[[ I have discovered recently that I have a verbal tic. I should say (or write) right at the onset that I am not sure that “tic” is the appropriate term. Perhaps I mean something else that, had I possessed a more expansive vocabulary, I might be able to illuminate for you. But, anyway, I have this nasty little “habit” (say) in my verbiage where I tend to preface the important content in what I say—or write—with unnecessary information that, in my own mind, is supposed to qualify or enhance the more important words to follow. I don’t want to sound too overconfident in this next admission. In fact, what I am about to reveal to you is more a self- imposed demerit in my own head while it might sound like bragging to you. I assure you, it is not bragging. I think my problem comes from my training as a lawyer. Perhaps it came before law school. If it came before, then it is likely, though not surely, that it stems from my intelligence. While the following is not always the case, I often find myself, when communicating with others, running the exchange out in my head before it transpires—calculating an immense number of factors and trying to shape each in the here-and-now—so that I might change the trajectory of the conversation with a few well-placed words before the critical juncture. While I am not exactly set on how I should resolve this issue (though I think it the wiser course of action to have SOME plan for the intermediate), I have decided that I do not like this habit (or “tic”, if you will…) for the time being. In this spirit, I have decided to try and change my speech patterns altogether. I must apologize at the beginning of this blog (in that case, my tic (or plain old, but perhaps more accurate, “habit”) rears its ugly head in my blog as I go forward). Anyway, on to the latest entry…]]
What was I writing about? Ah, yes, law school… In trying to answer the question why Patricia and I continue to wrestle and be involved with wrestling, it is probably more fitting to start by listing all of the reasons she and I should throw away our shirts that ripen with that first collection of perspiration and mouth guards chewed nearly through in favor of polished speech and Carpal Tunnel. And the proper way to start THAT list is to begin talking about law school.
Patricia was an economics major in college, and she taught me the catch-all phrase “opportunity cost” to help me describe how our current and former choices prevent us from living some other life with all its circumstances and differing possibilities from the path we are on now. She and I both graduated from good law schools (No—Patricia—your law school is not better than mine; the best law schools cannot be located in a ghetto), and we both have had that sensation that comes when you stand holding a J.D. diploma looking up into the legal rope ladder (to a “successful” legal career) above. The sensation is one of wonderment and absolute dread of the climb ahead. “What would it be like?” mixed with “I think I sense a trap—one I’ve seen before…” For both Patricia and I, the trapped sensation dominated the former. For myself, I have to admit this pessimistic view came with watching so many people start climbing the same ladder.
Two of these people, let us call them “Matt” and “Mike”, went to law school with me at UVA. While I knew them, they were the most fun of law school acquaintances. They hung around with me in the middle to lower end of the grade spectrum at UVA Law—more contented to play poker, betting the literal shirts off our back at 2 a.m on a Tuesday, than working through the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure one more time. None of us had much to say that was extremely optimistic or idealistic about the future gig we knew we were slowly signing up to do. At the end of law school, Matt and Mike went off immediately to Washington and New York to make the formidable six figures yearly and are well on their way to seven. Unless they start talking a lot more optimistically about their profession to me, I am unlikely to join them at their jobs. (**Important to note here that the firms these guys have worked for would probably not hire me anyway due to my persistent donning of lamb chops and inability to prevent my cursing or crude comments).
Patricia, I think, has had similar experiences with her classmates.
But, why should we stay wed to sports and the realm of the body? Patricia and I, to be fair, have always had an easier time handling a brain teaser or a problem set in an academic situation than we have had dominating even the most average of opponents with our athletic prowess alone. Furthermore, for all of Patricia’s successes on the mat, her luster will be far greater in the business world. While she was still in college, she ran a business that grossed a quarter of a million dollars in 3 months’ time. To her, the position was just a summer job which she seemed to manage effortlessly. I see her confidence, likely inherited from her parents, come so naturally when the topic turns to making money. In stark contrast, her confidence never materializes easily or naturally on the mat. Her ability to win in competition at or above her skill level has always lagged behind her performance when less is on the line or few are watching.
I do not proclaim Patricia’s talent or poise as an entrepreneur. However, I have held many jobs and excelled at each. My coworkers seem to like me, and I learn fast. I have found that I am adaptable and usually have much to contribute across a wide variety of tasks in the many varied positions I have held. Like Patricia, wrestling was altogether different and marvelously (in hindsight) humbling for me.
Patricia and I have similar, yet nuanced personal reasons for continuing to fly in the face of a challenge that became so obviously deterring. I will write here frankly about my motivation and guess a little about Patricia’s. For my part, I had always wanted to be tough. Growing up, the way I did, I got the message from above and all around that a person wasn’t worth shit in this world if they weren’t tough. My family was from the high deserts of northern
The problem was, I was a weak kid. Relative to my cohorts, I was always physically immature and somewhat sickly. My culture was not cruel and the measure of my inadequacies growing up was supposed to be independent of my starting point. Demonstrable, genuine fight was the only worthy goal regardless of how high it took me. However, my stature and frequent signs of physical impotence left me tentative and fearful. My mind that made school so easy by spotting all the details others could not see, also left me so pessimistic about how the factors I couldn’t control would fall against me in the real world.
Enter wrestling. There is no linear progression or anything approaching a governing logic for why I stuck with wrestling even though it gutted me time and again. I don’t know why, in every moment I was very nearly broken, I brushed myself off time and again to walk back into the ring. I only know now that there was a vague idea that this was something that I had to do to be the person I wanted to be. In the early years I was probably sustained somewhere deep down in my core by the fact that I was the kind of person that craved to wield the power to destroy, albeit temporarily, another person and take their pride. For this possibility, I found that I would risk nearly everything. Later, my perspective matured and I stuck with collegiate wrestling just to try to pull back the curtain on an enemy that seemed so simple and maddeningly elusive in the same exhaled breath. Whatever instincts, whatever fortunate breaks lead me to finish a successful struggle against my own fear, I emerged, years later, almost the person I want to be. Well on my way.
Patricia’s stated reason for getting sucked into combat on the mat cannot be all that different from mine. She grew up saturated in a culture that championed feigning elitism as the one worthy goal for a person. Somehow, she was taught, if she worked on her presentation and collected all the right societal keys, she could be handed a comfortable life where her core character would rarely be placed in question—however weak it would eventually become. Fortunately, the status of our existence, even in
We stick around in this sport for another year—we decided that Patricia should come back for one more run at Olympic gold in ‘05—because I believe that Patricia is on the verge of a breakthrough. I see her cornering her own fear and her own sense of inadequacy, pushing both to retreat. This project you read about now is the journey to forge her character as she wants. She made the judgment to reject her early teachings and work to become the new, full hero that she now aspires. I entertain myself by her side with the more mental challenge of how to turn her struggle into, perhaps, a worthy set of wins against the best wrestlers in the world. I also support her now because, whatever we do or wherever we go after out careers in wrestling have run their courses, we can value each other much more because of the quality of our respective companion.
Regardless of our needs as adolescents and young adults, wrestling may seem like a strange pick among all the sports available to us. Wrestling has never contained big money. Our sport gets little respect from the average person. When Patricia and I play, say, basketball, we both agree that this game is more pleasurable than the suffering contained in preparing oneself for a wrestling competition. Then again, no “game” could have endangered our fire so thoroughly and force us to harden ourselves where our softness was so entrenched.
Even among combat sports, however, wrestling is not the purest. I have been playing around with Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) training lately, and the innate nature of combat sports, like no-gi grappling and jiu-jitsu, that get closer to a no-holds-barred fight more easily and readily place participants in that zone where they can discover their true metal. I am so confident of this relationship that I am sure to remember it when my kids ask for my opinion when they go looking for their command in this world. Perhaps, if I had it to do again knowing what I now know, I might start out taking punches to the face to see how I might respond to such an invasive stimulus.
The simple truth is that wrestling is what was available when Patricia and I started our individual search for inner strength. We continue it today because it is adequate for our purposes. I assure you, had it been easy for either of us, we would have left it years ago in favor of something more daunting. In the very small and few ways wrestling allows us to hide from the fact that we are in a fight with the opponent across the mat (and it does, sometimes), we have embraced a mentality that forces us to always view our objectives as a battle of will that we will wage to the limits of pain and life itself.
In this way, wrestling has had, and always will have, an important kinship with well-designed combat sports. All such sports design a place where the athlete can choose to grapple themselves with the ultimate prize to be won or lost: whether or not the combatant will continue to shy away from conquering doubt, fear, and the tendency to buy into their own unproven greatness and inflated idea of their own importance. If “warrior A” chooses to step up to the challenge of his/her own inadequacies and “warrior B” elects to do the same, then, when A and B meet to do battle amongst themselves, the struggle against the self can be genuine. Here, deep in the heat of battle among the hungry with no balls or equipment and little rules as distraction, Warriors can be found and, perhaps, created. Perspective and wisdom can be gained. These moments rarely occur in basketball, American business-as-usual, or golf. I try to live by the philosophy that, when you find a forum that causes you to grow as I have described above, spend productive time in that forum. Patricia is there now, and we will give her one last chance to get what she needs.
-Levi
