Hi Ann, and welcome from me, too!
Yeah, I get both sides, actually... Maybe you too?
which brings me to a "serenity prayer" attitude:
change what you can, accept what you can't and keep looking for wisdom to distinguish the two,
or I prefer to continually challenge what everyone incl. me thinks can't be changed, and find adjustments, workarounds etc. to change it after all, to demystify, unravel, find positive surprises to counteract the negative ones.
That to me is fun, actually, making the impossible possible, finding things out that hardly anyone knows. In sports and games I don't want to win over someone else, I want to be good at something. War isn't fun, it's dire. Warriors are only romantic before the fight - after, they quickly lose their gleam.
If the terms warrior and war inspire, motivate, keep going in the face of hardship, then they can be useful. I think warrior or fighter rather than war. Cos important to me is that I fight "for" and not fight "against". So it's more like fighting for rights rather than fighting against an enemy. These are challenges to win over, about construction rather than destruction.
(I once put something about this on my thread about motivation
here.)
On the other hand I have gained just as much strength to do so
from my "radical acceptance", too. However I understand that acceptence always in relation to the working at it. And that is how it is actually meant, as an active attitude, not a passive one, and active in a double sense: actively accept and actively keep trying to change, too. However I agree that books on it tend to dwell too much on the passive side. Or I did an online course in ACT which also gave tools mainly for the passive side. This is however not meant to exclude the active side. But we need other competences and tools for that. And also the active attitude which we have. Better for the balance between the two comes from motivation psychology (see again the thread above): radical acceptance is more state orientated, whilst for active change we need an action orientated attitude.
Another problem with the "fighting" metaphor I feel is that it's too open to interpretation - it can for instance be very close to the grieving stage of "denial", it can be done in a mental state of desperation, it can become a self purpose and blind actionism, it makes it feel like a struggle which we seem to be losing. That may all be the case, but using it then will increase that feeling instead of keeping a clear head and working diligently at prioritizing and handling what's on our plate one after the other. I manage to play it like rummy or skip-bo - I get a hand dealt, every game has a new set of rules, which I have to learn to adjust to at the same time as playing calmly and straight ahead in a way I decide. Whether I win or not, I'm playing and playing it as well as I can without getting in a fluster. And when one game is finished, I have always won just by playing "right" and finishing and being prepared for the next game.
But... I still admit I deep down still sometimes somehow feel like a fibro "warrior" or "hero"
.
However I think that's mainly because I've achieved to basically remain happy, satisfied and content with my life, whatever happens. And that's something I've learnt from the self-care that fibro has pointed me to. So warrior "for happiness" (perhaps, but not really "against misery"). And not just my own, so like you suggest in an "army", but praps more neutral a (-n emergency) "squad", like fire fighters?