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Forgetting Your Strength
Never let life make you forget your strength.
Sometimes in life, when we come face-to-face with the violence of this world, and we want nothing more than peace, we are temporarily changed in a way that goes unnoticed. Frightened, injured, and saddened, we find ourselves haunted by the badness of the world, as if it were hiding in the shadows cast by every object, occupying all the corners, crevices, and undersurfaces around us. We look at all that is wrong, and we wonder how we were ever so naive as to see the world as such a perfect and beautiful thing, as we did on our best days.
This is the primary potency of badness — of violence, evil, and hate. It does not defeat; it deceives. It puts us into a trance wherein we forget ourselves. It draws all of our attention, and we forget to remember what is most important: We are strong.
Even now in the throes of sadness and fright, does one leg not follow the other? Has your heart missed a beat, or have your lungs ceased to work? Does your blood run any less warm or red? Show me where you have been defeated as you feel you have. Can you not see a bright ray of optimism shining through the cloud of your sadness even now? The badness never beat you; it only convinced you for a moment that it had.
