Lights Along the Road · Hiroshi Kanda
Chapter 18: The Credit Belongs to Those Who Try
The Words: Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
On 23 April 1910, Theodore Roosevelt gave a long speech called Citizenship in a Republic. Most of it is now forgotten, but one passage has travelled around the world. Roosevelt said that it is not the critic who counts, nor the person who points out where the strong one stumbled. "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena," he said: the one whose face is covered with dust and sweat, who strives, makes mistakes, and falls short again and again. Even if that person fails, Roosevelt said, at least they fail while daring greatly.
The arena he had in mind is the old picture of a place where contests were held before a crowd. In his picture, the critic sits safely in the seats, while the one who acts is down on the sand, trying. Roosevelt wrote "the man", as people did in his time, but the lesson belongs to everyone who has ever tried something hard in front of others.
The Life Behind the Words
Roosevelt was born in 1858 and was a weak and sickly child, often troubled by asthma. As a boy he was encouraged to build up his body, and he spent years exercising, hiking and riding until he grew strong. This early struggle shaped him. All his life he believed that effort mattered more than comfort, and that a person grows by doing hard things, not by watching them.
He went on to a long and busy public life, but this chapter takes from him only a personal lesson. Beyond his public work, he was a great reader, a writer of many books, and a lover of nature who studied birds and wild animals from boyhood. He knew failure and loss as well as success. When he spoke these words in 1910, he was a man of fifty-one who had spent his life, in good years and bad, in the kind of arena he described.
What the Words Ask of Us
It is easy to be a critic. Standing at a distance, we can see every mistake in someone else's work, plan or performance. Roosevelt's words ask us to honour the person who tries, and that includes ourselves. Trying means risking failure in public. It means that our mistakes will be seen. But it is also the only way anything new is ever made. The critic may be right about the details, yet the one who tries is the one who is really living.
Think of Hana, sixty-four, who decides to sing alone for the first time at a small community concert. Her voice shakes on the high note. Afterwards, someone in the audience remarks that the second verse was a little out of tune. Hana feels the sting for a moment. Then she remembers that she was the one standing up there, heart beating, giving something of herself. The remark will be forgotten by morning. Her courage belongs to her, and next year she will sing again.
Similar Words From Around the World
Near the end of Faust, the great play in verse that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe completed in German at the end of his life (it was published in 1832), angels sing that whoever keeps striving, we can save. Faust has made many errors in his long life, some of them serious, and yet the poem honours the fact that he never stopped reaching and working. Like Roosevelt, Goethe places worth in the effort, not in a perfect record. The echo adds something important: striving is not one brave act but a whole life of getting up and trying again.
The Dhammapada, a collection of the Buddha's sayings in Pali, an old language of South Asia, says in verse 103 that one who conquers himself is a greater victor than one who conquers a thousand times a thousand people in battle. This echo turns our eyes inward. The hardest arena is often not in front of a crowd but inside us, where fear, laziness and pride try to keep us in the seats. To step down onto the sand at all, we must first win a small victory over ourselves.
Living It Today
These words help in many lives. A young person afraid to share a drawing or a song can remember that the brave one is the one who shares. A worker whose idea did not succeed can be proud of having offered it. A grandparent learning to use a new tool can laugh at mistakes instead of giving up. And all of us can be slower to criticise others, because we know how hard it is to stand in the arena.
This week, do one thing in which you might fail where someone can see you: ask a question in a meeting, try a new recipe for guests, sign up for a class, or show someone your work. Notice your fear, and do it anyway. Then, the next time you feel like criticising someone else's effort, say something kind about their courage instead. The arena is open to all of us, and every brave try deserves its credit.
Chapter 19: The Journey Itself Is the Gift
The Words: C. P. Cavafy, 1911
In 1911 C. P. Cavafy published a poem about the long voyage home of Odysseus, the hero of the old epic who spent ten years trying to return to his island after a war. Cavafy turns the story into advice for every one of us. In my own words, the poem says: when you set out on your journey, hope that the road is long, full of adventure and full of learning. Do not hurry. Stop at many harbours, see many things, learn from people who know more than you. Keep home always in your mind, but arrive there only when you are old and rich with all you have gained on the way.
The poem ends with a quiet surprise. Even if home turns out to be poor and plain, the traveller has not been cheated. Home gave the traveller the beautiful journey; without it, the traveller would never have set out. By then, Cavafy says, you will have become wise and full of experience, and you will understand what such homecomings really mean. The goal matters because it starts us walking. The gift is the walk itself.
The Life Behind the Words
Cavafy was born in 1863 and wrote in Greek. He spent most of his life in a busy port city on the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, where many languages and peoples lived side by side. For about thirty years he worked as a clerk in a government office, going there each day, and in the evenings he wrote. His life looked ordinary from the outside. Yet in his poems he journeyed through the whole of the ancient world, with its kings, its streets, its long histories and its quiet wisdom.
He was also a very careful poet. He worked on each poem for a long time, often for years, and printed only a small number of them, sharing them with friends on single sheets and in small private booklets. He died in 1933, and a full book of his poems was published two years later. Today he is one of the most read poets of his language. His own life, then, was a little like his poem: slow and patient, with the true reward found along the way rather than in fame at the end.
What the Words Ask of Us
We usually live with our eyes fixed on a goal: the diploma, the job, the house, the retirement. Cavafy does not tell us to drop our goals. He tells us not to rush through the road that leads to them, because the road is where most of life happens. The years of study, the long work on a project, the slow raising of a child are not waiting rooms. They are the journey, and they are full of harbours we could stop at, if we only noticed them.
Think of Kofi, thirty-five, who is training for a long-distance race. For months he sees each early morning run only as a step towards the race day. Then one morning he notices the sky turning pink above the trees, the other runners who nod to him, and the way his breathing has slowly become easier. He begins to enjoy the mornings for themselves. When the race finally comes, it is a fine day. But Kofi knows that the real gift was the months of mornings that brought him there.
Similar Words From Around the World
In 1689 the poet Matsuo Bashō set out on a long walking journey and later wrote about it in The Narrow Road to the Deep North, in Japanese. He begins by saying that the months and days are travellers of a hundred ages, and that the years which come and go are travellers too. For Bashō, life itself is a journey, and every one of us is already on the road. Cavafy asks us to hope for a long voyage; Bashō reminds us that we are on one already, whether we planned it or not.
The Daodejing, the old book of wisdom in Chinese, says in its sixty-fourth chapter that a journey of a thousand li begins beneath one's feet. A li is an old measure of distance. The words are often remembered as advice about beginning, and so they are. But they also say something close to Cavafy: the journey is made of single steps, here, under our own feet. Every long road is only the present step, repeated with patience. If we love the steps, we will love the road.
Living It Today
Cavafy's poem speaks to anyone in the middle of something long. A young person at the start of a career can be less anxious about arriving quickly. Someone caring for a parent can see value in the days, not only in the outcome. An older reader looking back can recognise how much was gained on roads that did not lead where they once expected. Every road teaches something, even the ones that end in a plain and simple place.
This week, choose one long task in your life, perhaps a course, a work project, a garden or a habit you are building. Once each day, stop for a minute and notice one good thing about the road itself: something you learned, someone you met, something beautiful you saw. Write it down if you like. By the end of the week you will have a small list of harbours you might otherwise have sailed past. May your road be long, and full of them.