I get The Daily Stoic daily email. Today’s email quoted this passage from Walker Percy’s book, The Moviegoer:
“I don’t know quite what we’re doing on this insignificant cinder spinning away in a dark corner of the universe. That is a secret which the high gods have not confided in me. Yet one thing I believe and I believe it with every fibre of my being. A man must live by his lights and do what little he can and do it as best he can. In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.”
I read this and smiled and got up from my desk with a little more courage.
Lately I’ve been feeling a little less sure and a little more lost than normal.
I don’t seem to be getting wiser as I get older. I’m just becoming even more aware of how little I truly know. Or maybe that’s what getting wiser is all about. If so, wisdom is not living up to the hype.
Regardless, I do know that I can live by my “lights”, by my meager understanding of what it means to be good and to do good.
I know how it feels to come alive, even momentarily, and shake off the half-hearted, half-asleep caution that most of us cower behind perpetually.
I can fight. I can attempt to rise, knowing I’ll still go down sooner or later. But in merely making the attempt I will prevail and fleetingly defy the gravity that aims to keep us from escape velocity.
Make the attempt. Shine where you can. Get up and get going and put up a fight. Be the hero of your own life.
