Musings on victory and defeat and hopelessness

 What is victory? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Most likely you’ve asked yourself in a specific situation. Or you’ve just naturally known in a specific situation.

In a sport, victory is easy to define…or is it? For a team that is dominate, victory is first place. For a team that has never won before, winning a single match or set might be a victory for them. So a moral victory, while not complete victory can still be part of victory.

How about a person who feels that victory is not losing their home in the face of a forest fire? Or the person who loses their home, but still feels victorious because they didn’t die in a flood?

What about the addict. Be it a substance addiction or an addiction of the heart. Victory will look different for the recovered alcoholic, the recovering drug addict, or the one who has just acknowledged their addiction and started a very, very long road to recovery.

Victory in war. When the war is on my soil, then victory can mean a lot of things. It can mean repelling my enemy. But in the face of overwhelming odds, it may just mean making my enemy bleed as much as I can before THEIR victory is at hand. My victories will also change depending on what THEY define as victory. Genocide and subjection are two different things and will affect how I view victory whether I'm on the "winning" or "losing" side. 

Here is a key point. The circumstances that we might call “victory” will change. They will change according to our opponents and they will change according to the circumstances and context around us. Two people fighting the same war and even fighting on the same side may view “victory” very differently.

 Likewise, defeat is a little ambiguous. The pride of one man may feel that subjection is a defeat. But for another, to be allowed to live feels like victory and so subjugation does not feel like a “defeat” in the same sense.

 But here is a key point in defeat. Hopelessness. If we succumb to hopelessness, will we see victory in little things? Or will we only see the defeats looming large? Will we try and keep fighting if we feel hopeless? The answer is no. If a person feels hopelessness (their spouse or children are threatened and it is outside their control, they feel their finances will never be in order, they know their home will be destroyed no matter what they do, etc.) they usually lose the will to fight. Notice how closely tied hopeless and helpless often are? This is a rule of subjugation. Make them feel helpless and in turn hopeless so that they won't fight back. 

Hopelessness, like victory and defeat, changes its shape based on the psyche of the person feeling it. Frankly, it is more emotion based than the ideas of victory and defeat. It is an emotion based on the interpretation of our surroundings. Two people watching a flood come to destroy their home won’t react the same and one may feel hopelessness while the other doesn’t.

Hopelessness is a grave enemy to the human spirit. This is where faith can see you through in many situations. Not always. People of faith fall prey to hopelessness even as people without a religious faith do. None are truly immune. Faith in God and Jesus Christ, while is seems like it should make us immune to hopelessness, doesn't. We forget. We avoid. We fall astray.

This is already long enough. Next time I’ll jump into hopelessness a little more.

#DefeatHopelessness