The Knight in Rusty Armor

The Knight’s armor represents how he masks his emotions and hides from other people. He doesn’t express his feelings and the fact that he got his armor stuck meant he didn’t know how; after hiding his emotions for so long, he had forgotten what it meant to express them. “We’re all stuck in armor of a kind. Yours is merely easier to find.” (The Knight in Rusty Armor, 9) The Knight’s armor also represents that he was afraid to be alone and he never really listened to anyone else. He never opened up. In some ways, I’m a lot like the Knight. I’m afraid to open up to people, and I need to feel the affirmation of others. I don’t let people know how I’m really feeling because it’s easier to push your feelings aside than confront them. I experience feelings almost too much. I really care about everything, which leads me to have a very open heart. I believe that others should care as much as I do, but that is hardly ever the case. It’s hard to differentiate between needing someone and loving someone sometimes. I love my mother, but I also need her. I’m still a high school student, I live at home, and it’s implied that my mother will be there at home to cook me dinner and pay the bills. Of course I love my mother, but with everything that goes on outside of that love, it’s easy to take her for granted. I’m only sixteen so I can’t say I know any other love outside of my friendships and family relationships; it’s hard to be completely sincere in love a hundred percent of the time because there are so many outside factors. I’m always going to need people, but that doesn’t mean I have to need them more than I love them. I look to my parent’s relationship when I think of what love should be like. They have been married for 23 years this year, and they’re still very much in love. My dad travels on the road frequently, so my parent’s only see each other a few times a month at the most. I wear an emotional armor for the same reason that most people do. I’m afraid of getting hurt. The idea of opening yourself up to other people is difficult to do because people don’t like not knowing the outcome of how things are going to go. That’s why we wear the emotional armor. We want to keep the bad things from getting in, but when we try to keep the bad things from getting in, we also prevent the good things from getting in, too. The Knight kept trying to live up to the perception of how knights are supposed to act, and this interfered with is emotional growth because he never knew who he was. He spent so much time trying to be what other people wanted and expected him to be that he only focused on how others felt about him; he then based the opinion of himself off of other’s opinions of him. He never knew what made him truly happy or if anything at all made him sad. “If you really were good, kind, and loving, why did you have to prove it?” (The Knight in Rusty Armor, 17) If you don’t know what you’re feeling, you can’t ever fix it or learn from it. If you can’t learn from it, you can’t grow as a person. Suffering is very helpful because that is when you know what you are made of. When you have to suffer through something, you know that you can handle anything. You have to take life one day at a time, meaning the suffering doesn’t last forever. If you never suffered for any reason it would be so much worse, but because you have suffered, you know you can make it through. Suffering means you feel things; you really feel them. I’ve faced death, rejection, and injuries. They are all their own type of suffering. Death is the only thing in life that we know is going to happen for sure, but that never makes it any easier. Losing someone is hard, and when I was in 9th grade, I lost my best friend’s dad. He was like a father to me because I was over at her house all the time, and I only saw my own father a few times every month. Losing someone hurts, but it’s something I think is necessary to experience. If you had never met that person, than you wouldn’t have to suffer through losing them; but you did meet them, and you did lose them, and because of that you’re a stronger person. Rejection is difficult to face because nobody ever wants to hear that they’re not good enough. It’s hard to feel like you’re trying your hardest only to be told that your best isn’t good enough. Rejection is also a necessary thing to suffer through because you need to know that just because that person didn’t like you, just because you didn’t publish that book, it doesn’t mean that every person you meet is going to reject you. The third one I mentioned was injuries. Those are difficult to suffer through because as much as you wish you could do something about it, you can’t. You have to have patience and persistence to get through it. I strained my IT band in the spring and it was so difficult to sit around and wait for it to get better. I wasn’t allowed to run because it would have put more strain on it. When Rebecca told the Knight, “When you learn to accept instead of expect, you’ll have fewer disappointments.” She was trying to get the knight to understand that he wasn’t entitled anything. “Animals accept and humans expect. You’ll never hear a rabbit say, ‘I expect the sun to come out this morning so I can go down to the lake and play.’ If the sun doesn’t come out, it won’t ruin the rabbit’s whole day. He’s happy just being a rabbit.” (The Knight in Rusty Armor, 32) Whether good or bad things happened to him, the way he felt about the situation depended on his attitude concerning it, rather than the situation itself. You can’t go into situations expecting them to end a certain way, because you can never predict what another person will say, do, and feel. If you accept things the way they are, you’ll be happier because you’re not trying to make something it’s not. When Rebecca says that, I automatically think of holidays where you give gifts, including birthdays. I, among many others, tend to expect the things we ask for. When we don’t get the things we ask for, we get disappointed. If we just woke up on Christmas morning and opened our presents, not expecting anything, but accepting everything because we’re lucky just to be receiving presents at all. I continue to mask my feelings by telling everyone that everything is fine, or that I’m just tired. When my friends ask me what’s wrong, it’s easier to tell them the short answers than it is to talk to them about all of your fears and insecurities. A few years ago, my neighbor got sick. We’ve lived in the same neighborhood for the last 20 years, so we were surrounded by a lot of elderly people. Leo got sick around Halloween time. My mother took us up to the hospital so we could see how he was doing. I didn’t know what to think or feel when I saw him lying in the hospital bed, barely breathing. It scared me to the extent my eyes were watering, but I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t do anything but stare at the monitors that measured his breath. This past summer I went to Jamestown, New York to stay with my grandmother for a few weeks. After going out to a Mexican restaurant called the Taco Hut, my grandma started feeling sick. The next day she was hospitalized. I was staying at her house and on her couch at the time. I was so afraid that I would lose my grandma just when I was finally starting to get close to her. Life works in funny ways. It came time for the Knight to go through the castle of silence, and he had to go alone. It wouldn’t have been helpful for him to go through the castle with another person, because you can’t let all of your walls down if you’re around other people. “I discovered that when I was with someone, I showed only by best image.” (The Knight in Rusty Armor, 35) You’re always going to have some type of mask on if another person is around, even if it’s your best friend or significant other. The Knight never would have been able to discover himself and the things about himself if he had gone with another person, because he never would have truly been alone. He never would have been able to take all of his masks off. I personally do not handle being out of control well. If things get too out of control, my control especially, I tend to shut down. I get so overwhelmed that I can’t deal with everything going on at once. This past week was homecoming, and it was immensely stressful for me. Things started to spin out of control in some aspects, especially when it came to the decorations of the doors and floats. I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t like the fact I had lost control of the situation. I then was sent home and told to come back the next day. My student council advisor told me I needed to calm down and start over fresh tomorrow because it was a new day. Sam represents the Knight’s conscious. The Knight hadn’t known Sam before because he had never made the effort to get to know him on any level before. Only when he began to listen to himself did Sam finally show up. The Knight needed to learn that it’s okay to have ambition as long as it’s ambition from the heart. “Ambition from the heart is pure. It competes with no one and harms no one. In fact, it serves one in such a way that it serves others at the same time.” (The Knight in Rusty Armor, 59) Ambition is okay to have as long as it’s not to get ahead and be better than everyone else. He also had to learn that if you need people more than you love them, you can forget why you loved them in the first place. I am accountable to the promises I make and the things I say I’ll do. If I say I’ll do something, you know I’ll be accountable for it. I’ll follow through and do what is asked of me. I think the number one example would be my mother. I need her because I’m still in high school. I need her to do my laundry, cook me dinner, take care of me, and just be a mom. She spends day in and day out working and doing miscellaneous things to be able to helps support my sisters and myself. I love my mom, but I think the fact I need her to be my mother and take care of me outweighs some of the love I have for her. She takes care of the responsibilities and does a lot for me; I just wish I could love her more than I needed her. I always have place I need to be or things I need to do, so I can’t ever enjoy the time I have with my mom. It’s difficult to have a really good relationship with her while I still depend on her so much. We do give power to the things we fear. “If you believe the Dragon of Fear and Doubt is real, you give it the power to burn your behind—or anything else,” said Squirrel.” (The Knight in Rusty Armor, 67) We let them dictate the decisions we do or do not make. I’m terrified of being alone, and I missed out on a great opportunity this past year. Last Christmas I was given the opportunity to study abroad in Italy; I was really excited when I was going through the interview process. I started to fill out the forms for a passport and a visa when it started to hit me. I didn’t know how to speak their language, and I’m not good at being alone. I love my mom and I love being around my friends. Nine months is a really long time to spend overseas, and it’s a question you really have to ask yourself. You have to ask if you can handle it, because once you make the decision there’s no going back. Travelling abroad would have been a great opportunity for me, and I’m disappointed that I didn’t take it. “I learned that when you step out of your normal routine, and normal environment, it’s an amazing thing!” (Rachel Sprague, The Knight in Rusty Armor discussion, 9 September 2013I let my fear of the unknown and my fear of being alone get in the way of one of the opportunities that will come along in my life. Opportunities like that don’t come around all the time, so it’s upsetting when I think about the reasons I didn’t go. It’s simple; I was afraid of changing, being alone, and not knowing anything about the culture and the way they lived in Italy. Instead of branching out I decided to stay home in my comfort zone. Though I regret that decision, it does me no good to dwell on it. I made the decisions I made for a reason, and I can’t go back. All I can do is learn from it, and jump at the opportunity if it ever comes along again. In the castle of will and daring, the Knight is supposed to learn that fear and doubt are only as real as you make them out to be. Danger is real, yes, but you choose what you fear. It might take more than one try to get over your fears enough to face the things you need to face, but in the end it’s worth it because you come out of it as a stronger person. You know who you are and what you want. You understand that just because you’re afraid of something, that doesn’t mean you need to let it hold you back from the things in life that are really important. One of my greatest fears is going through this life without positively impacting the people I meet. I want to be remembered for the things I do. I want to help people when they can’t help themselves, and maybe that’s not the best thing to fear, but it’s as real as any. I’m also very afraid of disappointing people. I have always wanted people to be proud of me; I want them to be proud to be my friend, be proud of me as a student, a daughter. I’m afraid to do things that other people my age do, such as drinking or even just being in a relationship because I don’t want to disappoint the people around me. I need to feel the constant approval of people and I really think that holds me back from a lot of the things that I want to do in my life. When other people are disappointed in me, I get so disappointed in myself. To me, the quote from the book, “…for I cannot know the unknown, if to the known I cling.” Means that you can’t ever learn anything new if you continue to do the things you’ve always done. “His willingness to embrace the unknown had set him free.” (The Knight in Rusty Armor, 73) If you only stay within your comfort zone, you’ll never be able to know certain things or get to know certain people. You can’t learn anything new if you’re so set in your routines that you refuse to deviate from them. “We all thought the book/movie clip suggested that we needed to step out of our comfort zone and try new things out.” (Yasmine Solomon, The Knight in Rusty Armor discussion, 3 September 2013.) The process of trusting someone or something can either be very complicated or very easy. For me, I trust someone until they give me a reason not to. I don’t believe that you need to earn someone’s trust, as long as you can prove that you deserve his or her trust. Trust is something that should be given, and it’s also something that should not be received lightly. If someone trusts you, you should be able to hold yourself to a higher standard for that person. They trust you, and manipulating someone to betray that trust is cruel. People aren’t perfect, and they’re going to make mistakes. That’s a given. However, you don’t need to make it harder on them. If you do lose the trust of a person, it should be earned back, but it needs to be realized that you may never have their full trust again. I believe you need to forgive people, but you shouldn’t forget. If you forget what someone did to you that leaves you vulnerable for the same thing happening again. Some of the “knowns” in my life are things such as my routine. I wake up, go to student council, school, and then I go home to do homework. I know that my mom is always going to be there for me, so that’s a known. I know that my dad works on the road a lot so I only get to see him once a month.