So I wanted to write up a few thoughts that have been on my mind. My understanding of the world includes the view that every human has a spirit animal and every animal has a spirit human. You can accept this from a simple logical standpoint if you think of humans and animals as concepts rather than just physical entities. Humans anthropomorphized animals because animals exhibit traits that exist in humans, at least roughly. Some animals rely on deception and camouflage, hiding and stalking. These animals might be comparable to human traits of cleverness or being a trickster. Some animals are large and vast, strong and unsubtle; the comparisons here are obvious. Thus the way a human acts and looks has a conceptual counterpart in the form of a spirit animal.

In regards to an animal, their "spirit human" is simply how they act when stripped of all claws, teeth, strong jaws and little whiskers. Are they pleasant? Are they ugly? Are they intelligent? Are they cruel? These are all exhibited by the spirit human's form and behavior.

Essentially the upshot is whether you're an animal or a human, you have something which represents your strengths and weaknesses, your spirit. Your spirit is affected by your body, and vice versa. Thus your spirit does and will change, depending on your actions and that which you have experienced in your life. There are many directions in which these changes can go, but there are two main ones: up or down. Down leads towards the diminishment of your spirit, while up leads to the fulfilling of your spirit. You can go up for as long as you want; indeed, forever. But you can only go so far down, depending on where you started in the first place, before your soul will detach from your body and you die.

Changes happen in millions, billions of different ways, and some of those will be up while others are down. As long as the total sum of those going up is greater than those going down, your life will continue. Once it passes that mark however, you begin to age, descending slowly to death.

The funny thing is we can direct those changes, at least to some extent. There are plenty of things we can't change... but we have plenty of control over one thing if we want to, ourselves. By steering yourself in one direction or another, you can reach certain goals that mean the changes you experience in your life are generally leading you up rather than down. Sometimes it's difficult to do this, and sometimes you don't need to; but if you see yourself continually in bad circumstances, it's worth a try to take control over your life and decide where you want to go. After deciding where, you have to figure out how.

I've found, for myself, that a good way of starting out is considering where you came from. I am part Chinese, part Serbo-Croatian, an often troubled part of Eastern Europe. For those that don't know, Serbia and Croatia came from the former country of Yugoslavia. Serbians and Croatians rarely get along, so it is quite funny that my mother is the result of the two. Her Croatian father was an orphan who managed to create a modest production plant in Michigan, doing a lot of work during World War II and the aftermath. My Serbian grandmother came from a little farm. My father came from wartime China to the United States at a young age. My grandfather, a part of the Nationalist movement, stayed in Taiwan. Only my grandmother and their children came over. An interesting tapestry to say the least.

Having watched my mother and father interact over the years, as well as perhaps just a bit of whimsy, I imagine that my father is probably a snake. His year is that of the Ox, but that's not how I determine spirit animals. My mother, who is quite a woman, I believe to be a Siberian tigress. As I say, whether I am correct or simply dabbling in some fanciful dreaming, I do not know, but I am sure I am a synthesis between the East and the West. That much is true. I have had experiences where I've seen an Eastern dragon, and where I've seen myself as an Asian dragon. I am too thin and spindly to be a normal Western dragon, that much is obvious! But I can legitimately lay claim to Western ancestry. I am part Serbian and part Croatian. Thus I am not solely an Eastern dragon. But much of me comes from the East, from China, and that is how I spell out my heritage.

I am a Chinese-Serbo-Croatian Dragon. I know where I came from, and now I can decide where to go from there.