Very recently, a close friend and I got talking about success and our perceptions of it. How after a certain point in life you have to accept the limitations of your mortal flesh and make peace with the ghosts of unfulfilled dreams and desires. Just a casual browse of Facebook or LinkedIn, and you know which friend is taking that foreign vacation that you can't afford, which colleague got the promotion you had your heart set on. Trouble happens, he said, when our ambitions find it difficult to adjust to the limits posed by our abilities.
And having discovered our weaknesses, do we stop in our tracks, waiting for fair winds to fill our sails while the storm weathers itself out? Or do we trudge along, knowing we might never reach the proverbial Jerusalem, but keep marching to the tunes of duty and old habit?
We always read about heroes and supermen in their youth. Their old age seems to be lost in valourless obscurity. But courage and faith are not the monopoly of the fresh-faced. The hero of the Trojan War may be weak in the knee, but not in the heart.
"Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
- Ulysses, Lord Alfred Tennyson
Read the full poem here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174659
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