I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
When I was younger - 15 or 16, to be exact - and was taking my philosophy classes at the Ateneo, I had a chance encounter at the library with Ayn Rand's books. It took me weeks - and lots of trips to the library to renew my library card - to finish Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. In between classes, projects, case studies, and academic readings, Ayn Rand's books gave me a 'break' - it was all conscious breaks, however.
It was all worth it.
For some reason, I was enamoured by the speech of John Galt of Atlas Shrugged - to the point that in my philosophy of morality, I had an argument with my professor about Ayn Rand, Immanuel Kant, and Schiller. (Of course, he won - he had a Ph D in Philosophy whilst I was just trying hard to be philosophical... Haha!)
For years, since I left the academia, I never got back to Ayn Rand until today.
And rereading Atlas Shrugged - particularly the speech of John Galt at this blog - it became apparent to me why it had so much an impact on me.
I have since mellowed down - the messiahnic and "infallible/impenetrable" complex that adolescents are wont to have have all waned. I have since tempered my idealism - consciously or unconsciously, I don't know.
What makes the re-reading of the speech special at this point in time is somehow far deeper than when I was younger. These days, I see this speech as a declaration of excellence - the drive, the admission, the unabashed commitment to excellence and being remarkable. No, not perfectionism - but being remarkable and being the best that I could be.
Here is the part of John Galt's speech addressed to those who have yet to accept who they are - and from my point of view, to those who are yet to accept their ability to be excellent and to those who are apologetic (seemingly) for being excellent and wanting to be excellent.
The last of my words will be addressed to those heroes who might still be hidden in the world, those who are held prisoner, not by their evasions, but by their virtues and their desperate courage.
My brothers in spirit, check on your virtues and on the nature of the enemies you’re serving. Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, your love—the endurance that carries their burdens—the generosity that responds to their cries of despair—the innocence that is unable to conceive of their evil and gives them the benefit of every doubt, refusing to condemn them without understanding and incapable of understanding such motives as theirs—the love, your love of life, which makes you believe that they are men and that they love it, too. But the world of today is the world they wanted; life is the object of their hatred.
... don’t exhaust the greatness of your soul on achieving the triumph of the evil of theirs. Do you hear me … my love?
"In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.
...
You will win when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have taken at the start of my battle—and for those who wish to know the day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world:
I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
