Free Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman Page B

dark vision of them both sitting there, laughing at me; maybe I was their warrior’s quarry.
    I didn’t spend time with Susie or any of the other women I knew. What sexual urges I had were spent in training, washed away by sweat. Besides, how could I look into other eyes now that I had gazed into Joy’s? One night, awakened by a knock, I heard Susie’s timid voice outside. “Danny, are you in? Dan?” She slid a note under the door. I didn’t even get up to look at the note.  
     
    My life became an ordeal. Other people’s laughter hurt my ears. I imagined Socrates and Joy, cackling like warlock and witch, plotting against me. The movies I sat through had lost their colors; the food I ate tasted like paste. And one day in class, as Watson was analyzing social influences of something or other, I stood up and heard myself yell, “Bullshit!” at the top of my lungs. Watkins tried to ignore me, but all eyes, about 500 pairs, were on me. An audience. I’d show them! “Bullshit!” I yelled. A few anonymous hands clapped, and there was a smattering of laughter and whispering.  
    Watkins, never one to lose his tweed-suited cool, suggested, “Would you care to explain that?”
    I pushed my way out of my seat to the aisle and walked up to the stage, suddenly wishing I’d shaved and worn a clean shirt. I stood facing him. “What has any of this got to do with happiness, with life?” More applause from the audience. I could tell he was sizing me up to see if I was dangerous--and decided I might be. Damn straight! I was getting more confident.
     
    “Perhaps you have a point,” he said acquiesced softly. I was being patronized in front of 500 people. I wanted to explain to them how it was--I would teach them, make them all see. I turned to the class and started to tell them about my meeting a man in a gas station who had shown me that life was not what it seemed. I started on a tale of the kind on the mountain, lonely amid a town gone mad. At first, there was dead silence; then, a few people began laughing. What was wrong? I hadn't said anything funny. I went on with the story, but soon a wave of laughter spread through the auditorium. Were they all crazy, or was I?  
    Watkins whispered something to me, but I didn't hear. I went on pointlessly. He whispered again. “Son, I think they're laughing because your fly is open.” Mortified, I glanced down and then out at the crowd. No! No, not again, not the fool again! Not the jackass again! I began to cry, and the laughter died.  
    I ran out of the hall and through the campus until I could run no more. Two women walked by me--plastic robots, social drones. As they passed, they stared at me with distaste, then turned away.  
    I looked down at my dirty clothes which probably smelled. My hair was matted and uncombed; I hadn't shaved in days. I found myself in the student union without remembering how I got there, and slumped into a sticky, plastic-covered chair and fell asleep. I dreamt I was impaled on a wooden horse by a gleaming sword. The horse, affixed to a tilting carousel, whirled round and round while I desperately reached out for the ring. Melancholy music played off key, and behind the music I heard a terrible laugh. I awoke, dizzy, and stumbled home.  
    I'd begun to drift through the routine of school like a phantom. My world was turning inside out and upside down. I had tried to rejoin the old ways I knew, to motivate myself in my studies and training, but nothing made sense anymore.  
    Meanwhile, professors rattled on and on about the Renaissance, the instincts of the rat, and Milton's middle years. I walked through Sproul Plaza each day amid campus demonstrations and walked through sit-ins as if in a dream; none of it meant anything to me. Student power gave me no comfort; drugs could give me no solace. So I drifted, a stranger in a strange land, caught between two worlds without a handhold on either.  
    Late one afternoon I sat in a redwood grove near the