Defeat


“As always, victory finds a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan.”
Galeazzo Ciano

          Defeat doesn’t finish a man, said Richard Nixon, but to quit surely does. This should be a good starting point for a new day. Many times we encounter tribulations which fill us with a feeling of defeat, but Nixon was right, it is not until you give up that you are defeated. Theodore Roosevelt thought that it is far better to dare mighty things and win glorious triumphs, even though it may be checkered by failure than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much. To Roosevelt, such people find themselves in the grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

This all boils down to one thing, as usual, and that is to your capacity to decide whether you want to quit or whether you want to push on and push through, or whether you decide to go and sit down in the grey area between victory and defeat. Alice Foote MacDougall said that it is the small doubts of timid souls that accomplish their ruin. It is the narrow vision, the fear and trembling hesitation that constitute defeat. This is true, many people tend to only look at the final picture; they focus on attaining a certain goal (which is perfectly in order) but then they fail to take the hard and bumpy road on the path to that goal, into consideration because they are afraid of failing. Keep this in mind in all that you pursue and don’t be a proverbial bandit of defeat but rather a conquering king.

Do you have a conquering spirit?
or do you live a life of defeat?
In the first, there is much to profit,
but in defeat, you will have less to eat…



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