Part V. Qualities
It is never too late to sharpen our weapons and our minds.
Now, finally, after my trials, I honor myself, asking it from no one else. You cannot know what I have first had to tear down and replace in order to do that. You cannot imagine how much I have first honored and absorbed others. You cannot see the first tottering edifice of my own honor that I have struggled to re-build as a secure home for everything else.
––John Roberts
A Fighter Pilot never quits. Never. Because, if you do, you become nothing more than a failure in the wreckage and you were never a Fighter Pilot to begin with.
––John Roberts
It is not enough to fight. It is the spirit which we bring to the fight that decides the issue. It is morale that wins victory.
––George C. Marshall, Military Review, 1948
It is not enough to have great qualities; we must also have the management of them.
François de la Rochefoucauld
Character is destiny.
–– Heraclitus
Chance favors only the prepared mind.
––Louis Pasteur
The will to win means nothing if you haven't the will to prepare.
––Juma Ikanga (1989 NYC Marathon winner)
Not to alter one’s faults is to be faulty indeed.
––Confucius
The great secret of success in life is for a man to be ready when his opportunity comes.
–Disraeli
All things must change to something new, to something strange.
––Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The war against our personal cancer requires the muster of strong qualities that will enable us to persist on a broad front with a variety of different efforts. It is never too early, never too late, to think about the strengths that will be needed and how to get them into fighting trim. We must not let a pessimistic prognosis prevent us from taking a long and hopeful view of the fight. Similarly, taking a long view must not prevent us from making an immediately and intense resistance when the cancer may be new and weak. To really fight such an enemy as cancer, we must reinforce all of our qualities and build new ones. We must minimize the weaknesses in our defenses. All this creates self-respect and spirit, our essential weapons for all the battles of life.
Building the great qualities of character and success is the project of a lifetime. While it helps to have good family, teachers, friends, colleagues, education, religion, nationality, and culture, it may well be largely up to the individual to intentionally draw from these the deep learning––the change in thought and behavior. Through study, trial, luck, and hard work, a person can assemble and strive to develop the qualities that are admired and valuable as we move through life and face difficult challenges.
A key element of our personal development over our entire lifetime is the will and ability to look inward, to overcome the difficulty of self-understanding, and penetrate the distortions and cover-ups we all spread over our weaknesses. We must learn to see ourselves honestly, and learn how to correct our faults and improve our virtues. The sooner and more thoroughly we do this, the more successful we are likely to be in our life’s work and relationships, the more successful we can fight every battle.
I have struggled with this for many years. I will never give up. My dreams and visions are frequently beyond my immediate grasp, but they are not unplanned or unreachable. I have often failed, sometimes stupidly, sometimes severely. But, although I learn positive lessons from experience, failure has no bearing on my hard-core determination to succeed. I simply do not allow myself to get discouraged. If ever the thought of failure presents itself, I vigorously drive a stake through its black heart and return to my demanding plan without remorse, indeed with an even greater sense of satisfaction and motivation. Fighting cancer demands the strongest qualities formed over a lifetime.
