Fighting the Long Defeat
It Is Inevitable
Welcome to the paid edition of YouTopian Journey, a Substack featured publication. Each week I will be sharing unique wisdom that can help you in the daily battles that we must all fight in the game of life. This week we discuss the Long Defeat.
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BEFORE WE BEGIN
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MADE FOR MISFORTUNE
“Truly I was born to be an example of misfortune, and a target at which the arrows of adversary are aimed.”-Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
We live in a perplexing age.
Make no mistake about it.
While we have more resources and opportunities than even our grandparents could possibly imagine, we still struggle.
We struggle with hardship, difficulties, obstacles, and people.
We struggle with understanding.
Above all, we struggle with ourselves.
Yet despite the vast difficulties that we face on a daily basis, we are bombarded with cute sayings, self-help wisdom, and endless advice from people who have no experience to provide it. Yet this doesn’t stop them from doing so. You have no doubt heard it, seen it, and even committed it to memory.
Wake up at dawn and meditate.
Stay up all night and study.
Listen to audio books to improve productivity.
Work smarter, not harder.
Take cold showers only.
Take warm showers only.
Put all of your money into crypto.
Put none of your money into crypto.
Go vegan.
Go gluten free.
Follow this person.
Sign up for this course.
And so on. If you want to be successful, content, rich, healthy, and happy, you must listen.
But this advice ignores the fundamental issue with life, with existence.
That life cannot always be won. It isn’t a simple sports game on the weekend.
It is an everyday battle.
In fact, failure and defeat are far more common than success and victory. Only a few can truly overcome and gain victory. Only the strongest can keep moving through it all. If this is the case, if this is a fundamental truth, why aren’t more people preaching this? Why aren’t they opening the door to the possibilities found within the hardship and suffering that is inevitable for all of us?
Simple.
It doesn’t sell.
It isn’t marketable.
It is uncomfortable.
It doesn’t promise riches or happiness, but only a true test of individual persistence. In other words, you won’t be purchasing the courses, downloading the free e-book, or paying to attend the private retreat and mastermind session.
And you shouldn’t be.
You should be facing whatever comes your way, not looking for an easy way out.
“Let everything happen to you,
Beauty and Terror.
Just keeping going no feeling
Is final”
-Rainer Rilke
The only easy way is the hard way. And this path has one companion who never gets tired and is omnipresent.
The Long Defeat.
But what is the Long Defeat? How do we face it? And can it ever truly be escaped? This is precisely what we will discuss.