Everyone who wins is a fighter. When fighters are tested, they are essentially experiencing death. The nature of this death differs - sometimes its physical sometimes its visceral. To experience a new life, a seed must first be dead and burried for a while.
During this time, the seed must fight to survive and live again. The combatant must be ready at all times to overcome the fear of death in order to reach the pinnacle of success.
Even though the seed that survives was ready for such challenging transformation, the burial itself is usually involuntary. The fighter must be ready, ab initio, to face their greatest fears, die in the process and come through with a new life victory. However, this is no guarantee that the challenge will be voluntary. The battle may be uninvited, and the misfortune may be sudden.
As the ancients say, mgberede ka eji ama dike. It is the challenge that reveals the true warrior. A champion cannot be cannot be crowned until everyone has been tested. A victory cannot come until the resistance has been negotiated. This process of negotiation is what some deep thinkers call death. Death is a process, a transformative journey through which a being that once had life attains a new type of life. The beautiful thing about it is that before this death happens, the being can decide to a great extent what their new life will bw. This is based on their state of readiness before the death.
This is one of the greatest phenomenon in life.
From a struggle one can beget a blessing. From a failure one can beget a success. A hopeless and jobless youth can transform into a massive employer of labour. A highly temperamental person can become impossible to offend. A timid child can become a powerful leader and childhood starvation can beget long life.
This is nature’s miracle of transformation. Magnificent wonder to any observer who watches how a dead seed yields itself to burial and emerges a little while later in a completely different life.