Until perhaps this very moment, I had always been confused by the expression "fighting the good fight." It seemed either like an untenable paradox (how can a fight be good?) or an empty cliche for doing your best or trying hard. As an English major, I am pretty comfortable with paradoxes, but as a human being, I find that living them is a lot harder than writing about them. How is it possible to love yourself and be your own worst critic? How is it possible to have pride in who you are and know that, at some level, you will always be a failure? How can you strive to be independent without pushing away those you care about most? How can you care about what people think of you and not obsess about it? These are my questions. You may have different ones, but we all have them, and we are all searching for the answers. Here's another paradox for you: when we search for the answers, we both are and are not fighting the good fight.
By seeking answers, we do fight the good fight in that we attempt to grapple with the fundamental issues of our existence. To borrow from Max Lucado, we are "facing our giants," an image which clearly implies conflict. Here's where it gets tricky, though: when we face our giants, most of us discover that they are too huge to collapse; we are not David, felling Goliath with a slingshot. I say "most of us" because there may be some Davids out there. I don't know any, but I would be remiss to assume that they don't exist. Anyway, when we discover that our giants are too big to defeat, we can either turn our backs on them or keep loading our slingshots even though we know we will never win. This is where the paradox occurs: after that first defeat, we think we have fought the good fight, that it is behind us. Yes, we have fought the good fight, but it is not finished. It is never finished. We do not fight the good fight unless we never stop fighting.
The Good Fight (its universality lends itself to capitalization, methinks) can be brutal and is never comfortable or easy. I have waved my white flag countless times. Ironically, I have surrendered not only by ceasing to care about the questions but also by forcing myself to answer them. When I felt a lack of control, I imposed strict control upon myself; in so doing, I made myself the giant and defeated myself. We must accept that we are not in control and that we will never know the answers, but we must never stop asking the questions and believing that the answers exist. It is futility in its purest form, and we must immerse ourselves in it. But we musn't do it alone. If we do, we will sink.
The best people in my life are the ones who want what is best for me. Period. They do not want to placate or please me. They are honest and straightforward and sometimes harsh. Sometimes I want to run from these people or make them feel sorry for me (tough to admit) to avoid conflict. Sometimes I mistake them for my giants and try to fight back. But they are not my giants; they are my equals. They are facing their own giants and have decided, for some beautiful and unknowable reason, to help me face mine. If that doesn't make the good fight worth fighting, nothing does. I want to be like these people and also be myself. For the first time, that doesn't seem like a paradox.
