Principles

Its a fight. Thats it. Thats all there is to it. Right? I mean, you know what you believe in, and you know the reasons for believing in it. And you know all your reasons are right and justified. So that should be enough of weapons and defenses for any war.

All you need to do is keep in mind the reasons. You need to remind yourself how you are right in standing up for your beliefs. If you're sure about that, there should be nothing that could defeat you. You think you're ready for any battle. Nothing can stand in your way. And you possibly cannot forget that. How can you? After all, those reasons are what make you, you. They are what you live by. You can never lose sight of them.

So you decide to step into the field. But still, just to be sure, like a warrior adjusting his quiver just before mounting his steed, you go over it again. It all rings solid. No flaws, no loopholes, no way you can lose. So you take your first step into the battlefield. You start fighting, clashing blades, with gritted teeth and steely determination. First fights are the simple one-on-ones. You sail through them, without a scratch. You think its too easy and that after all, you are going to end up alright. But what you dont realize is that every fight, every single blow has taken its toll on you. Your sword is not that sharp anymore. Your shield does not sound as reassuring as it used to. But you ignore these small discrepancies because you are addicted to having things the easy way, what with all the easy fights. So you take the easiest route available.

Then come the bigger fights. But you storm into them with your actions exuding tremendous confidence that you have gained from your previous victories. These fights dont seem as easy as the previous ones, and you stare more in surprise than in pain at the first wound that cuts across you. But you are undaunted. You go on ahead, fighting. But you are a little alert now. You have started feeling the fragility of your shield, the bluntness of your sword and the fatigue in your joints.

The reasons that seemed undefeatable now are not all that convincing. You have been out on war for way too long. You have fought for so long without a rest and without a celebration for any victory that now your weapons and defenses are failing you. You begin to doubt your own reasons. You begin to doubt yourself. You begin to grope around for another explanation. You start feeling weak in the knees because you suddenly stumble upon a possibility. That you might have been wrong. That your reasons were not hard and sound logic, but just deception. That your shield is after all, hollow and that your blade is not as strong as it looked. What seemed so simple and straight forward earlier now seems a humongous task. All you had to do was stand steadfast and not lose the sight of what you believe. But the length of the war has made you weak. You can stand no longer. You now have started to look for stronger reasons to bear the pain of war. The reasons you started out with dont seem worth it anymore. You now begin to think whether you were right and sensible to have justified those reasons. You start feeling that the enemies might be stronger.

And, wounded and tired, you trudge through the fight. You face the fact that you might have started losing the fight. But you cannot lose. If you lose the fight, you lose yourself. Losing is not an option. You either win or you go down fighting. You go down fighting even though now you think that the reason you did start out to fight for is not worth even fighting for anymore. Yet you go down fighting for it. Because now, there is no looking back. The time for rectification is long lost. And then, there is this small, flickering hope somewhere in the dark corners of your heart that after all, you might have been right. That your enemies only seem stronger, but you might have been too lost in your own fatigue to notice their waning strength. That you were quite sensible and sane earlier and you can trust the decision that you took then. So you again lift up the worn sword, you raise your cracked shield, and you run head first into the fight once more.