Ultimately we are all big losers. We lose everything. Everything that made us feel better about ourselves, like winners———-it’s all stripped away from us, either slowly from the moment of birth, or by sudden surprise ambush when that final moment comes. But nobody escapes defeat. It is the ultimate sorrow for an American and a Buddhist who prides himself on winning, winning and winning to see, feel, know and experience that the final battle is not a win but a loss. All Alpha males be forewarned and beware. Though I know you won’t.
But there is one thing that is only mocked but is up to us whether we give it up. It is not our pride, not our health, not our victory. These are all completely robbed of us. No! That one thing that is not robbed but mocked and taunted by that final experience we all go through is our love, our faith, our persistence, our attitude of “death itself be damned, I’m staying true to what I believe even if all evidence is to the contrary; not even truth and fact can take that away from me. For I see a world in which a man is judged not “by the color of his skin but by the content of his character.” And I see a world in which I live on in the gifts I have given to others that live on in them. And I see a world in which all those things that sustain the body and the ego don’t matter and what is dignified and noble about us never dies. But triumphs at last through the next generation to whom the torch of righteousness and inner conviction in what is good has been passed. And I see a world in which people only want to give to one another, a world in which those frustrations and annoyances can’t stop the heart of the soul from beating for humanity, for dignity, for peace, for love. So let the labors of the body all go down in embers. They can’t touch who I really am.