Take more risks; suffer more defeats.
Take more Risks; suffer more Defeats.
“Defeat, my Defeat, my solitude and my aloofness;
You are sweeter to me than a thousand triumphs,
And sweeter to my heart than all world-glory.”
So starts Kahlil Gibran’s “Defeat,” a poem that never ceases to send the (good kind of) shivers down my spine.
Otherwise known as chills. Signals of the unseen. The divine reaching down to pluck the strings of your soul and make its presence known. Telling you to pay attention. So I did (or at least tried).
And what I heard was a call to take more Risks (capital “R”) and suffer more Defeats (capital “D”).
What I realized is that, for a long time, I allowed life’s sweet lullaby to lead me into my own custom land of complacency. One where my ego stood guard at the gates and allowed just enough risk (small “r”) into my life to convince me I’m a risk-taker. A life with only lowercase “d” defeats.
Certainly not the type of Risks that could lead to real wounds or real Defeats. No, law school had taught me how to mitigate risk and there was little room left for any Risks in my life. I was on pace and on schedule to arrive safely at Death’s shores, with a soul dead long before my body’s arrival.
You see, I wasn’t giving myself the opportunity to fail at something that I cared deeply about. Wasn’t in the arenas that mattered most to my soul, where my ego could be battered with blows that rattled its teeth and left it bloodied. Where wounds would leave scars—those marvelous marks of virtue that remind of us our courage to dare greatly and live well.
No, I had shriveled into the writer that never shared his writing. The athlete that never competed. Just the lawyer secretly wishing he had the guts to be an entrepreneur, patrolling the periphery of the life he longed to live, knowing neither Victory nor Defeat.
Slowly, though, I’m shaking this slumber and will end with the promise that ends the poem:
“Defeat, my Defeat, my deathless courage,
You and I shall laugh together with the storm,
And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us,
And we shall stand in the sun with a will,
And we shall be dangerous.”
Defeat’s bite may be bitter, but its fruit is sweet.