destruction | defeat

Are there moments in your life that you wish you could go back and do differently? Moments that keep returning to your memory, vivid as they were when you were actually living through them?

Not necessarily regrets.

But maybe regrets.

My grandma uses the term “I wish” very frequently and I tease her whenever she does because she’ll use it for the smallest things like wishing she had bought the larger sized butter or started making dinner sooner.

As much as I don’t like using “I wish”, I won’t deny that there have been several occasions in my life for which it would be fitting.  

What distinguishes my “I wish”es from those of my grandmothers’, however, is that mine are mostly related to the attitude with which I handled said events and challenges, whereas hers apply to the actions themselves.

It’s a subtle difference, but an important one at that. If we regret every little decision we made in the past to act one way or another, our lives end up being no more than a series of so called “mistakes” that we wish we could have done differently, without any opportunity to actually go back and do them any differently. If, however, we “wish” we would have had a different attitude towards the problems or challenges we’ve faced over the years, we can indeed do something about that moving forward.

In Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, Santiago talks about destruction versus defeat. “A man can be destroyed, but not defeated”, he says.

In other words, he says that losing a battle doesn’t mean you’ve lost the war.

His version is a little more complicated though. While the familiar saying suggests that losing the war is indeed a possibility, Hemingway suggests otherwise; that a man can lose a battle, or all the battles for that matter, but cannot lose the war.

It’s an interesting thought. Even as I write these lines, I’m not sure if I agree with him. I certainly believe that his statement applies to some people, as I’ve personally known some such people, but I’ve also known people who have been ready to put up a white flag at the sight of the smallest challenge. Regardless of whether or not his idea is “true”, it’s one that’s worth being investigated further.

The thought of being destroyed over and over again, but not being defeated raises the issue of resilience. There are different kinds of battles and different ways of being destroyed. In determining whether or not a battle is worth fighting for and if one is willing to take the chance to be destroyed without going down without a fight, it’s necessary to answer some questions.

The first one is: What is it that we’re fighting, is it a worthy opponent, and what does “worthy” even mean?

What we’re battling with perhaps says more about us than the result of the battle itself. It reveals more about ourselves than we could reveal if we were openly asked. It speaks oceans. It tells the world about the values we prioritize, what our passions are, the things we find are worthy of a fight, and the lengths that we’ll go to in order to defend those things. It tells the world what kind of fighters we are. What our weaknesses, strengths, and fears are. Perhaps, it teaches us things that we didn’t know about ourselves.

That with which we choose to battle gives us the opportunity to make better versions of ourselves. When we choose an opponent that is worthy of our efforts, one that we’re proud to announce as our opponent, we can take pride in knowing that we didn’t take the easy way out. In the end, if we lose to an opponent that we were proud to have fought in the first place, we can rest assured that we were not defeated, just destroyed. If, on the other hand, we chose an opponent who we’ll know we’ll defeat, we will have lost before we ever had a chance to fight. 

And then there’s the question of what a “worthy” opponent even looks like. There’s a certain beauty that lies in being able to understand the value of that with which we’re fighting. If we’re able to see our opponent as something or someone who’s worthy of our respect, efforts, and energy, it means that we’ve found something that has the potential to make us a better version of ourselves. The moment we’re able to relate to it—see not just the soul and strength that lies within it, but also the weakness that makes it mortal—is the moment that we discover a newfound respect towards ourselves for having made the right choice. Not just in finding the right opponent, but also for correctly choosing how and to what to delegate our energy.

When the fight is over and we have won, we’ll feel a sense of respectful sorrow along with a sense of victory that we’ll know, deep down, we owe to our opponent. And if we’ve lost, the loss won’t feel like a defeat because we’ll know that we were pushed to our limit, that we tried our hardest, and had no regrets. That’s how we’ll know that the fight was a worthy fight, and the opponent a worthy challenge.

In the end, there remain two more questions that we must answer for ourselves.

1)   Who is to decide whether or not we’ve been destroyed?

2)   If we’ve been destroyed (lost the battle), how de we know that we haven’t been defeated (lost the war)?

For me, the answer for the first question is clear. If I’m the one who’s fought the fight, then I’m the one who will know whether or not I’ve lost. This is not a scientific experiment that requires an objective third party involvement for the final decision to be made. The criteria that I’ll use to determine whether or not I believe I’ve lost the battle will be different than that of anyone else, which means that no other person can tell me if I’ve won or lost as they don’t know what I’ve been trying to achieve to begin with.

 The second one is even easier to answer.

Loss happens the minute you stop trying after a failed attempt.

If you keep being destroyed, losing battle after battle, it means that you’re still fighting. And if there still are battles to be fought, the war is not yet lost.

As long as you keep fighting, you’re in the game.

Undefeated.