I have always been able to understand a person’s ability to just lie down and give up when things get tough. From personal experience I know that it is just the easier thing to do sometimes. I spent an entire semester at school doing just that. When things got tough and I didn’t want to confront my challenges head on, I went to bed and slept. I would sleep in the morning, afternoon, and early evening even after a full nights rest. If I didn’t want to deal with life I found it easier to just skip through my anxiety and let sleep heal my frustrations. An additional problem came from the fact that it became so easy to hide from the world that I would turtle away at the slightest perceived challenges. I never even gave myself a chance to see how hard my challenges were or, even worse, how ready I actually was to take them on.
But this isn’t the way to conduct business. It’s not the way to live life. It’s downright unacceptable to give up before the first round even starts. I have understood the flight part of “fight or flight” only because I chose never to use that mechanism in the face of challenges. I don’t like to feel helpless but I would rather fight from my knees than look back at what could have been.
There is some kind of fire that has been burning in my soul lately that won’t let me settle in for complacency. It burns hotter when things stand in the way of my goals. I need to take action and I hate myself when I don’t. Even when the chips are stacked against me and it doesn’t look like I’ll win, I would rather take a swing at success on the way down than not try at all. There is a great poem by Dylan Thomas that really illustrates how I feel about the subject:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Rocky did it. John Conner did it. Captain Kirk did it. Wolverine did it. Luke Skywalker did it. That blonde chick from Center Stage did it.
Not every hero was given the tools to win from the beginning. They had to earn it and bleed for it. Many times, when it looked like everything was going to crash down on them, they still pulled through and managed to fight back and win. Set back on our heels, we might take a look at a situation and call it quits to lessen the fall but if we never take the chance to at least make a play for the win, then we’ll never know if we could’ve been the next John McClane. 
Here’s my fight song for the month- No Easy Way Out by Robert Tepper