LIFE AS AN ADVERSARY

For the champion life is not an enemy to be beaten, but rather an adversary that must be respectfully tamed. Life, like nature, is marvelous and implacable and heartless. With some it appears to be generous and kind, and with others terrible and cruel. In fact, life is not always kind or cruel with anyone; there is a time for everything. Things go well at times and badly at others. There are streaks, and then there is the unexpected that can change everything at once. One can be a bit more up, or a bit more down. The poet said it all: la vie est ondoyante -life is a ride on the wawes.

The champion holds the reins. Life may whinny between his legs but he sets the way -the path that is laid out, more or less, to reach his goals. It is possible to ride life (a winning horse) or to be ridden by it (a losing horse).

What the champion does not do is to open new paths. The paths are already there, open, numerous, accessible to all who hold the reins. Why hurl oneself into the void of the unexplored? There are certainly some, visionaries,who try, and some have made it. But the champion is not a hero, and he doesn't see the need to run unnecessary risks. He is fixed on a goal and he sails towards it with determination, if not always in a straight line.

Life on the planet earth is always the same. It is the individual perception of each mind that makes it different. Some days it is ineffable and glorious, while other days it is a disastrous and perfidious. It is the extreme instability of the human brain, which filters information in one way or another, often as a function of events in one's life, that presents it in a particular way. A strong mind, intelligently self-programmed, levels out this phenomenon as best it can (bear in mind that emotions act upon the mind), smoothing relations with events.

Life rewards the daring -those who set out the lines of their own destiny, who know where they are headed. Life rewards those who are prepared to suffer, and to accept adversity without bitterness and with a smile on their lips. Life is a friend to those who get up back as soon as they have fallen. Life, marvelous life, is a friend of champions.





















Like this post? Let Charles know. Thanks.