The King of the Golden Hall.

What's my obsession with the military? It's amazing how i can immerse myself in the world of guns and swords while others find it boring, even sometimes down right stupid. Call it an obsession; call it boyish childishness (if there's even such a word to begin with...).

But to me, it's a way of life, it's more than an interest.

There's something that always get the better of me in the clash of arms. Though i must say that i know the horrendous effects war can have on societies, or even civilizations on whole. I do not believe in a bad or good war.

St. Augustine believed in the theory of a "Just War", fought in the name of justice and against repression.

Sun Tzu remarked that war had a certain attribute that sharpens a man in unknown and unexplainable ways.

Von Clauwitz proclaimed that war was "the solution to internal disunity, bringing about whole nations and animating them into one spirit".

Adolf Hitler told his aspiring Hitler Youths that "war, to men, is like what giving birth is to women" and famously declared that "for a nation to stay healthy and uncorrupted, it must go to war from time to time, perhaps every 20 to 30 years".

Of course i don't buy all these statements completely; but i cannot deny that there are some truths in such words.

Enough for this sociology lesson now.

To simply explain my obsession here - i love the expressions of emotion in battle, values highly honoured by all soldiers around the world - Courage, steadfastness in battle, and a strange contempt for death. A true soldier greets danger like an old friend, and sees death not as necessarily a bad end, but a continuation of an ideal that was worth fighting, and dying for. In Singapore, one of the few countries to have compulsory conscription as part of her defence policy, many symbols will come the way of a recruit, like beacons marking each significant parts of their life in the SAF.

I remembered a boy gave way to a man when I received Butt Number 25 - my M16S1 Rifle, on that cloudy evening facing the coast of Changi Beach. You suddenly grow every fast in that moment when you realized that entrusted to you was not a piece of common metal. It was a rifle, with the ability to kill someone. Yes, that is what makes us grow up, when we realize the amount of power that has been given to us, power never held before and that can alter the life of another person.

So back to me, it is me, you can never separate war and Dom. Some may like it, some may feel weird about this whole thing, some will insult and pass comments that will hurt. But i have found my passion in these, and i am not ashamed to display it as long as i live. I lived out a passion, and did not hide it as if it was something of an abomination. True, this interest has distant many from me, flocking to those with other more "likable" characters. I know that i will never display such popular or charismatic response to others, but it is in our different composites of interests that makes the church a beautiful place.

No two person are the same.

We are all part of God's grand painting on this canvas called "life". =)

So, at the end of the day, are you really living out something that you like? Or are you repressing it, especially the "weirder kinds" of personality or interests? Everyone dies, but not all truly lived.

Be yourself in church (of coz not the sinful nature); be who you really are around your friends. Be honest and true to one another so that God may be glorified in the end.

I'm being Dom, as how He would like me to be....