As a child, reading books about knights, I too dreamed of heroic deeds — munching on warm pies at my grandmother’s house, I imagined myself in battles and skirmishes. Years later, during real combat and special operations — from the North Caucasus to the Middle East and Africa — I would reflect, in the quiet moments between deployments and during the lulls in action, on the meaning of it all: who I am, where I’m going, what I’ve filled myself with… and whether the lines of the great and endless Path have led me where I was truly meant to go.