Monday, March 14, 2022
Fighting the good fight is a metaphor for the difficulty in understanding the root cause of suffering. I’m not talking about physical suffering in body, or suffering at the hands of a physically abusive person. I’m talking about mental suffering – the things that keep you up at night. The worry that you think is helping to “solve” or to “fix” your struggles, by incessantly mulling over them in your head, is the actual problem. The mind, stewing like that, is the actual battlefield – the “bad” fight. But there is only one person in that combat – YOU.
A tormented person has a tortured mind, one that picks a fight, creates a problem, and manufactures a fear that keeps one out of a natural state of rest (homeostasis). The good fight, however, is constant understanding of how to maintain that rest, when there may be a storm, externally. Fighting the good fight is actually not a fight at all. It’s surrender. Remember, it takes two to fight. In the good fight, your enemy is not your circumstance, or anything out of your control. The battle in the good fight, so to speak, is in the difficulty of learning how to stay clear of trying to change that which cannot be changed.
Fighting the good fight is simply being fed up with being irritated, foul, and upset with every little thing that comes your way. If there is a fight to be had, it’s in learning how to keep your cool, to make peace of mind a priority, over struggle. Fighting the good fight is a kind of peaceful and powerful determination to rise above combative thoughts, to stay aware of the flaring temper, and to accept an unwavering disposition of surrender, at all times. Fight the good fight today, but don’t put up your dukes. Put up your white flag, surrender to what’s outside of your control, and prioritize being hopeful, helpful, adaptive, kind, excited, eager, patient, funny, pleasant, and anything else that helps you be the champion victor of the fight for good!