Time & Perspective Quote by Al Lewis

A seasoned activist knows the horizon always recedes; the point is to keep walking. Al Lewis, remembered by many as Grandpa on The Munsters and by New Yorkers as a blunt, funny, tireless agitator, speaks from that marrow-deep understanding. Causes worth fighting for rarely stay won. The struggle for dignity, fair work, and equal treatment does not reach a tidy finale; it mutates and returns, requiring renewed attention and courage.

Saying the victory is in the struggle reroutes the measures of success away from trophies, polls, and headlines toward the daily practice of showing up. It is a commitment to process over payoff: the conversations on a picket line, the small policy change that makes someone’s life easier, the solidarity built in a neighborhood. Accepting this early spares an activist the corrosive cycle of disillusionment that follows every imperfect outcome. It guards against cynicism by offering a sturdier source of meaning: agency, integrity, and community forged in the work itself.

There is no resignation here. Acceptance is not the same as giving up; it is clarity about the terrain. When victories are treated as permanent, backsliding feels like failure; when struggle is understood as ongoing, every inch gained is real and worth defending, and every setback is a call to return to work rather than a reason to quit. The stance echoes Camus’s image of finding dignity in pushing the boulder, but it remains fiercely practical: keep organizing, keep learning, keep laughing, keep going.

The line also generalizes beyond politics. Artists, athletes, caregivers, anyone who has committed to a craft or a cause learns that the deepest rewards arrive in the doing. Lewis’s long-ago acceptance reads like a compass setting. It points away from the mirage of final victory and toward the steady, stubborn joy of participation, where meaning is made day after day in the very act of striving.