Rising to the Challenge

There is no good or bad news -- except how one responds to those challenges.  One can go into a irrecoverable downward spiral, or use it as a springboard for getting where one has never gone before.  In that way, every crisis is a challenge to be the best one can be -- based on everything else they've ever done before.  Thus the present implies the past -- as well as indicates the future.  It is not just one more thing unrelated and unconnected to every other.  That is the context of every meaningful and successful action -- and not as a lot of failing people think, that they'll be the million in a million.  The million is the success -- proven time and time again.

Nevertheless, it is difficult for a few to believe that there is a reason things happen as they do -- rather than the majority is always wrong, and they alone, know all the answers.  Most of life knows all the answers -- and those that persist in their stubbornness, usually aren't around for very much longer.  Eventually, they just run out of chances.  That's why it is so important to get it right the first time -- and every time, in everything one does -- because that alone, qualifies them for the next.

But if they just fritter away their opportunities, invariably they run out of options, choices, decisions -- and then have everything dictated to them, as the only way it can be.  You don't want to get to that point -- when all the choices and opportunities are behind one, and only a certain rut lies in front of one.  That is also burning one's bridges behind them -- so they have nowhere else to go.  On the other hand, the wise tactician, multiplies the possibilities and options before them.  They grow their life -- rather than killing it, and do so until the day they inexplicably perish.  But that is not part of the plan -- to bring about their own demise, destruction and death.

Those are Darwin's losers; the winners find a better way -- even if they have to create it themselves.  When those individuals do, the whole of the species is advanced -- and not just the one over every other -- in a brutish struggle for scarce resources and survival -- as the only way they think life can be.  At best, it is just a repetition of the past -- and never breaking any new ground.  Of course, such societies have no future.  They have to create it -- and not just repeat their glorious past.

That is the challenge of life and living: one must get better.  The alternative, is to only get worse -- and it does not matter how many others one drags down with them, or exploits for a better position.  It is still a sinking ship -- no matter how they rearrange the deck chairs.  The challenge of every individual, is also the challenge of civilization -- with the fate of humankind hanging in the balance.  But all actions are not created equal.  Some matter much more -- because that is the spirit and understanding they are undertaken with.  Others think that nothing they do matters -- and is of consequence, and so they live their lives that way -- without any significance -- "sound and fury, signifying nothing."

It's not even a good game.  Life is just one entertainment and diversion after another -- or they are interminably bored -- mostly with themselves.  Every opportunity is lost.  They rise to no challenge -- and pretty soon, it is all over.  Those challenges don't have to be big things; they are more likely to be personal challenges and milestones -- that they fail to answer, time and time again.  But life is no other.  It is entirely personal -- and not about what somebody more important and well-known does, or does not do.

When one is only talking about what others do and don't do -- as the reason for success or failings in their own lives, all is lost.  That person has lost the significance and power of their own action.  They are the pawns in the game of life.