Ep. 103 – Walking Into The Arena With Your Head Held High

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Teacher Mike: But he understood, at last, what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. "Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew and so do I", thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, "and so did my parents, that there was all the difference in the world". So this is from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which is book six in the series. And one thing that is really interesting about this passage is the mindset going into a battle or something difficult that you have to go through. So what I find very interesting, first of all, is that I used to have a very big prejudice against Harry Potter. It's not a book that I thought I was going to enjoy it and then I decided to give it a go. I made one month of the book club. We did it with Harry Potter and then... We did the first one, I thought it was kind of cool and then, after a few months, I was like, "let me read the second one now". And so I read the Chamber of Secrets and I thought it was really good. And then I went on and on. And now, for the last, I don't know, 35, 40 days, I've read only Harry Potter and I think I'm very close to finishing the whole thing. So I read everything in order and very quick and very fast. It's good, right? It means it's good. So this part here is right as Harry Potter is making the decision that he's actually going to be fighting Voldemort. It's not something he needs to do. It's something that, you know, if you read the books, if you know the story, you kind of remember it. So it's not something that he has to do. It's something that it's in the prophecy that he's the chosen one, but he can choose to do it and he can choose not to do it.

Teacher Mike: At this time, Harry and Dumbledore are talking and they're having this conversation. And Harry realizes that he has to do it and he wants to do it. And the passage of the book is: there's a big difference between having to do something and not wanting to do it and having to do something because you want to do it or maybe not doing something because you don't want to do it. So I think the gist of it is it's a very similar idea, maybe not the same, but a similar idea of picking the sacrifices that you have to make in your life. And I know this is a concept that I've heard first for the first time when I was listening to a Jordan Peterson podcast about the Peter Pan. I mean, it was a class of maps of meaning. And he's talking about Peter Pan and the fact that Peter Pan is a story all about potential the kids have, but, at the same time, all the kids are potential. They have to grow up and, when they grow up, they have to pick the things that are not going to do. So they have they have to pick their sacrifices. And then you pick all the things that you're not going to do because basically that's speaking the thing that you're going to do. You know, you are everything that you are not, right? and I love this this concept. You are everything that you are not. So where you are right now, the choices you make, they are some of the choices you make, which are some of the choices you didn't make. And the vision that I have from that passage for Harry Potter - and, of course, it doesn't need to mean that that's actually what it meant, but the way that I interpreted it - is that you get to pick the battles you fight, and when you pick the battles you fight, you can go to the battles, you can go to the arena with your head held high, which means that you're looking up, your shoulders are back, your chest is puffed and you're ready for battle.

Teacher Mike: And there are going to be thousands of battles in your life. It's going to be financial battles. There's going to be career choices. There's going to be deciding where to move, who you are going to stay with, getting married, having kids. And within all those big battles, there are small battles, probably every day, so - and that's the gist of it, and that's the idea of that passage - you get to pick the battles you get to pick the battles you fight, and if you pick them, you get to go and fight them with your head held high and that makes a big difference if you don't pick the battles and you don't go there with your head held high, if you just "I have to do this and I hate it and I don't want to do this anymore", that's going to have a different attitude and that's probably going to bring a different result. Most likely it's going to bring in different results. So yeah, I'm not going to go too deep into it, but I think it's the same idea as the Peter Pan story. The difference with the Peter Pan story is that the Peter Pan story is not necessarily the battles that you're picking. It is actually that you are picking the things that you're not going to do so, that you can stop being all the potential that you are, so that you can become really something, to be something. And I don't think that that's the case in Harry Potter. It's a similar idea, but not the same. The idea in Harry Potter is picking the battles that you're going to do, to battle, to fight and going there with the spirits of a fighter, because you want to. You want to fight that battle. So I think a very good example of this is moving to Canada. It's a very big battle that you take and you want to do that, if you want to move to another country. And if you're in your headspace, if you're thinking about this, this is a good podcast to have you think about it. So you are picking a battle and you are picking a very hard battle, by the way. It's not easy. It's not easy. So when you say "well, let's move, let's go to Canada" and then you start, okay, so let's start with the first battle of this war. It is kind of a war. So the first battle is the financial aspect. Okay, okay, we got that part figured out. Okay, so the second part is documents. Do we have all the documents? Not yet, but okay, let's figure it out. Okay, figured it out. Okay, third step: it's language. Do we speak English well enough? Okay, we do. Okay, fourth battle: finding a place to live. Fifth battle: finding a job. Sixth battle: improving at the job, getting a new job. Seventh battle was probably a financial battle still, because you're still getting to the point where you can sustain yourself financially. And then eighth battle: we are alone. Can you make friends here? Can we have a group of people that we trust and love? Finding a partner. That's battle number ten. And maybe you have that partner before, so you guys get to fight the whole war of moving to another country together. So you see what I mean? And imagine if someone said to you, you're a fourteen-year old and your mom tells you: "Listen, we're going to go to Canada". And you're fourteen years old. And so you're like: "No, I don't want to go to Canada. I want to stay here in Brazil where all my friends are". And your parents tell you: "No, we're going to Canada". So you didn't pick the battle and you're having to do it anyway. And now you're mad and the whole attitude of it makes everything worse. You come to winter, you hate it. You don't want to play basketball, you want to play soccer, and all your friends are bad at soccer. You think it's their fault, they should know soccer. It's not you that should know basketball. You're not good at English, so you say that people don't understand you, but, well, actually, it's you that are not that good at English. So, you know, do you see where I'm going to? Where I'm trying to get at? So, yeah, I think that's it. The idea that in that passage of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, I never know her last name, yeah, it is Rowling, she was able to pass it and send that message towards everyone that was reading and actually got it, which is the idea that the mentality that you have at the moment of a big battle makes all the difference in the world. And, as the book says itself, a lot of people would say that there's no difference: if you were fighting a dragon, either you want it or not, you have to fight a dragon, that's the same thing. It's not. It's better to fight the dragon because you chose to. It's much better. All right. Yeah, I think that's it. Hope you enjoyed today's podcast. And I'll see you guys on the next episode of The Journey. And by the way, read Harry Potter, I think it is a very good book. It's childish to some extent, but it is very good as well. So I'm probably going to put it on that book club eventually. So thank you so much for listening. I'll see you guys next time.