“All that you need now, is in your soul,” Ronnie Van Zant and Gary Rossington of Lynyrd Skynyrd fame write. This resonates with the folk who rely on others for their own happiness, what the song points out, the song is Simple Man by the way, is that the only thing that a person needs in order to be whole and one with themselves is themself.
An interpretation of this song that I like to apply to my own life is the self-determined persistence that I can relate to. “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” Camus writes in one of his poems, signifying the point I am trying to make, that being that the indomitable human spirit exists, and it is more common than we realize.
The will to make your spirit indomitable is something that has to be persistent, something has to push back to your outside circumstances, or else you will be lost to the powers at play. I am not saying that outside factors do not play a part in your physical circumstances, as that would be contradictory to the phrase physical circumstances, but what I am saying is that the struggle of and to exist within the world is something that can be fought against always.
Again, it would be naive of me to say that things will just get automatically better because you have a positive mindset, but what I would contend is that satisfaction comes from the struggle to exist, from reaching the peak of the mountain, whether it be a literal mountain or a mountain of doubt, insecurities and anxieties make the whole trek worth it tenfold. The struggle to keep that eternal summer amidst the winter, to know that your spirit is pushing against all the factors in the world, sometimes yourself included, that opposes you is something that defines our existence. As an aside, I was not confident in my opinion of the indomitable human spirit until I watched the movie “Rocky” — amazing movie, 8/10.
