Blog #5: The Strenuous Life
Out of all the readings we have done this semester, maybe even the whole year, I found this reading the most interesting. With this speech being full of inspirational quotes and phrases, I couldn't help but feel empowered. After reading this I can see why so many people like Theodore Roosevelt. However, there is no point in his speech where he mentions to dare these mighty deeds with well thought out plans. The foremost attitude I got from this reading was something like "go off half-cocked and hope for the best..." This strategy, while when successful is very impressive, is extremely ineffective and not the best way to live one's life. For example, if we relate this to the movie "Viva Zapata", we will see where Emiliano Zapata's downfall occurred. Right at the end, when Zapata had all he needed in his life, he decided to take an uncalculated risk, which was to collect ammo from a, supposedly, turned national soldier. This situation was clearly a trap, and even though they would have benefited from the ammo they would receive, it still wasn't worth Emiliano dieing over it, and that's exactly what happened. The point here is that, yes, it is much better to live a life full of triumphs, speckled with dots of failure, than it is to "live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat". This, however, does not mean one should forsake common sense and reason and act solely on impulse. And as we saw in Zapata's case, his failure resulted in his death. Now I'm not saying that Roosevelt was wrong here, I mean his goal was to motivate the American people, which this speech should have done that quite well. The strenuous life sounds hard, but full of great successes, so why wouldn't anyone want to live like that?! All I'm saying is if one is going to live a life on the edge, remember to have a safety net below in case you fall!
I really liked reading "The Strenuous Life," too, and your thoughts here are really interesting. When I read it, I didn't get the sense that Roosevelt was encouraging people to "half-cock" everything they do, but what you said makes sense. He really was motivating people to strive for a "strenuous life" in everything they do; however, this is not possible. If you struggle and try to tackle difficult tasks all the time, then you will never have time to sit back and make plans that will help increase your likelihood of success. So maybe Roosevelt should have advocated for a “strenuous life” for half of the time—the other half should be spent carefully making plans so that when you do decide to “go big,” you don’t make a huge mistake.
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