Men Can Be Destroyed But Not Defeated

Salmonella Typhoon is back! And I have decided to create some changes in my blog. From now on I am trying to post in English. There are several reasons for this. The first reason is that I am going to go on an adventure to an English speaking country, and since my English is getting rusty I have to train it somewhat and somewhere. So I decided to hone my English skill here. Expect some grammatical errors as you read the posts, feel free to correct but I doubt someone will be diligent enough to do it. :p The second reason is to made this blog more internationally available. I realized that this blog has several visits from overseas maybe because of the English title, and unfortunately if there are really visitors from overseas (I don't know if the statistics are true or not, or maybe the visitors are just some kind of bots) they cannot read my posts. So I am trying to make it understandable for more people even though the readers are still quite few. Actually I don't care about who read this blog but my perfectionist side just got the best of me. So here is my first English post.

Okay let's get on to the topic, the quote for today is "men can be destroyed but not defeated". I forget where I read this passage but I tell you this quote is not mine.When I google it, it is said that the quote is came from Hemmingway's "The Old Man and The Sea". I am sure I have never read the novel and I don't know the context of the passage in that novel. So the interpretation of the passage in this post is purely mine. At the first time I read the passage, I think that the quote is very negative. Sounds like men have a very high pride and their pride insists them to win every battle and argument. It is better to die rather than accepting defeat. It is actually true in some levels because men have a very high level of testosterone in their body and it pushes them to be the alpha male, the leader, the best man everywhere they live. However, this ideology also does not sound very sportive and more like a savage person would do. So at first I do not really like the quote.


This ball is mine, take it over my dead body

However, on second thought I think this quote actually contains a lot of hope. One day, I read a book titled "From Good Man to Valiant Man" by Dr. Allan Meyer. In the book he said that a defeat is not about not winning, but to give up, believe that we are not capable, and stop trying. To support his argument, he also quotes some of the words from Winston Churchill which sounds more or less like this: " Success is the ability to move from one failure to another failure without losing enthusiasm", and "Never, never, never give up". Looking at those perspective, the quote "Men can be destroyed but not defeated" is very beautiful. It is true that men can be destroyed, for example by weapons, diseases, disasters, and time. However, the spirit within men (in this context the word "men" refers to both men and women as human being) cannot be taken from them until they die. There is no such thing as defeat as long as we keep fighting for our purposes.

Sometimes it's hard for us to face failures, it feels like we will never be able to get up again. But remember, if you still can breathe it means you are not over yet. You are defeated when you give up on something you are pursuing. Even if you die while trying to achieve your goal, you still die as a winner. Therefore, do not be afraid of failure, because you can still get something precious in every failure. This ideology is said perfectly in one of Dr. Allan Meyer's anecdote of riding a bike. He says that if we ride a bike for 10 km and fall off the bike on km 3, we don't lose the 3 km we have gone through so there is no need to start over from the start. Just get on the bike and start again from km 3. Also we cannot be a good bicycle rider if we are afraid of falling off the bike. Just be afraid of giving up because giving up would not give you anything to learn.

Adventurers, I would not say that your adventure will be a smooth ride. However, I can say that your adventure will be fruitful if you keep struggling till the end. Like I always say, do not lose hope and just have a little faith. Good luck on your adventure! :)


 NEVER GIVE UP!