JOURNEY - Everything you experience is your journey. Journey used to be long episodes of travel, across mountains, deserts, or oceans and entail strange foods and weird cultural customs, but now the pettiest things and the most horrendous things you experience all fall into your journey,
"She graduated college. What a journey!"
BATTLE - A battle until recently was a military operation in which two sides violently clashed.
Now Battle is used just about every time someone dies to explain that they were HEROIC. I.e. the word CANCER seems to always be ASSUMED to be a BATTLE. But what if you get diagnosed and you think "so it shall be" and you DO NOT BATTLE? (I will respect you if you choose not to fight a disease.) Another Battle is supposedly Alzheimer's. Battle used with Alzheimer's assumes that the person could FIGHT their own deterioration. Battle's as used to describe the horrific medical treatment some people endure is often used with the word LONG.
"She died last week after a long battle with cancer."
FIGHT - Along with Battle, the word Fight, which used to be about having a verbal or physical altercation with another person or persons, in particular on the school yard, is used to explain all sorts of activities in which there isn't an opponent exactly, the activity is just difficult or stressful or taxing. A few letters back and forth with the IRS qualifies.
"If she starts her own business, she's in for a fight."
