Everything becomes in the struggle

To struggle is to fight against a force that hinders one's momentum. This force can be physical, spiritual/intellectual, or emotional/psychic. In this sense, the act of struggling manifests in various forms. Let's take a closer look...

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I- If we take the term "struggle" in its literal sense, it refers to thephysical struggle.

In Ancient Greece, wrestlers were celebrated as heroes capable of lifting live bulls and bending trees with their bare hands. Wrestling was one of the most popular combat sports in the Olympic Games, where two opponents faced off unarmed, each seeking to pin the other to the ground. However, for these athletes, it was not about playing the game of glory for the sake of physical strength. Their preparation was not merely about performing before an audience to win a title. It was a preparation for life, with training leading athletes to a level of completeness that embodied the four cardinal virtues:

• courage
• wisdom
• justice
• temperance

The Greeks considered physical training(gymnastics, wrestling, running) and the development of the mind(philosophy, music, literature), as the primary means to achieve harmonyandbalance.The gymnasium and the palaestra were places of training, social interaction, and learning, where philosophers mingled with athletes and discussed virtue. Consequently, the education of the mind was not separated from the education of the body, as physical exercise served as a means to strengthen self-control, acquire mental clarity, and thus strive toward wisdom.

Conversely, a cult of the body based solely on physical appearance was rejected, because beauty was not viewed on a physical level apart from spirituality (the goodness of the soul). This does not mean that the beauty of the body was rejected as an attractive aspect that inspires admiration or even attraction—if we are speaking of the phenomenon of love or the mystery of love—but rather that it was considered the initial part of beauty, finding its ultimate purpose in the beauty of the soul(strength of spirit, mental discipline).

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II-If we take the word "struggle" in a sense that moves away from the concrete physical impact of a fight, it refers as much to theemotional struggleas it does to themental struggle.

a) Theemotional struggle is the effort made by an individual to reconcile various emotional dynamics in order to maintain a certain balance, which allows them to pursue their daily activities consistently without being overly disrupted by their moods.

b) Themental strugglerefers to the mind. It represents two things:

- what islogical (what makes sense)and

- what ismoral (what tends toward the good).

‍It embodies the battle of ideas set in motion by Reason following any given perception. Its goal? To build information management and monitoring systems to best handle what isrationaland what isreasonable. The synthesis created upon interpreting each external or internal event ensures the successful execution of the chosen plan of action. Our mind or intellect acts as the reader of our emotional charter, a sort of guide that must provide a logical (true), fair, and effective response to the problem detected by the individual (e.g., a bout of the blues). Mental struggle thus becomes that inner dialogue with oneself to decide upon the principles and values by which one chooses to live. Accurately naming an emotion and its underlying cause is crucial for the overall state of the person involved, both for their daily life and for their long-term personal development (overall health).

Mental and emotional struggles arise and exist almost simultaneously within our consciousness. They represent the hidden side of how we experience adversity or pleasure, reflecting our emotional and spiritual reality. One cannot exist without the other; this is why they are studied as a whole.

It is no coincidence that early philosophers attributed the word"turmoil"to everything that governs the emotional world—that is, any psychophysiological reaction of varying intensity that occurs in response to an external or internal event (a memory, a thought). Emotions are experienced as flows, as sensory movements that collide and intertwine much like the infinitesimal particles of matter. Their appearance always has a purpose and a reason for being that cannot simply be brushed aside (hence the struggle), even if it sometimes puts us in a difficult position, especially when dealing with "sad passions." These are the ones we want to banish, deny, or control at all costs, because they drain our energy while distancing us from others and the rest of the world. Why? Because when we feel bad, we often tend to isolate ourselves. The fact is, the more we struggle to suppress or silence these moods, the more they resurface randomly and pressingly in unexpected ways.

Consequently, denying an emotion is not the solution to feeling better and magically transitioning from sadness to joy. For example, suffering from a romantic disappointment will not disappear as an internal reality if you fill your time with activities just to avoid thinking about it or facing that malaise and the sense of emptiness that follows. The same applies to any unpleasant or difficult situation to manage (job loss, family or financial problems, etc.), which generates what specialists call"negative emotions."The fact is, you have to sit with the emotion to understand it and transform or modify it if necessary. This is how I manage to transform a feeling of failure into the positivity of the lesson or learning that comes from it, or how I shift from fear to a sense of security.

However, if we consider that there are two categories of emotions,positive emotionson one side (joy,gratitude,serenity...)andnegative emotionson the other (anger,fearorsadness), we split the emotional world into two distinct parts as if they were concrete objects (like marbles or apples). Furthermore, this implies that there are good and bad emotions, since anything negative would logically be something to banish. But that is not how things work. We do not have two bags where we can choose one, keep the one that promises us happiness, and throw away the other. We cannot classify or organize what is invisible (unlike marbles and apples), because the invisible resists any attempt to be grasped.

Here is what we can do:

Acknowledge and process the information the body receives (sensation, affect, emotion, feeling, or pain) without trying to erase it just because it is unpleasant.

‍What we notice at that point is that there are stages in managing feelings that lead to a breakthrough (a before and after), if we wish to break the vicious cycle of repeating memories (the past) and use what is painful to grow into our future. The stages are as follows:

• acceptance
• discernment
• change

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III- At the end of this account, it is clear that aphysical struggle(e.g.,fighting an illness) is just asemotional(e.g.,I start to feel anxious when I see that my headache isn't going away), asmental(e.g.,I keep thinking about what could improve my condition... rest, doctor's appointments, medication, walking, etc.), so that the three types of struggle are united in their manifestation. We cannot separate our ways of being and acting on a single level of consciousness. We are all three at once, that is to say abodywith aheartintegrated that generates emotions and amindthat analyzes everything in order to understand and name the state/object in question.

Consequently, our consciousness exhibits three different levels that act simultaneously and compose the unity of thestruggle of the self for life:

1- sensory(perception ---) physical and emotional struggle / means: 5 senses -feeling

2- rational (conceptualization) ---) mental struggle or ideological conflict / means:reason

3-moral(affirmation of good and evil) ---) moral struggle / means: affirmation of theauthentic self

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Everything becomes a struggle, whether we like it or not. We are all fighters. We are so by default, by virtue of our humanity. We struggle to stay alive even before we struggle to be integrated into society. A newborn baby struggles to catch its breath once it leaves its mother's womb. Its cry embodies the starting point ofits struggle for lifein the new world into which it is"thrown"(it did not choose to be born).

Embracing who we are through our physical, spiritual, and emotional development represents the existential battle that demands we be strong beings. But, theessence of the struggletransforms everything. That is why we must choose a) what kind of fighters we are and b) what we become from the moment our life model fails us.

To return to the initial example (wrestling as a combat sport), a good fighter acts like a fox who, through cunning(rational acuity and emotional control),distinguishes the parts of the fight that most deserve their attention and the investment of their strength. If they respond with the same intensity to every blow received, they will tire themselves out and thus lose. Therefore, thedynamics of their choicesis the guarantee of theirpower to act.It is then that the fighter plays to the strengths of their game. Any miscalculation of the situation puts them in great difficulty from the first error, which will sooner or later break their probability calculations, whether in relation to the conditions of their body and mind at thet^xof the fight, or in connection with the study of their opponent's strengths and weaknesses.

The wrestling model adopted must be studied or taken into account in any situation that tests our endurance and our vital momentum in everyday life. In this sense, we should not see the struggle as a necessary suffering or as an evil to be endured, but rather as an exercise in discipline, an education of the body and mind according to this model that goes hand in hand with the very essence of nature. The challenge for humanity will always be the same, regardless of the situation experienced:

‍For how long can one remain alive in the best conditions while pushing back their end (death) as far as possible?

It is from there that every struggle begins. The quality of our life rests on our ability to navigate our emotions without losing the functional thread of our goal:preserving health(physical, emotional, and mental).

The hidden, invisible struggles are those activated in the shadow of the self when no one is watching. They are perhaps the most significant in the becoming of each of us because they carry that dull, deep pain that promises the most spectacular transformations. In these moments of solitude, when our body struggles to remain standing regardless of the reason that overwhelms it (physical, emotional, spiritual), it does not compose with the strength of its muscles but with what flows within it: the power of the inner currents that traverse it, defile it, or liberate it. Solitude is the sacred space of the birth of the self, where one becomes aware of one's body and its resistances, of the quality of one's reflection and the depth of one's emotions—a point of contact with oneself, others, and the World.

We are the product of all our battles. Our daily struggles deal with our desire to live well. They teach us that being strong is not just about having physical power or being capable of some performance; it is above all about being able to feel secure enough to be yourself in emotion, thought, and action, regardless of what is happening around you. To struggle is to seize the freedom to be yourself without worrying about the game of appearances. It is this combative attitude that leads to inner peace and self-respect. In a world adorned with settings we did not choose, it is not easy to find one's place. But ease has never been an option for our combative nature, which is born through sensory cataclysms that defy all geometry.

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