Pick Your Battles

What does man have that he could take with him? Naked you arrive, wilted you leave.

There is little you will take with you. Your soul and its earnings and that’s it.

Yet while we take little with us, we can still leave stuff behind. Memories and children and estates and money and debt, well: stuff.

So the question is: What is worth leaving behind?

Money is useful, yet might be squandered. Houses are useful, yet might be seized. A good name is useful, yet might be sullied. Lessons might be useful, yet will likely be forgotten—or irrelevant—two generations in.

No, I am not discouraging you from leaving behind a legacy, in this or that way. Go for it! If you aren’t driven by your legacy, you are likely driven by some pretty vulgar demons, however politely you may go about it.

But whatever legacy you choose to leave behind, those worth leaving behind have one thing in common: they were worth fighting for.

The idea, the mansion, the factory—whatever you want to leave behind, you have fought hard to acquire it, to make it your own. Or someone else fought and worked hard. And you surely had to fight to preserve it. To protect it from the times, from the people, and from your own demons.

I met a man today who was fighting an honorable battle for an honorable cause.

Yet I know that he is fighting more than one battle.

Every fight comes with considerable risk, or it is no fight but a chore. The risk of failing and thereby wasting time and resources. The risk of destruction. The risk of being wiped out. The risk of losing your strength to fight at all. A number of fight-specific risks.

So what to do if a real fight always carries the risk of real destruction and a real legacy requires a real fight?

Give up on the legacy?

Yes, you could give up on leaving a legacy. Sadly, I have met more than one person who has. They usually sugarcoat their lack of legacy as „living for the moment,“ et cetera.

What to do? Giving up or grinding yourself down?

Well, we have a saying: Pick your battles.

I am not saying you shouldn’t fight for the reinstatement of common sense, for your nation and people, for your idea of a better tomorrow.

I say: Fight, but pick your battles.

Accept that you are small, and pick your one battle. Even the richest or most powerful man in the world cannot take up all the battles, much less you.

What does man have that he could take with him? You take little but your soul, but you leave behind what you fought for, and if you fought for the good cause, you take some of that too.