Generally, when people think of Tyr, they see Him as the god of cosmic justice, but there is more to Him than that. He is also the brave warrior who offered His arm to Fenrir when no one else stepped forward. He has a strong sense of honor, and He is also the law-maker. There are theories out there that say Tyr was originally the god in charge of the Aesir and then some sort of power exchange took place with Odin taking the helm. Tyr is also a war god, but He seems to be much calmer about the wars He engages in than Odin.

Out of all the gods I follow, Tyr seems to have the most patience and seems to be the calmest. I suppose for someone whose main responsibility is to keep things balanced, that type of patience is necessary. While Tyr works to keep things balanced, He is also the one who makes the laws – sets boundaries. In some ways, Tyr is the antithesis of Loki (although the two of them seem to have mutual respect for the other, for the most part) as Loki breaks boundaries and Tyr establishes them. I guess one way to look at the respect between them is to look at the respect a security systems expert has for the hacker who keeps managing to get through the firewall.

In any case, I was having some trouble with a guy who I’ve just started to be friends with. He’s a gamer, so he’s not really used to a lot of social interaction, and his manners were lacking a bit (I absolutely hate bad manners). He usually takes the bus home from school, but I’ve been giving him rides recently, and it got to the point where he was acting almost as if he expected me to always be available to give him a ride and we hadn’t established that as a rule and he hadn’t asked if I minded. That is inappropriate behavior for anyone, so I talked to him about that concern and a few of the other concerns I had, as honesty is an incredibly important part of any relationship.

While I wasn’t sure what to expect from the conversation – as it was our first “confrontation” (there was no fight, thus the quotation marks), the last thing I expected was for him to thank me for setting boundaries. I had been worried that I would offend him by telling him what was bothering me, and I got a response far removed from that. I have a feeling that if I had chosen a day besides a Tuesday to have that conversation, the result may have been a little bit different :p