Conquered Power

To survive a battle, to kill or drive away the enemy—that’s victory, of course, but not the hardest one. Far more difficult is to defeat yourself: to see the line between self-respect and arrogance, between pride and haughtiness, between principle and stubbornness. And once you’ve seen and understood it, to be able not to cross it. Sometimes you need to look at the surrounding world with different eyes and abandon viewpoints that have been ingrained for decades. And it doesn’t matter when these views and habits were formed—either in the XX century or the XII—because in any era the words are true: “Truly strong is he who has defeated himself.” Victory over oneself is victory in which there are no defeated people, because the strength that commanded you against your own will becomes a conquered strength.