Count on your blessings - II

I shared something with my wife, and she asked me to read the following from 'Atlas Shrugged', and I would like to share with my readers who might not have read the book as yet.

“....I, who thought that I was fighting them, I had accepted the worst of our enemies’ creed---and that is what I’ve paid for ever since, as I am paying now and as I must.

"I had accepted the one tenet by which they destroy a man before he is started, the killer-tenet: the breach between his mind and body. I had accepted it, like most of their victims, not knowing it, not knowing even that the issue existed.

"I rebelled against their creed of human impotence and I took pride in my ability to think, to act, to work for the satisfaction of my desires. But I did not know that this was virtue, I never identified it as a moral value, as the highest of moral values, to be defended above one’s life, because it’s that which makes life possible. And I accepted punishment for it, punishment for virtue at the hands of an arrogant evil, made arrogant solely by my ignorance and my submission.

“I accepted their insults, their frauds, their extortions. I thought I could afford to ignore them---all those impotent mystics who prattle about their souls and are unable to build a roof over their heads.

"I thought that the world was mine, and those jabbering incompetents were no threat to my strength. I could not understand why I kept losing every battle. I did not know that the force unleased against me was my own. While I was busy conquering matter, I had surrendered that which all of their claptrap is designed to subvert and to destroy: man’s reason. No, they were not able to deal with matter, to produce abundance, to control this earth. They did not have to. They controlled me.

“I, who knew that wealth is only a means to an end, created means and let them prescribe my ends. I, who took pride in my ability to achieve the satisfaction of my desires, let them prescribe the code of values by which I judged my desires. I, who shaped matter to serve my purpose,was left with a pile of steel and gold, but with my every purpose defeated, my every desire betrayed, my every attempt at happiness frustrated….