I Stand Defeated.

There are moments when you know you’ve lost, when you know you’ve been utterly defeated by someone with a much lower intellect than yours, by a person whose understanding of the cosmos is not even a minor percentage of that which you hold. But still, you have been defeated, by this meager creature. And to defeat you, they had no need for sophisticated weaponry or stealthy strategies, but the weapon that they chose to wield was none other than your own faith; your faith in that something bigger that you believe to exist in every man. We are all of us God’s own image, are we not? Are not our souls whispers of God’s own breath? Then why must we succumb to be such meager mortals, the lot of us? Why must we not struggle to be something of the divine? And this belied, my friend - the only, that each man might someday indeed be a God, that is the weapon that they wield against you. For men hold no desire in their hearts to be anything more than men, and that desire to be nothing but the ordinary is what drives our world to go round. You may believe otherwise, you may believe in strive for divinity, but on each turn, each step you will be proved wrong. You will be beaten down; you will stand defeated, as you stand now. But don’t let that drag your spirits down. For the only thing on which Sir Newton’s force does not work is the spirit. It is our spirit that holds the key to divinity – if only we can learn to set it free. So strive, my friend – my only, strive for divinity, for the Existence Extraordinaire. For every generation needs a Robert Frost to take the road less travelled by; every generation needs a Thoreau to keep pace with his own drummer; every generation needs a Whitman to contradict himself! So, go out there and be defeated and defeated once again, because after every defeat you may find yourself either marching to the crowd’s drummer or contradicting yourself even more. And that, my friend – my only, is a worthy risk after all.