{"id":816,"date":"2016-05-06T15:12:42","date_gmt":"2016-05-06T15:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/new-wp\/?p=816"},"modified":"2016-05-06T15:12:42","modified_gmt":"2016-05-06T15:12:42","slug":"fighting-a-losing-battle-with-dignity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/?p=816","title":{"rendered":"Fighting a losing battle with dignity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Yao<\/a>
Yao Xin of Knoxville<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Suppose you\u2019re on a soccer team. (Forgive me, I\u2019m an American; forgive the barbarism \u201csoccer.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Your team is awful. And you\u2019re playing against the best team in the country.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re going to lose. You know it. Your teammates know it. The opposing team knows it.<\/p>\n

The opposing team scores again and again. They score so often and so easily there\u2019s no elation in it. They\u2019re bored. A couple of the players even stop to smoke a cigarette midfield. It makes no difference: except that the remaining players are now momentarily entertained to see if they can still dominate with the handicap. They can; they continue to score.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s something different about your team. It has pride. It has said \u201cf\u2014 you\u201d inwardly to the other team (though not outwardly, as its members are gentlemanly); it\u2019s said \u201cf\u2014 you\u201d to the universe itself; its pride is its \u201cGround of Being\u201d; it knows no metaphysics other than its own integrity. What does this mean?<\/p>\n

This means your team keeps playing. It keeps trying. It sweats, but it never becomes shamefaced; it never stops running. It never throws in the towel. It never asks for mercy; it never asks to be the exception.<\/p>\n

At the end of the game, after being shut out, it asks for a rematch with a straight face. In so asking it gains the respect of the other team. The other team senses no bitterness in your team: your team was glad to have had the opportunity of playing for the sake of playing; was glad to feel its muscles tensing and releasing; was glad to inhale the scent of the grass; was glad to have gotten out, on a Saturday, and been in the sun. Your team fought a losing battle and it knew it; yet it fought.<\/p>\n

Life is like this. In the end we die and everything is smashed to pieces. We know this. And yet we bravely behave as though it weren\u2019t true. I say \u201cbravely\u201d non-ironically. There are times when it\u2019s wise to laugh at our foibles, wise to laugh at the foibles of others. But there are also times when it\u2019s wise to marvel at human integrity, human courage: especially those in defense of lost causes\u2014and our mortality is certainly a lost cause.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s as if we were boxers, assured of our ultimately losing the fight; and yet, we come out swinging: every punch we throw has our full weight behind it. We are determined that if we\u2019re to lose, we\u2019re going to demolish the face of our opponent as much as we can, while we can: and we\u2019ll be damned if he isn\u2019t bruised and bloodied.<\/p>\n

So we make our mark on the world, or attempt to. We carve out a place, we leave children behind; we publish books; we say, \u201cI was here.\u201d And we mean it. Even if there\u2019s no echo, we scream our presence. The sound waves travel where they may: lost in the atmosphere, dispersed. But we were here; we sounded ourselves.<\/p>\n

And isn\u2019t that glorious?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’re going to lose. How are you going to lose? Can you preserve your dignity?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","tag-essays"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phd6fo-da","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Old-Boxing-Gloves.jpg","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":818,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions\/818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zatma.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}