Battle
(page 2)
It is impossible to win the race unless you venture to run, impossible to win the victory unless you dare to battle.
You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.
To become 'unique', the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
The only thing that makes battle psychologically tolerable is the brotherhood among soldiers. You need each other to get by.
European nations began World War I with a glamorous vision of war, only to be psychologically shattered by the realities of the trenches. The experience changed the way people referred to the glamour of battle; they treated it no longer as a positive quality but as a dangerous illusion.
We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.
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