CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Life is full of struggles. Man lives in a hard and harsh environment where he struggles, toils and labours from day to day in order to survive.
Every living thing on earth struggles for survival, both plants and animals. Plants struggle, searching for sunlight to survive. Even lower animals with low mentality struggle for survival. Human beings are not left out. A baby that is still in the womb struggles for food and searches for a way out during labour, to show that struggles of human beings start right from the womb.
There are many types of struggles namely, political struggle, economic struggle, family struggle and so on. But all these struggles lead to one thing which is survival.
The seventh edition of Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary defines struggle as “to try very hard to do something when it is difficult or when there are a lot of problems”, while explaining survival as “the state of continuing to live or exist, often despite difficulty or dangers or something that has continued to exist from an earlier time” (1491). In a similar vein, the Webster’s Dictionary enters struggle as “to use great effort to labor hard; to strive; to contend forcibly; as to struggle to save one‟s life” (203).
Whereas all the above definitions are apt, we choose to align with an online posted material which adds that “survival is meeting your basic needs for food, shelter, clothing, transport and health care”. Survival goes hand in hand with success.
Davil Salti, a Palestinian who lives in the Middle East says:
The one who does not know the struggle of life is either an immature soul or a soul who has risen above the life of this world. The object of human being in this world is to attain to perfection of humanity, and therefore, it is necessary that one should go through what we call the struggle of life. Because life means a continual battle. One‟s success, failure, happiness or unhappiness mostly depends upon one‟s knowledge of the battle. Whatever be one‟s occupation in life, whatever be one‟s knowledge, if one lacks the knowledge of the battle of life, one lack the most important knowledge of all (www.goggles.com).
As soon as man loses his courage to go through the struggle of life, the burden of the whole world falls on his head. But he who goes on struggling through life, he alone makes his way. One must study the nature of life; one must understand the psychology of this struggle. In order to understand this struggle, one must observe that there are three sides to it:
struggle with oneself, struggle with others and struggle with circumstances. One person may be capable of struggling with himself, but is not sufficient; another is able to struggle with other, but even that is not enough. A third person may answer the demand of circumstance but that is not enough either. What is needed is that the three should be studied and learnt, and one must be able to manage the struggle in all three directions. The one who struggles with himself first is the wisest, for he has struggle with himself, which is the most difficult struggle. The other struggles will become easy for him.
What is the nature of the struggle with oneself? It has three aspects; the first is to make one‟s thought, speech and action answer the demands of one‟s own ideal, while at the same time give expression to all the impulses and desires which belong to one nature being. The next aspect of the struggle with oneself is to fit in with others, with their various ideas and demands. For this, a man has to make himself as narrow or as wide as the place that ask him to fill, which is a delicate matter, difficult for all to comprehend and practise. And the third aspect of struggle with oneself is to give accommodation to others in one‟s own life, in one‟s own heart, large or small as the demand may be.
When we consider the struggle with others, there are also three things to think about of which the first is to control and govern people and activities which happen to be our duty, our responsibility. Another aspect is how to allow ourselves to be used by others in various situations in life; to know to what extent one should allow others to make use of our time, our energy, our work or our patience and where to draw the line. And the third aspect is to fit in with the standards and conceptions of different personalities who are at various stages of evolution.