One more mountain...

In 2003 when I started this journey, I was reading Muhammad Ali's Soul of a Butterfly biography. Some lines I marked down then reminded me of my journey till that point and remind me of my journey since then. I started a race with so many faces. I ask myself, where have they gone? But they are all gone and there is only silence. Muhammad Ali said:

Outrun the people who quit when they feel discomfort, outrun the people who stop because of despair, outrun the people who are delayed because of prejudice, outrun the people who surrender to failure, and outrun the opponent who loses sight of the goal. Because if you want to win, the will can never retire, the race can never stop, and faith can never weaken.

You cannot slow down and you cannot give up. Even if exhausted you have to keep going forward. That is the great jihad, within your self and then outside it, as you express your existence in this world on the principles that you cultivate. I prepare to climb one more mountain, armed with the reassuring words of Arthur Clough:

Say not the struggle naught availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been, things remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e-en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making
Comes silent, flooding in, the main

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.