Out of the night that covers me, 

 Black as the Pit from pole to pole, 

I thank whatever gods may be 

 For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance 

 I have not winced nor cried aloud. 

Under the bludgeonings of chance 

 My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears 

 Looms but the Horror of the shade, 

And yet the menace of the years 

 Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate, 

 How charged with punishments the scroll, 

I am the master of my fate:

 I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley wrote Invictus in 1875 when he was 26 years old. Henley contracted tuberculosis of the bone at the age of 12, and, after suffering years of painful abscesses, this disease eventually caused him to lose a leg to amputation. As such, he was frequently sick as a child and therefore not able to attend school as much as other children. His father died when he was 19. When he moved to London around the age of 18, his attempt to establish himself as a journalist was frequently interrupted by long hospital stays, as long as three years at a time. Clearly evidenced by the fierce words of his poem, he was not to let any of that stop him in his zest for life. In fact, Henley’s friend Robert Louis Stevenson based his Treasure Island character Long John Silver on Henley, using Henley’s disability coupled with his “maimed strength and masterfulness” as a foundation for “the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by the sound.”

The resilience of the individual human is astounding. In literature and in life, we’re often presented with examples of people who have endured seemingly insurmountable pain, physical disability, heartbreak, loss, or financial failure, experiencing things that one would think would absolutely crush the life out of the average person, and yet they survive and find joy in living. My favorite example of tenacity from my favorite historical character, who himself experienced more than his share of heartbreak, is that of Teddy Roosevelt, who was so gripped by the importance of the message he wanted to deliver to a waiting campaign crowd that he continued to deliver his speech for 84 minutes after being shot in the chest. 

Having not suffered either the loss of limbs or close family members like Henley and certainly not having been shot in the chest like Roosevelt, I’ve had my own bouts with failure and fear on more occasions than I’d like to recount. They have been constant roommates over the years. There have been times where I wondered how my heart still managed to beat inside my chest because the emotional pain I was enduring should surely have been enough to physically stop it. Yet it ticked on.  Sometimes the thing you are most afraid of happens, and I discovered many years ago that when it does -- when you face the reality of the very thing you feared above all things -- it leaves you with nothing else to fear. At least for the moment. In that instant, your stupid, indomitable spirit (my nickname for mine) is forced to drag its bloody self up off the floor to stand on its unsteady legs, wipe the sweat and tears off its face, and keep pressing forward…because it’s already been through the worst part and survived.  Failure is failure only if you leave it that way.  Failure turns to success if you don't give up.  I have a lot of flaws, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty (whatever that is), lack of determination is not one of them, even if it's accompanied by lots of tears.

I don’t necessarily believe that any of us ever reach that plane of happiness that the overly optimistic hope for. (Well, maybe someone’s arrived, certainly not me.) You know what I mean: the constant "things will get better," even though I've been guilty of saying the same. I’ve been an adult for a good bit now, and I’ve yet to see that nirvana reached. There will never be a time in anyone’s life where they will be without struggle of some type for long. We all have our battles. But I do believe the battles come in cycles. I don't know that things get better, but they do change, they do get different, and sometimes the different is more bearable. We learn our life lessons and, we move on to the next, hopefully wiser for the learning. And definitely stronger. 

It also helps to remember that everything is temporary, and things can change on a dime. Don’t like where your life is at the moment? Change it. Be the master of fate that Henley described. I’ve never been much of a videogame player, but I do remember times as a kid playing a game and being excited about the possibilities presented by the unknown in front of me. Like, what was behind that door? Or what will I find if I go down this hallway? Life is exactly like that.  Your next best friend could be behind any random door on a road that you travel every day. Your next job could be something you don't even know exists yet. While there is life there is hope. Unfortunately, unlike video games, we don’t get multiple lives to figure it out, but the one chance we do get is full of opportunities and adventure, and we should seize those.

And, like Henley, let the menace of the years find us unafraid.