Day 3 of the Feast of the Victory of Horus ~ Meditations on Defeat

 Day 3 of the Feast of the Victory of Horus: Defeat

I said yesterday that defeat can be reversed just as victory can. This is true, at least from a certain perspective. Using my chess metaphor, as long as you still have pieces on the board there’s always a chance you can pull a victory. But there comes a point where you will face a checkmate. No one stays undefeated forever, unless they quit while they’re ahead. In sports like boxing or wrestling, no one gets to hold onto their world championship title belt forever. Someone who is a 10-time world champion has faced nine defeats. 

Lord Sutekh can teach us much about how to accept a crippling defeat, and still stand tall and keep fighting. He was robbed of His crown, demonized, His statues and temples destroyed, even had entire month-long festivals dedicated to His dismemberment; and then, like the rest of the Gods, He faded into obscurity for the better part of 2,000 years. But He is still here. He still fights that Chaos Serpent every night, and wins. He doesn’t need anybody’s validation. He doesn’t care if people call Him Satan or anything. Saving the world from a chaotic cosmic entity every night is a thankless job, but He’s not out to impress anybody. He doesn’t need to be universally loved. As long as His consorts and followers love Him, that’s enough. Because He knows whose opinions matter to Him.

There was a time when I tried to conform, tried to play by society’s rules, only to find out that it’s a rigged game. Built to keep regular people in their place and the ruling class on top. Imagine, being forced to play a game of Monopoly right after graduating High School, but no one explained the rules to you beforehand, and maybe you just aren’t that good with numbers, or you’re just not that competitive. Then society tries to convince you that you’re a total failure for not being good at this one game, for not being able to rack up enough imaginary numbers called “money”. But why beat yourself up over not being good at a game you never even asked to play? It’s like shaming a fish for not being able to climb a tree as well as a monkey. Poverty is never a personal failure, it’s a systemic failure, and laziness is a myth. For there to be winners in this game, there has to be losers. 

In those dark moments, when the world tells you you’re nothing, you’re worthless, when your dreams and aspirations evaporate before you and you hit rock bottom, that’s when you find out who you really are. You either crack and give up, or you collect all those shattered pieces of your ego and forge something new. Something stronger. You can only get to that point by experiencing defeat. As Nebet-Het teaches us, it’s okay to cry, to mourn, to grieve. There is no shame in it. But, if you don’t pick up the broken pieces of yourself and reach some kind of acceptance, you’ll be forever defined by your defeat.

However, that said, don’t keep trying to prove yourself to others either. That’s a dead-end path; you’re never going to please everybody, and no matter how great your achievements, people only really care about what you’ve done lately, or how you’re going to top your previous achievements. You need to redefine what success means to you, not what society considers success. Fame, money, sports cards, fancy houses, none of that matters by the time you’re on your death bed, or getting your heart weighed on the Scales of Truth in Duat. As Mark Twain once said, “Fame is a vapor; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.” Don’t throw away finite hours of your life slaving away at a dead-end job to afford expensive status symbols that don’t really make you happy. Give yourself attainable dreams and aspirations. Live within your means. Make sure those victories in your future are ones you actually want to have, not something you’ve been told you’re supposed to want. This is something I had to learn, and I had to taste defeat to learn it. Above all, defeat is a lesson. Pick yourself up after a defeat, but do it for yourself. You’re stronger than you think. 

𓋹֍֎𓋹

~ Siamanto the Foreigner

 𓋷𓅁𓈖𓏏𓍯𓀭𓈖𓐎𓏺𓈉𓏏𓅂𓌙𓀀

Սիամանթօ Օտարը