Two Wolves

I'm struggling with two forces that are fighting within me, two things that both clamor for my conscious (and unconscious) attention.

It's an old battle, one that has been going on for years beyond counting. It comes and goes (sometimes at will, sometimes no). I vacillate between valiantly putting it down and being completely consumed by it.

Today during Sunday School a story was related, versions of which I heard before. In this version, an Old Cherokee instructs his grandson about two wolves that live within each person: one wolf is those things that are good and right, the other wolf are those things that are evil and wrong. "How do I make sure the right wolf wins?" the young grandson asks his grandfather. The old man looks for a time at his grandson, perhaps considering his own past history, and then says "Feed the one you want to win, starve the one you want to lose."

Feed the one and starve the other. Simple in concept but difficult in execution: how do starve the evil wolf when all the food seems to be available to it, and feed the good wolf when there is nothing available? More simply put (I guess), why is it so easy to do evil and not good?

There seems to be something in myself that always seems able to find the worst and not the best in any given situation. Tell yourself to put something out of your mind, and it will immediately go there. Try to count your blessings, and they inevitably slip out of your mind like water. Every time your mind wanders mentally and you try to package the thought into a box and crush it, ten more follow on behind it. Look for hope for victory and find only more struggle. Feed it in hopes that it will leave and find is that it becomes even more ravenous.

If it's a case of fall down 99 times, rise 100, what happens when you fall down for the 101st time?