For the better us

Not sure, whether I agree. In any case the issue isn't being perceived from the right angle, because it has nothing to do with winning or losing. The question is whether you want to know where you stand in life, what life means to you in comparison to what life has to offer to you.

So, in purified form, the sentiment should be stated as follows:

Better to know the joy of your heart,

even if you never taste it,

than to angrily look the other way.

A man doesn't have to hurry to get to that point. But ultimately a man must understand that

anger => bloody-mindedness and looking the other way => anger,

for that alone allows a man to develop any kindness towards himself and others, although that may remain his secret.

Postscript from the following day. The above process of (re)gaining kindness is an example of the transition from Trotzigkeit, through Hilflosigkeit, Ehrfurcht and Unterwerfung to Zärtlichkeit as described in Tafel der heranleitenden Stimmungen, where the object of the Ehrfurcht and the Unterwerfung is man's better nature, i.e. to accept one's dependence and in particular the dependence of one's own happiness on people's (including oneself's) seriousness about being the best person one can be.

It is a process stressed in Christianity, and for good reason, but at the same time I think that a man must first try to find ways that change the situation, before surrendering to people's freedom to be either assholes or saints or anything in between. And of course in my case this surrender occurs no sooner than society's own precarious dependence on the same thing, that is to say, no sooner do I look at what happiness would mean to me, than when its absence will do society in, for I really hate to be begging those, who fill the streets, for anything and least of all for their seriousness about being the best person they can be.

And while my happiness does depend on all of them, that is only indirectly so, for there are only three grown people, including myself, in whose steadfastness my heart rejoices. From any position of objectiveness this is superior reason for mocking me. I honestly don't care. If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I calmly dismiss any suggestion that I failed to heed the call in my 44 years of life.