The Long Defeat

The Long Defeat

John Paul Derryberry

In The Lord of the Rings, the character Galadriel says, "He has dwelt in the West since the days of dawn, and I have dwelt with him years uncounted . . . and together through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat." Numerous readers can take what they mean from this text; it is undoubtedly a famous enough piece of literal work for millions to draw life meaning from.

Yet, as I have crossed the two-decade mark of working in social work this year, I have been thinking about this passage a bit more. The youthful hopefulness that I could tackle the world has faded, and the idea that I could rewrite the system has worn down ever so slightly. Lastly, the notion that we genuinely ever save anyone has been erased. People save themselves. Yet, I'm more focused, driven, and passionate about my work and delivering better results for clients and the whole social work system.

It's wrapped in my understanding of the long defeat. Eventually, we are going to lose. No matter what we do in life, it ultimately slips away. So many of us run from this fact. It's a scary fact that the beautiful lives we build, the people we help along the way, and the connections we make eventually slip away and pass into the history books of Earth. Yet, knowing this fact can propel us to feel free enough to interact in our best ways. To do good not for glory but for knowing it's the right thing to do.

Knowing you will lose and engage anyway, feeling the slippage of time, not becoming jaded by the loss you have experienced, and remaining focused on fighting on the side of good reveals true character. It is an act of defiance that I feel so few of us allow to gift ourselves. Not getting beaten down by the passage of life is such a rebellious act. It has stripped away so much from life that it feels like fluff and left what feels real. I take care of the people in my orbit to the best of my ability, attempt to leave people and systems better than I found, and follow my moral compass to my true north. When the defeat comes, I brush myself off and charge back into the thick of things until my final defeat inevitability comes. Those left behind will remember that I had engaged in the long defeat of trying to lessen the evil in the world. And in my book, that is a victory.