A man walks through the market, and a dealer in fighting roosters shouts out at him: “Buy my rooster! It fights to the death!”
“Why do I need a rooster that fights to death? I need one that fights to win,” the man replies.
Our whole life is full of fights, and whether we fight to the death or fight to win, it is more important to understand why we fight to begin with: what is the purpose of our lives and all the conflicts we endure?
We should imagine their winning and losing scenarios, what it would look like to win or lose the myriad conflicts. The fights get worse the more we evolve. In the process, we will destroy many of our enemies, as well as many of our own, and on a global scale, we will leave behind a lot of devastated countries, people killed and many struggling from other outcomes of these situations. Much of our victories in life thus often turn out to also be our defeats.
A true victory is when we realize the need to positively connect with each other, and to organize ourselves through positive human connection, without capturing or threatening anyone in the process. We then each become victorious over ourselves. That is, our egoistic and divisive inclinations that drive us to various battles against each other suffer defeat from the positive human connection that we build above it.
Every moment in our lives is a fight, and we should treat each moment as if it were our last. We should be aware of how long we have to live, whether we will live to the day’s end or not, and then consider what will happen if we die, what calculation we will leave this world with.
We usually do not ask ourselves such questions, but we should. Just as there is a beginning and end to every day, so there is a beginning and end to our lives.
We can and should think about what we will do in our lives because in the end, we do not know what will happen to us. Doing so requires training to look at life in a way where we relate to every moment as our last, and we can then make ourselves very useful in life. More succinctly, we should wish to leave a good impression of ourselves in the world, to enact as much good in the world as possible.
If we calibrate ourselves and act accordingly in our lives, then our contribution to building positive human connections will bring much benefit to the world, and these connections will remain after each and every one of us.
Based on KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman and Semion Vinokur on January 4, 2024. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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