Life is a battlefield!

My body and mind went overdrive as things typically do while partaking in one of those age-defying mindless Sunday morning recreational run-cycle-run combo of Powerman Malaysia 2023 Edition. Staying mindful of the traffic flow of fellow madmen, the condition of the roads, my heart rate, race timing, the remaining distance to cover and gears, I had my hands figuratively full on top of everything else I was doing.

Behind it all, buffering silently in the background, basking in the inebriation of all sanguineous perfusion of flurry vascular tributaries is the creative part of the brain. It wants to keep up with the rest of the body. It, too, tries its hand at neuroplasticity. It sprouts out dendrites to establish long-lost connexions. And it engages in its internal soliloquy. I just happened to be there eavesdropping the murmur. 

Life is a battlefield. In modern times, the enemies we are supposed to fight are no longer the co-creations created in His image but the one in the mirror. The demons have all gone internal, so we tell ourselves. The jihad that they were fighting to steamroll our ideology has gone underground. Now, it seems jihad refers to fighting the inner demons.

Now, we are supposed to be kind to each other, come together and feel alright. We are not supposed to be having ill feelings towards the other. Instead of all these, we should focus on fighting the inner demons that lurk within us. Then there will be heaven on Earth. 

In real life, it does not work this way. In Nature, there is a constant need to push to a higher level. It is a question of the survival of the fittest. Darwin proposed it. We condemned it but cannot sweep the reality under the carpet. 

Even as a newbie starts cycling, running or trekking, he always tries to keep up with the group's oldest and weakest link. If he can reach the stage when he can outperform the slowest of the pack, he knows he has qualified to be a legitimate fellow group participant. 

You are given one life, not to brood over but to make the best

despite all the seemingly unending adversities that come and 

go. Sisyphus, given the life sentence of rolling the boulder up

the hill will have to find joy in reaching the pinnacle, 

knowing very well that the boulder will roll down and he has to

repeat the process again and again.

When training for a competition, a participant has to train with someone stronger than himself to improve. During the actual event, he has to benchmark himself against the better ones if he were to outdo himself. There is no meaning in merely pushing ourselves to improve without a yardstick to follow. In competitive mode, we look for prey, the feared 'the other' and the potentially beatable. We want to improve our standing by overtaking others, one at a time.

There is a place for active competition. The world is cruel and does not give concessions to the weak. So, affirmative action will work only in a short time. When used indiscriminately, it would be counterproductive. Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times. (G. Michael Hopf)

Like it or not, we improve as a human race by challenging the status quo. Jealousy can be a healthy virtue as long as to push oneself, but not in destruction. But he would be devastated, nevertheless. As long as he knows, he will return bigger and stronger. 

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