Wrestling Life
Last night (Sunday), my son went to a going-away party for a young man, a youth group friend, who left today for basic training in one of the branches of the military. While I was sitting in my car waiting for Raleigh to say his goodbyes, another of his friends was standing at my window, telling me that my son is a glutton for punishment. I didn't really know what he was talking about until we were on the ride home and Raleigh was telling me about how the boys at the party did some wrestling and how he lost something like ten falls in a row to the friend who was going away. A glutton for punishment?
I remembered that I used to wrestle like that with my cousin and a handful of other boys from around the rural mountain village where I grew up. Always the biggest guy in the gang, I often had to take on two or three at a time. I remember kicking their butts regularly, although they might remember it differently. While wrestling remained an interest in the years that followed, by the time our five county schools consolidated to form one school with enough money and participation to have a wrestling team, I was too deeply invested in basketball, and if I remember rightly, the two seasons ran at roughly the same time. So, I never wrestled in any organized--or skilled--way.
I've often wondered what happens to old wrestlers, not the "pro" kind (or maybe them too) but the guys like the ones I went to school with who were on the team and loved the sport. How do they continue doing what they love? Can they? In my late 40s, it's still relatively easy to get together with a group to play some half-court basketball or a few innings of softball, and even though I've grown a little brittle, I can still join my peers for a game of touch football if one happens to start up. In Willow Springs Park, I often see a group of our friends from south of the border--be they legal or not--gathered into two teams and skillfully kicking a ball around. But I think it would be awfully difficult for an old wrestler to continue "playing" his (or her) sport in such social way. How would I respond to somebody who walked up to me at the park or the gym and said, "Wanna wrestle?" I can think of several things I might say, none of which would approach "yes" (even if I was interested), and that's gotta be sad for the true lover of the sport. Maybe there are clubs out there somewhere.
Anyway, my wrestling has mostly undergone a metamorphosis into metaphor. Regardless of your interest or lack of interest in the sport--whether or not you include the circus of today's "professional" entertainment version--wrestling is an accurate metaphor for life. Life is a physicalmentalemotional struggle. We grapple with problems--relationships, finances, morality and so on. We have our skills, and we face skilled opponents. Wrestling is much more human, I think, in its metaphorical qualities than, say, the loneliness of long-distance running or the touch-me-and-it's-a-foul rules of a team sport like basketball. Wrestling is up close and personal; it's hands-on and messy, forcing us to become intimately involved with those things with which we grapple--even when God is the one we wrestle with. (One of the strangest and most affecting stories in the Old Testament, for me, is Genesis 32: 22-32, where Jacob wrestles with God--an angel in some versions. Take a look at that passage, and wrestle with what it says.)
As Raleigh and I rode home from the party, he said, with neither anger nor amazement in his voice, that ground-fighting exercises in tae kwon do didn't prepare him for what happened when he wrestled with his friend. (Keep in mind that Raleigh is a third-degree black belt in tae kwon do.) Ground-fighting, as I've seen Raleigh and his fellow students practice it, uses prescribed holds and escapes that all participants practice and use. With its variety and messiness, catch-as-catch-can wrestling took Raleigh by surprise. Life will do that to him over and over and over again, life by turns sneaky and brutal and overpowering. My hope is that he won't quit when he discovers wrestling life is messy and unpredictable, that he'll come back and come back again, even when life has beaten him to the ground ten times in a row. I hope he won't be a glutton for punishment, a stupid man never learning from his defeats, but a tenacious human being who will keep trying his strength against life until he overcomes.
244.8 NWT
I remembered that I used to wrestle like that with my cousin and a handful of other boys from around the rural mountain village where I grew up. Always the biggest guy in the gang, I often had to take on two or three at a time. I remember kicking their butts regularly, although they might remember it differently. While wrestling remained an interest in the years that followed, by the time our five county schools consolidated to form one school with enough money and participation to have a wrestling team, I was too deeply invested in basketball, and if I remember rightly, the two seasons ran at roughly the same time. So, I never wrestled in any organized--or skilled--way.
I've often wondered what happens to old wrestlers, not the "pro" kind (or maybe them too) but the guys like the ones I went to school with who were on the team and loved the sport. How do they continue doing what they love? Can they? In my late 40s, it's still relatively easy to get together with a group to play some half-court basketball or a few innings of softball, and even though I've grown a little brittle, I can still join my peers for a game of touch football if one happens to start up. In Willow Springs Park, I often see a group of our friends from south of the border--be they legal or not--gathered into two teams and skillfully kicking a ball around. But I think it would be awfully difficult for an old wrestler to continue "playing" his (or her) sport in such social way. How would I respond to somebody who walked up to me at the park or the gym and said, "Wanna wrestle?" I can think of several things I might say, none of which would approach "yes" (even if I was interested), and that's gotta be sad for the true lover of the sport. Maybe there are clubs out there somewhere.
Anyway, my wrestling has mostly undergone a metamorphosis into metaphor. Regardless of your interest or lack of interest in the sport--whether or not you include the circus of today's "professional" entertainment version--wrestling is an accurate metaphor for life. Life is a physicalmentalemotional struggle. We grapple with problems--relationships, finances, morality and so on. We have our skills, and we face skilled opponents. Wrestling is much more human, I think, in its metaphorical qualities than, say, the loneliness of long-distance running or the touch-me-and-it's-a-foul rules of a team sport like basketball. Wrestling is up close and personal; it's hands-on and messy, forcing us to become intimately involved with those things with which we grapple--even when God is the one we wrestle with. (One of the strangest and most affecting stories in the Old Testament, for me, is Genesis 32: 22-32, where Jacob wrestles with God--an angel in some versions. Take a look at that passage, and wrestle with what it says.)
As Raleigh and I rode home from the party, he said, with neither anger nor amazement in his voice, that ground-fighting exercises in tae kwon do didn't prepare him for what happened when he wrestled with his friend. (Keep in mind that Raleigh is a third-degree black belt in tae kwon do.) Ground-fighting, as I've seen Raleigh and his fellow students practice it, uses prescribed holds and escapes that all participants practice and use. With its variety and messiness, catch-as-catch-can wrestling took Raleigh by surprise. Life will do that to him over and over and over again, life by turns sneaky and brutal and overpowering. My hope is that he won't quit when he discovers wrestling life is messy and unpredictable, that he'll come back and come back again, even when life has beaten him to the ground ten times in a row. I hope he won't be a glutton for punishment, a stupid man never learning from his defeats, but a tenacious human being who will keep trying his strength against life until he overcomes.
244.8 NWT
posted by mac | 8:36 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home