Know who you are

Julia ♦ October 13, 2021 ♦ 2 Comments

The Three Soldiers statue at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, DC, April 2012

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” ― Maya Angelou

Nobody likes to lose.  Loss hurts, sometimes irrevocably.  But there are lessons in defeat, if we are wise enough to learn them.

If you are experiencing defeat right now, take courage from Angelou’s words above, and in this video that features her incredibly incandescent hope, and know you can rise above your despair.  If you have painful memories of past defeats, I hope you are able to look back and find some good that came of it.

If you’ve never felt the sting of defeat, you’re a rare and blessed person, and have reason to be thankful.  But it’s almost certain that you know someone who isn’t so fortunate, who might need your compassion and help in facing their loss.

Defeat, as any other crisis, can be a catalyst for growth and change.  In fact, often defeat will give us no other choice but to grow, if we wish to survive.  Today let’s draw inspiration from the many people around us now, and in our collective history, who taught themselves (and us) how we can rise above setbacks and keep going.

One year ago today:

A daybreak that’s wondrously clear

This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.