One would think there’d be no shortage of information about the right stuff that human beings like to know, and need to know. But about the significant place the good fight has in our lives, there is little data of import. Just how disappointing, meaningless and unfair life is remains a problem to be solved. Especially now.
Of course, much of this discontent is covered up. We, ourselves, have probably been conditioned to look as if we’ve sucked it up, so to speak. Looks are only skin deep, however, and the problem persists. And what about the circumstance that leaves millions of us ill-prepared, by dint of birth and/or limited opportunity, to prevail in the challenge that life is? If we have even a shred of conscience, we feel the moral obligation to endure, to stand up and be counted, to make it matter that we lived at all.
But we’re not born with the means or substance to fight the good fight or to leave our legacy on the right side of history. If we don’t make it our business to acquire the powerful substance that gives heft, versatility and persuasiveness to the means and tactics, our good fight will never have the punch we want it to have.
This need to perfect who we are, to see a bigger picture, be a bigger person and make a bigger contribution is a predicament that virtually every one of us faces. Religion has made an indelible impression on convention. Even if we don’t think of ourselves as religious, we do know what’s decent, humane and thoughtful, noble and deep.
Although it’s true, isn’t it, that many people appear not to have an effective conscience? That they’ll lie, cheat, steal, misrepresent, extort, intimidate and worse to accumulate wealth and influence with no thought to the fellow human whom they cruelly exploit and rob? Yet greed for wealth and power gives its own credence and is not receptive to introspection or an examination of conscience.
As a result, each is indignant or dumbfounded (and his or her lawyer cries foul) when accused of being without a moral compass, selfish, ruthless, unfit for parenthood or any other leadership role. So despite mind-numbing, dispiriting evidence to the contrary, the good fight is there to be fought and we are the people who want to do it.
Face it, life can and often does stink (suck is actually the currently preferred descriptive). The gap between how it is and how it ought to be is vast, and the number of competing claims for how it ought to be continues to escalate. We thought it would be one way and sadly, cruelly, unfairly, it’s another way. It looks like the good guys never win, and every piece of conceptual turf or real estate is vehemently contested. Life’s a fight, and until we’re knowledgeable in the matter, we suffer over it.
However, we have a very iffy relationship with discontent, particularly our disappointment with how things turned out. We experience it profoundly. We feel it sap our strength. Our effectiveness. Our affinity. But because we’ve been conditioned to think that discontent signals a lack of character, we try to put our attention on something else. Stiff upper lip, and all that. Besides, as I said, down-to-earth information about how to make life other than a disappointment can be hard to come by.
We live and work in one of the most prosperous opportunity-filled countries the world has ever known. Yet so much of life feels like a self-defeating struggle. This is true even if the battles to be won aren’t necessarily against vicious criminals, corrupt executives and politicians or ignited by moral outrage.
Because, in fact, it’s contentious out there. Hard-hearted. Everyday life is adversarial. Half of the people we meet in business or closer to home (maybe at home, too) are mean-minded, their worldview small, their substance shallow, their resources stingy. Sure, we dress up. And we live and work in environments where a certain amount of decorum prevails. Yet at day’s end, we’re beat and our commitments to leadership and contribution robbed of their hope and energy.
One could say that America built its prosperity upon the back of our programmed “willingness” to yoke ourselves into the slug-it-out Machiavellian world and its cold-blooded principle of expediency. We comply with its demands and to one extent or another accept its blows because, well, that’s how it happens. We did one thing. Then the next, and the next. And now that’s the life we have and the world we live in.
Neither culture nor our formal educations predictably teach us how to be an honorable contender in the competition for life and lifestyle. Or in the struggle for the soul of humanity. Without breaking our spirits. The fight is not realistically described. Did we learn that virtually everything we ever wanted would be hard-won and saddled with unintended consequences that themselves give rise to new struggles?
And the intellectual, emotional and moral substance it takes to survive, thrive and lead in the fight is neither sufficiently explained nor taught. Did we learn that the struggle would never cease? That we’ll always be called upon to get over our unexamined visceral immediacy in favor of practices we recognize as rational, decent, civilized? As a result of this not-up-to-par preparation, we may find ourselves either painfully inconsequential in the scheme of things or else in the ring without enough of the right stuff.
But in fact, competition, which includes cooperation and the persuasive arts, of course, is here to stay. It’s intrinsic not only to the marketplace but also to life. The rivalrous impulse moves the human species relentlessly. Conflicts of interest, honest or malicious, whether material, existential or spiritual, will and do occur—in the marketplace, in politics, in education and medicine, in the home.
If the truth be told, and that’s our intention here, our shot at living a meaningful life is usually directly correlated to our skill in the ring, which has everything to do with the perspective we have and the substance we have. The secret to being fully human and to the successful activism and leadership that make a difference is to perfect the substance of who we are. Every single one of us needs to be, and deserves to be, prepared to take on the fight.
Of course, our effort to perfect who we are doesn’t mean we’ll win every round. In the ring of life (except in the movies), even if we’re perfectly fit, perfectly disciplined and perfectly psyched, we can’t always beat the heavy. In this country, it’s often possible to be judicious about the rings we contend in. In some other countries, not so much; opportunity is just too limited.
But adversity itself is not a defeat. Nor is stumbling or reeling from the punch. Losing a round is not a defeat. Nor is a knock-down. Changing rings to find a better fit, to find a place to excel, is not a defeat. Nor is backing up for a moment for a breather. Clearly, though, our effort to perfect our performance does mean that we always get back in the ring. That we are always adding to our intelligence and our skills. That we never give up on the good fight. That when we go down, if we go down, we go down fighting. And tomorrow we rise again!
In other words, we have a never-quit, tough-it-out responsibility for our condition and circumstance. We recognize, accept and respond creatively and effectively to the pragmatic and moral demands of autonomy. We’re physically, mentally and morally fit to contend, to prevail when what is at stake is how life is going to be.
Strong feelings accompany everyday life. All contenders, competent or not, feel them. We can describe them negatively. But these tense, pressured feelings can also be described as biology intruding upon inertia. They motivate us to eat, sleep, move, fight, defend or flee. They also fuel the civilizing effort to make us responsible, self-starting, self-reliant and to stimulate us to be rational, to think, to make order out of chaos and to care. If we don’t understand, monitor and transcend these feelings, however, they become burdens and limit our ability to be productive, to endure, to persevere.
Leaving, of course, the world to a shakedown by the bad guys.