Ladybug Lin's Hall of Flames: THE IDES OF MARCH AND HOW LITTLE MANKIND LEARNS

Julius Caesar...one of the building fathers of the Roman Empire...A general both revered for his brilliance on the battlefield, and reviled by the

armchair warriors frightened his skills would unseat them from the power they'd shed not one drop of blood to acquire.

The Ides of March...friends...alleged friends under the cloak of camaraderie and trust, encircled Julius Caesar and repeatedly thrust their knives, daggers, blades into his unsuspecting, trusting body.

Dead!...no longer a threat to the usurpers eager to place themselves in line to fill the vacancy they'd viciously, cunningly, demonically created.

Throughout his long campaigns to assure Rome's supremacy, Julius Caesar excelled despite being challenged by the side effects of the

"Dropping" disease...known more widely today as

Grand Mal or tonic-clonic seizures.

Betrayed not by the enemy on the battleground, but by the likes of Brutus...someone he had sponsored into power...someone he believed HAD his back...not meant to STAB him in the back.

My daughter Kat, is an avid devotee of history. As an elective in middle school she took The Holocaust because that evil stain on our history as humans is not routinely taught...just as it is not routinely taught Columbus was not the kind, benevolent founder of the lands now called America but a wielder of carnage, brutality, and pain.

White-washing acts of unmitigated betrayal...and yet that does not alter the reality of their commission.

The Ides of March...we know the term, but did we as a species learn from it? Have we ceased stabbing people we call "friend" when they have their TRUSTING backs turned the other way?

You have no idea how much I wish I could say

yes.

Today we are still fighting emotions and concepts of hatred created long before any of us were twinkles in the turned on eyes of our parents. But evil waits, flexing and contracting its unjust lungs for one or a bunch of ones who do not mind operating from the shadowy corners of integrity.

You know who you are, and why you do what you do. But think about this...every action has a reaction...if you put something out into the cosmos, it WILL find its way back to you...maybe not immediately, but it will...and then what? Can you handle the fallout from the deeds you perpetrated?

Rome fell because betrayal and deceit grew into the norm. Trusting the man standing beside you, or the woman sharing your bed could and more often than not DID lead to your death.

Throughout the Bible there are repeated references to the punishment the betrayers eventually are castigated with. Many can quote chapter and verse from the Bible, yet learn none of the lessons its history has to share.

The Ides of March...friends betraying friend for what?

I have been watching Peter Jackson's

Lord of the Rings trilogy lately...(no longer have cable TV and refuse to buy another digital converter for a TV that is probably the last in the entire country still needing one.)

There's a moment when Eowyn confronts Aragorn with her displeasure over being assigned to the caves to care for the women and children and to be ready to care for the wounded. "What honor," she wants to know is in that?

She does not see the honor in care...simply caring for others...not swinging sword...but tending to the frightened and easing the anguish of those who were not given a choice about swinging sword and facing death.

Loving your people...your friends...those who have given you the priceless gift of their trust cannot be

quantified with a value...and it shouldn't. When someone offers you their trust, you have moved beyond being separate from them...you have become a part of the

Higher Selves you both now share...Betray it and it is not the person you are betraying that will suffer the most. Every person you betray takes away a piece of your

Higher Self, scattering it to the winds...announcing to all they dare not risk having faith in you lest they be the next person you turn your cold, calculating

treachery upon.

No one person is an island, no matter how much we might wish to be.

Napoleon was sentenced to isolation on the island

Elba, not because of any wealth or pastoral clime the island might claim, but because isolation erodes more deeply upon the spirit than anything else.

Betrayal of those we trust, turns us, the betrayers, into islands of dark, self-damaged Higher Selves that will take many, many lifetimes of atonement to wash clean.