Fight best in the shade of the cloud of arrows

I recently started reading the journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson and stumbled upon this gem, where Emerson claims that a person must do the work with that faculty he has now. But that faculty is the accumulation of past days. No rival can rival backwards. What you have learned and done is safe and fruitful. Work and learn in evil days, in insulted days, in days of debt and depression and calamity. Fight best in the shade of the cloud of arrows.

Seems like an appropriate banner to carry these days as we rush toward global climate catastrophe amid other horrors. In Emerson's time slavery was the evil to overcome. We still have our work cut out for us. Keep fighting the good fight and doing the work that is real.