How confident are you that you will rise when you fall?

---

---

The life of a male lion

I watch a lot of lion documentaries, and one of the most vulnerable periods in their lives is when they are young and/or when they're old. When they are young, they are at the mercy of older lions who enter their pride, possibly kill their father in a coup, and then pursue them.

This is because adult male lions in their prime despise competition; they make it a point to kill young lions after defeating their fathers in battles, in order to keep female lions in heat and ready to mate at all times. This is primarily what adult male lions fight for: the right to always have two to three females to mate with, and they are willing to kill cubs to achieve this.

When a male lion reaches old age, he is no longer capable of defending his territory. This means they are now vulnerable to stronger and younger lions, who will chase them out of their pride.

In fact, the buffaloes they have hunted over the years can recognize them and begin chasing them, which is what typically kills an old and weak lion.

They are alone, living their lives without the protection of pride, losing their ability to protect family because they are not strong enough, and becoming lone rangers, hiding in the shadows, with the majority of them eventually dying of hunger.

The life of a human

I have seen people who have experienced and tasted the good life but then return to being broke, poor, and unsure of themselves. They lose friends, family, love, and the assurance and hope bestowed upon them by those who once valued them.

A male lion's life is identical to that of a human. Every living thing's DNA is programmed to value what is useful to them while discarding what is not. It is a cyclical phenomenon.

In the past, we may have been guilty of abandoning people who are no longer valuable or are not primarily useful to us; unfortunately, this may happen to us as well.

Perhaps as a result of hustling, we contract a serious illness, are fired from our place of employment, or are involved in a fire and are sidelined for years.

There is no cushion against vulnerability; we either survive or die.

Everyone will be vulnerable at some point in their lives; the only difference is the degree or extent, and some people are able to navigate their vulnerabilities while emerging victorious and having an experience to tell their stories about.

"Failure" reality

One of the most stressful times in a person's life is adjusting to a new "failure reality." Some people can not imagine being previously beautiful and then being hit with third-degree burns, leaving them looking like a shadow of their former selves.

It is difficult to adjust to the reality of once being regarded as a beautiful woman and now having no man find you attractive. It becomes even more painful when the individual realizes they were not humble.

Another type of pain is not being able to command the respect you once did; most of the time, it is a mental battle, and some people lose their minds because they can not accept that their lives have changed.

Some people would rather remain poor indefinitely than become wealthy only to return to poverty.

We are not the adjusting machine we term ourselves to be

When you start from scratch, you get to live with your vulnerabilities and shape your reality around them; however, adjusting to a new reality in which you are poor, needy, insecure, and easy to trample on makes life a living hell.

This is why wealthy people work harder than others. Most wealthy people are greedier because they do not want to experience what it is like to return to ground zero. When you are down, you are more likely to rise, but when you fall, your chances of rising again are slimmer. It is a psychological thing. When you fall, you lose your connections, capabilities, and access to accelerate your recovery.

Why?

Because this is when you are most vulnerable and unable to attract what you previously commanded.

Success Story

I enjoy success stories, but there are more people who never get to share theirs because they never made it, so success stories are less important than failure stories. That is because life provides more opportunities to fail than to succeed.

However, we eventually learn painful lessons from being sick, broke, homeless, cold, hungry, and useless. Unfortunately, some of the people who learn these lessons will never survive.

When you're old and frail, there's no going back to being young again. You only regret not putting your youth to better use; unfortunately, you can not turn back time. Unfortunately, the lessons you have learned are useless.

As a result, you can only consider yourself fortunate if you rise after falling. Sometimes it is not entirely up to you, which is the type of uncertainty that no one wants.