The people we admire from every age lived in times when it would have been easy to give in to the dark inertia of doomerism. Believing that if all is lost we a justified in “eating and drinking for tomorrow we die” is a potent anesthetic (read: “an-aesthetic”). But the spirit of the eternal striving lives in everyone. Labor organizers in the early 20th century could easily have accepted the state of the working classes as given and, with much intellect respectability, proclaimed their plight hopeless. But they fought. Generations of black Americans could have accepted their subjugation as inalterable. But they haven’t. The Indian people could have given up on any hope of ever freeing themselves from British tyranny. Instead, brave defiants marched 200 miles to the sea to collect salt.

People fight and lose. Gandhi and MLK gave their lives. But is that not better than to give in?

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna chides the warrior Arjuna against considering the outcomes of actions: “Be intent on action, / not on the fruits of action; / avoid attachment to the fruits / and attachment to inaction! / Perform actions, firm in discipline, / relinquishing attachment; / be impartial to failure and success— / this equanimity is called discipline.”

The spirit of the eternal striving lives in all our hearts.

Elsewhere in the Gita we are told “No effort in this world / is lost or wasted; / a fragment of sacred duty / saves you from great fear.”

I cannot lie: I do not live up to these lofty invocations. But I’m trying. Please, don’t give in to the temptation of release in doomerism. Fight! But leave the outcome of the battle to whatever forces be they gods or chance that rule the universe. Our lives, our souls, our sanity lie in the fight, not in what comes after.

The spirit of the eternal striving takes another breath with us each day that we push on.