The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.’
All too true, and all too often forgotten.
It's generally a good idea in life not to go look for trouble, to cherish your friends and family, to focus on the here-and-now, to dine well and to play heartily. But when trouble comes to look for you, be prepared to punch back as hard as you can.
Getting that balance right, however, is hard. Sometimes we become so used to the very act of swinging our fist that we keep on punching long after we've won, turning into a kind of trouble ourselves without realizing it. Or else we are so focused on avoiding trouble that we turn into cowards who thinking cowering is the same as standing.
Getting that balance right, I repeat, is much harder than we think. All oppressive empires begin (certainly in their own stories, but often in truth) as freedom-loving individuals pushed to rebel.
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