Two Sides of the Same Coin

There is No Victory without Defeat

My best friend once posed that very statement and dared anyone to challenge it. I tried and I tried but I couldn't overrule the fact that there are opposites in this world and one would not exist without the other. Men would not exist without women (though sometimes the idea of not having to deal with them is tempting) and happiness could not exist without misery. The idea that most everything exists in pairs is sometimes hard to buy, especially when one can so fiercely overshadow the other.

Misery can overshadow happiness to such an extent that we may question whether happiness may even exist at all. Surely these things cannot be in relation, but how could they not be? Is it possible to feel happy when you are miserable? I'd wager it's impossible. It's difficult to think about these things, because I want to be happy and focus myself on being happy, but in dreaming of a bright future I cannot deny that opposites do exist. Happiness and misery, good and bad, fortune and misfortune. At the flip of a coin the tide can change and the other can rear its face.

I'm not afraid of the future to say, but afraid of the pathway it will take to get to that point. Will I be vigilant in the things I ought to be vigilant in? Will I do the right thing at the right time, or will I be too late? My hopes for the future are bright and brilliant, but I must accept that along with the victories that I hope to achieve, there will be defeat. My victory will mean the defeat of others, my defeat will mean that I have been triumphed over others. It's such a terrible thing to think that one person's happiness is the cause of another's misery, and part of me hopes that Dakota was wrong when he made that claim that there is no victory without defeat. Still, I hold them as words spoken by a wise man and a good friend, and I hope that my being wary of them will help me to shape the future into a more desirable pose.

These opposites exist, but we can control which way the coin lands to the best of our efforts. True, the rest is left up to a higher power, but I will seek each day to make the coin land on the right side, whichever that may be. There may be times I am required to sacrifice my happiness and accept misery for the sake of another, and I will relish these chances. My hopes have always been to be the best man that I can be, and this week especially I have set my foot forward in hopes to realize this goal. It scares me, but they are changes that will benefit me in the long run. Although altering ourselves is never the most pleasant process, I will look forward with grateful eyes to the man that I can be.

I hope by all standards to be considered decent enough of a man as is, and I could do well staying the way I am, but as always I'm longing to be more. I want to be the best, and I will not stop until I have achieved the best man that I can possibly be. It's a goal that I will, essentially, never meet because there is always room to be better. The fact that nobody is perfect defines that the room to grow will never end, there will always be more to learn. But this is what I want in life, to see just how close I can get to that untouchable marker. I have the right friends and family for it, that is for sure, now it only requires my determination and will power to achieve the rest, as well as the humility to ask for help when I so need it. This, I plan to do, without fail. Starting today, it's a step towards the ultimate Victory, the one in which only Satan will be left with Defeat.