we are all axes.

Lately I've been being pretty blasted open.  By pain,

                                                                            by love, 

                                                                                by sorrow, 

                                                                                    by confusion.

I am treated so kindly by one person and then to watch that same person treat another person so horribly.

And that's when I concluded, we are all axes.  Yep, axes.

And like axes, we are useful, helpful, harmful, and dangerous, all in the exact same object.  We can be any of these at any time, sometimes accidentally.  And so we might craft a leather holster to go over our sharp parts to protect others or ourselves.  And then forget that we left the holster on when we go to cut up some cheese and end up making a mess.  This picture i'm painting is getting weird.  Hm.

How else might I expand this metaphor?  Different axes of course!  Like these fine axes!

Which brings me to my next observation.  The Ebony Battle Axe (Number 3) is a beautiful ax.  But if I needed to chop wood with that ax, I would A) be much more likely to cut off a toe. and B) probably fatigue much more quickly due to the weight of that monstrosity.  Does that make it a bad axe?  No.  In a wartime ceremonial environment, that axe would fucking shine.  But we don't always get to be where we shine as humans.  Sometimes we are wood axes in a war, and war axes in a pile of unsplit logs.

Which brings me to my next obvservation.  (i love breaking writing rules.) We are vessels for change.  An axe might be used to break down a door to either save a human from a burning building, or enter a room to hurt a human, or just plain hurt a human.  Or it might be used to chop down a tree to build a house for shelter or to make a fire to keep us warm.  The same ax is being used is all these cases.  We as humans destroy in order to continue.  Thankfully some of us destroy consciously and do it in ways that don't wipe out an entire forest, instead cutting down some and giving it time to grow back.  Even with food, even with the most conscious of eaters, we destroy plants to gain their energy or calories as we call it.

Now I'm not here to shame anyone or invoke feelings of guilt, more simply looking at what is in front of me and saying, "hey, look at this thing we've been ignoring."

Consider how substantial our actions can be and just how devastating a single error in a swing can be.

As you walk around consider what kind of axe that person might have been crafted into and then how they're being used.  Do not blame them for the shape they take, they did not choose it.  And don't rag on them for not changing shape.  It is a lot of work to change a wood axe into a battle axe.  And have patience with a battle axe (god that's such a good term) attempting to chop wood to keep warm, or a hatchet that's being used to break down a door to save someone's life.  Instead of mocking a smaller axe that's just piddling away or cutting that axe down (which takes a lot of fucking work to repair and will probably never be the same) consider adding your ax to the effort.