Act… or Leave?
There comes a phase in life where nothing feels clear anymore.
Should we act?
Or should we walk away?
Sometimes, leaving everything behind feels peaceful — like stepping out of noise, expectations, responsibilities… like a sage who chose silence over chaos. At other times, staying and doing what life demands feels like the only honest way to live.
And somewhere between these two, we get stuck.
When I first heard about the Bhagavad Gita, I had a very simple thought.
Arjuna didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to kill his own people — his teachers, his brothers.
That felt right to me.
Then why did Krishna tell him to fight?
Was the divine wrong?
At the same time, I watched Vinland Saga. When Thorfinn says he will run instead of fight, it feels powerful. It feels right. It feels… higher.
So what is truth?
Is Arjuna wrong?
Or is Thorfinn right?
Or are we just seeing the surface of something deeper?
Because if you look closely, this is not a question about war. It is about something far more familiar.
Confusion.
Responsibility.
Fear.
And the quiet struggle of trying to understand yourself.
Before learning more about the Bhagavad Gita and the Mahabharata, I was naïve. I thought Arjuna was choosing peace.
But I was wrong.
Not completely wrong — but incomplete.
Because Arjuna and Thorfinn are not standing in the same place.
Arjuna — The Man Who Cannot Run
The Bhagavad Gita begins on a battlefield called Kurukshetra. Two sides of the same family stand ready for war. Arjuna, one of the greatest warriors, asks Krishna to place his chariot in the middle of the battlefield.
And when he sees who stands on the other side — his teachers, his relatives, the people he grew up with — something breaks inside him.
Arjuna stands there, frozen.
Not because he has found peace.
Not because he has transcended violence.
But because reality finally hits him.
For the first time, he truly sees:
- the cost of victory
- the faces behind the enemy
- the weight of what he is about to do
And his mind collapses.
He is not calm.
He is confused, overwhelmed, afraid of guilt, afraid of consequences — afraid of becoming someone he cannot live with.
What looks like compassion… is actually collapse.
His refusal is not clear.
It is paralysis.
And Krishna does not comfort him the way we expect.
He doesn’t say, “You’re right, walk away.”
He says something much harder.
You are already part of this. Running away now will not give you peace — it will break you.
Krishna is not glorifying war.
He is preventing escape.
Because if Arjuna walks away, nothing truly stops. The war still happens. Others will fight. The destruction remains. But Arjuna carries something else for the rest of his life — the weight of having stepped away when it mattered.
So Krishna tells him to act.
But not the way the world understands action.
Act without ego. Without hatred. Without fear.
This is not about war.
This is about facing life without running from it.
This is where Arjuna stands.
A man who cannot run.
Not because he is strong —
But because running would destroy him more than action would.
Face life. Don’t run.
Thorfinn — The Man Who Has Already Fought
Now look at Thorfinn.
He doesn’t stand at the edge of war as Arjuna did.
He was born into it.
Thorfinn grew up in violence. Not as a choice — but as a reality he couldn’t escape. He watched his father die. He carried that moment inside him for years, turning it into anger, into purpose, into revenge.
For a long time, that was all he had.
He fought.
He killed.
He survived.
Not because he wanted to understand war —
but because he had nothing else to hold on to.
War didn’t scare him.
War gave him direction.
And slowly… it took everything from him.
By the time we meet him again in Season 2, something has changed.
Not outside.
Inside.
The anger is gone. The purpose is gone. Even the hatred that once kept him alive is gone. What remains is something quieter — and heavier. An emptiness that doesn’t shout, but stays.
Thorfinn is not confused anymore. He is tired.
He has seen where violence leads. He has lived through what it takes to survive. He knows what it costs — not just to others, but to himself. And for the first time, he chooses something different.
When he says,
“I will run.”
It doesn’t feel like weakness.
Because it isn’t.
He doesn’t run to save himself.
He runs because he no longer wants to create pain.
He chooses to take it instead.
He stands there, takes blow after blow, not because he cannot fight — but because he refuses to.
That is a different kind of strength.
He tries to speak before raising a hand.
He sees people, not enemies.
He refuses to become what he once was. This is not an escape. This is a choice after understanding.
If Arjuna stands at the beginning of the conflict,
Thorfinn stands at its end.
He is not avoiding the battlefield.
He has already walked through it — and decided not to return.
Duty and Peace — Two Different Moments
This is why Thorfinn feels… different.
Not just peaceful, but grounded.
He shows a kind of strength we rarely see:
- strength without dominance
- courage without violence
- responsibility without hatred
- power without ego
He feels like the answer.
But he is not the beginning.
He is what comes after.
The Gita asks:
How do you act when life demands action?
Vinland Saga asks:
Who do you become after you understand suffering?
One teaches you how to stand in the fire.
The other teaches you when to stop lighting it.
Modern Man — Somewhere in Between
And this is where most of us live.
Not Arjuna.
Not Thorfinn.
Somewhere in between.
We are not standing on a battlefield, but we are not free from conflict either.
Our battles look different:
- work we don’t fully believe in
- Responsibilities we cannot walk away from
- expectations we didn’t choose
- lives that feel both stable and incomplete
We hear Krishna and wonder, Why should I fight? We see Thorfinn and wonder, Why can’t I live like that? We are pulled in two directions.
Responsibility… and peace.
Ambition… and meaning.
Strength… and softness.
And we call it confusion. But maybe it isn’t confusion. Maybe it’s where we are supposed to be.
Acting or Leaving — The Missing Piece
This is where the question changes. It is no longer:
Should I act?
Or should I leave?
It becomes:
Who am I… when I choose?
Because neither Arjuna nor Thorfinn are not escaping.
That is the part we miss.
Arjuna stays.
Not because he wants war. Not because he enjoys it.
But because he understands —
This is his moment.
Running away would not make him peaceful. It would only make him incomplete.
So he acts.
Without ego.
Without hatred.
Without fear.
Thorfinn leaves.
Not because he is afraid.
Not because he is weak.
But because he understands —
This is no longer his fight. Fighting again would not give him purpose. It would only repeat his past. So he walks away.
Not to escape —
But to protect what he has finally understood.
Both of them are doing their duty.
Just in different forms.
One faces the fire. One refuses to create it.
One learns how to stand inside conflict. One learns how to live beyond it.
And maybe that is where we struggle.
We want a clear answer.
Fight or leave. Right or wrong.
But life doesn’t work like that. Sometimes, staying is courage. Sometimes, walking away is courage. The difference is not in the action.
It is in the state of the person choosing it.
Arjuna wants to leave because he is afraid.
Thorfinn leaves because he is free.
That is the difference.
Maybe life is not about choosing between action and peace. Maybe it is about understanding when each is true.
Arjuna teaches us to stand when life demands it. Thorfinn teaches us to stop when the fight is no longer ours.
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