our dreams soon race out of reach.<\/em>
\n Without our demons present and active<\/em>
\n our angels don’t soothe us,<\/em>
\n they\u2019re silent<\/em>
\n instead.<\/em>
\n Without the raging of my demons<\/em>
\n I fear my angels won’t show me the way.<\/em>
\n I’ve somehow escaped my demons,<\/em>
\n is that life I feel slipping away?<\/em>
\n ~<\/em><\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t misunderstand the meaning of this post – it has nothing to with good and evil or even with right and wrong.\u00a0 It is about the forces that drive us and those that encourage us to accept the status quo.\u00a0 I have chosen to equate the driving forces in our psyche to demons because they aren’t gentle, they don’t ask us nicely – they goad and prod us mercilessly and are never satisfied no matter how hard we try or how much we accomplish.\u00a0 I\u2019ve equated the forces that hold us back to angels because they praise our efforts while quietly encouraging us to accept our lot without conflict – this is a theme I’m certain you are all too familiar with in all major organized religions.<\/p>\n

Be wary of your wishes,\u00a0Fate<\/a> might be listening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A tenet of my personal philosophy is balance in all things.\u00a0 Throughout our lives we struggle to vanquish our demons, yet I’ve recently concluded we should do no such thing – for it is our demons that drive us and our angels that hold us back.\u00a0 Perhaps this poem will evoke the essence of my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[28,109],"class_list":["post-5522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-poetry","tag-angels","tag-demons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}