My Hands On The Rope

When I was young, I played football, but I loved strength sports.  I loved them for their simplicity.  With the possible exception of running, strength sports are the simplest of all.  You move a piece of metal from here to there, and that's it.  Whoever moves the heaviest piece of metal wins.  Sometimes there's no competitor.  It's just you and the metal.  Can I move four hundred pounds from here to there, or no?  There is no other person.  If I do it, I win.  If I don't, I curse and try another day.  The possibility of failure makes it a sport and not an exercise.  Exercise is doing things you know you can do.  Sport is doing things you may never be able to do if you don't commit yourself.  

Nearly all strength sports are solitary affairs, which suited the younger version of me because socialization was often difficult and usually only possible with those I trusted the most.  There was a communal or team strength sport, though: tug-of-war.  Tug-of-war is deliciously simple.  Two teams grab hold of a rope, and whoever pulls the most rope to their side of the field wins.  That's that.

Nearly everyone grips the rope with their hands in tug-of-war, and if things go badly, everyone can just let go except one.  The anchor had the rope tied around his waist.  If his team lost, he would be dragged bodily through the mud pit or pool or whatever lay between the two teams.  He would be singled out as the loser.  That job, more often than not, was mine.

Tug-of-war works because, while I may be the only one tied to the rope, my friends have their hands on it too, and they pull as hard as they can and commit as much as they can to try and prevent the team from losing and me from going into the mud.  While there were a few times when I went into the pit, more often than not, we won.  We won because my friends wouldn't give up and kept their hands on the rope despite the challenge.

I like applying metaphors from strength sports to life's challenges because life is complex, but strength sports are simple, and simple metaphors can make the most difficult challenge less threatening and more surmountable.  Right now, many of the things I care about the most are struggling.  My country, my state, my city, my school.  In some ways, they struggle more now than ever before.

Long ago now, I was hurt, and tired, and frustrated, and felt very alone, so I untied myself from the tug-of-war rope and hid in a place of solitude and stillness for a very long time.  "My friends can win without me," I thought.  Whatever strength I had was spent long ago, I thought.  If they don't win, I don't want to be dragged through the mud, I knew.  I feared.

One day a voice said to me, "you can no longer stay in the in-between place.  You must choose.  If you die, you will be quiet and still forever, or you can return to the world that's been calling for you since you left, but you must fight."  I opened my eyes and saw that the tug-of-war continued.  New men were in the anchor loop, but the war continued, and it wasn't looking good for my team.  

I'm old now...and broken.  I'm no good for the anchor loop anymore, but I have hands.  I've been in this war before.  I can pull.  I can pull harder than you would ever imagine.  I can commit, and I don't care if I go into the mud, and the strength I lost is coming back more every day.  I'm back on the team.  Now, all I need to know is where to put my hands on the rope.