Inspiration

From The Prize by Irving Wallace

"A great countryman of mine, in my field, Mr. William Faulkner, spoke to you about the immorality of man, because man has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion, sacrifice, endurance. I wish to address you tonight on another facet of man--the obligation of man to his time on earth."

In each one of us, he reflected to himself in these fleeting moments, there were, like unused muscles and organs, resources of the spirit-courage and energy and responsibility-never employed in our time in the world. The blessed one was he who, confronted with a crisis in his life (as was all humanity this day), was driven to call upon these resources, to use them to survive, even triumph, over life itself. One so challenged and so triumphant had won the only prize that counted-the prize of the Maker of the spirit, the rebirth of a withering soul and, as such, a Homeric victory over life's disasters. In a lesser way, he had been so challenged, and had discovered the resources he had not known that he possessed, and was therefore, now at last, an entire men. This, indeed, was his prize. He wondered if all the others, before him, everywhere, could understand this victory and its honor. He must make them understand it. They must know the supreme value of challenge, and the eternal necessity to meet it as an individual and grow to fullest life.

"...all man's honors to man are small beside the greatest prize to which he may and must aspire-the finding of his soul, his spirit, his divine strength and worth-the knowledge that he can and must live in freedom and dignity-the final realization that life is not a daily dying, not a pointless end, not an ashes-to-ashes and dust-to-dust, but a soaring and blinding gift snatched from eternity. The ultimate prize is to know that each new day's challenge is meaningful and offered for use, that it must be taken to the bosom, and it must be used-and to know that, to understand this, is the one prize worthy as man's goal and all mankind's summit."