Alexander and I

ALEXANDER, STRIFE, LOVE

Life is more difficult and complex than I thought it would be. Follow your bliss. I thought that was all it took. I thought I would go along and get along, that everything would fall into place for me. What was I thinking! I thought the world would love, endorse, and support me, because I’m such an attractive, amazing man. So nice to have around, right? Charismatic, like a homosexual Billy Graham. O Lord, what a naïve little twerp I was.

All I have to do is figure things out to make them work, right? If I can just figure it out, everything will be fine. Alas, my ability to make things work is limited by time, energy, intelligence, talent, and relationships. I can’t do everything I want to do, and I don’t always get to do things the way I’d like to. Sometimes I have to settle for less. Sometimes I have to settle for making other people happy, rather than getting exactly what I want. That's what families do. We don’t breeze through life like kings in chariots. Even Alexander did not breeze through life. He fought his way through to an early death in a foreign land. The key to Alexander was that he was loved. The world feared him too. But, he accomplished what he did because of the love he inspired in the men and women who knew him.

Photograph: Mosaic of Alexander fighting King Darius III. Naples National Archaeological Museum. Retrieved June 17, 2015, from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Alexander_the_Great_mosaic.jpg.