In 480 BC, Xerxes, the king of Persia, decided to conquer all of Greece. He marched on Sparta with as many as a million men. When he reached Sparta he sent a messenger to King Leonidas of Sparta to tell him to lay down his arms. Leonidas replied with only two words: Molon Labe. It meant “come and take it.” It was an act of defiance that led to the battle of Thermopylae. The Persian messenger tried to threaten the Spartans by telling them that the Persian army was so large that if they all fired the arrows at once the flight of their arrows will block the sun. “Then we will fight in the shadows,” one of the Spartans responded defiantly. In Spartan culture it was forbidden to ask the number of your enemies, only where they were.
To block the advance of Xerxes the Athenian general, Thermistocles had proposed that the allied Greeks block the advance of the Persian army at the pass of Thermopylae, or the hot gates. Leonidas together with 7000 men held the pass for seven days, three of which were battle days. On the final day of battle, Leonidas had less than one thousand five hundred men which included 300 Spartans. It was this battle that inspired the movie 300. In the morning of the final day of battle, Leonidas said to his men, “Spartans, ready your breakfast and eat hearty for tonight we dine in hell.”
The Spartans knew that death was eminent but each man looked forward to his final moment of glory when they would each lie dead in battle side by side with their King knowing that not even in death would their enemies conquer. Each man too knew that before going down he would take as many of his enemies as his breath would permit. This would go down as one of the most famous last stands in the history of warfare. Today Molon Labe is a motto for the United States Special Operations Command Central as well as that of the Greek First Army Corps.
The Spartans were trained from a young age never to surrender and to fight till the last man. In another famous last stand Brig. Gen. Anthony ‘Tony’ McAuliffe who commanded the 101 Airborne Division during the defense of Bastogne in Belgium in 1944 had only one word for Germans who had encircled his division and demanded his surrender. NUTS!!!
There is something about men that does not give up even if the odds are clearly against them. You can bet on having your fair share of adversity, that the odds will build up against you, that much we know. The question therefore is; will you cower and give up or will you stand your ground?
It is said that once in the heat of battle a general screamed to his men to hold the line, not to give an inch to the right or an inch to the left but to press forward. “If anything let every man die where he stands,” the general shouted. To this his men replied with a thunderous YES SIR. Men fail not because they don’t have what it takes but because they don’t have the heart and the grit to follow through. They start and stop as and when they please. They hide behind the difficulties to cover up their cowardice.
Men and women who press on in the face of adversity are rare. Rarer are those even who seek out adversity, who knowingly put themselves on its path even though they are fully aware of the dangers. A coward lets his fear control him, a warrior feels the fear but doesn’t let the fear dictate his actions.
You will be met with failure in many of your ventures for sure? What is the point of living if all we do is fear the worst that could happen? What if the worst we fear could happen did indeed occur? Isn’t it true that if it happens it always turns out that it wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be? Franklin D. Roosevelt said “there is nothing to fear but fear itself.”
Shakespeare wrote “A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” In the end death will come for each of us. We did not choose to be born or when we were born, most of us will not have a choice on how or when we die, but each one of us has a say on how we live. We can live like real men and women who have a say in the affairs of our lives or we can live like cowards. Rather die than quit.
We must embrace failure as much as we embrace success. If failure comes then so be it, let us pick ourselves and start where we left off as soon as the dust begins to settle. Let us do this every waking day. If failure comes then let it come, let it find you where you stand. Give neither an inch to your left nor an inch to your right, hold your ground, press on and if anything die with your boots on right where you stand. If you find yourself cowardly wanting to give up remember the words Leonidas echoed into eternity, “Molon Labe.” Dare your enemies, dare you circumstances, dare your doubts and keep on daring because in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “it is far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”