“…Anyone who enters can be a champion. But to become one, you have to learn how to get hit.”“You treat mistakes as final, but they almost never are.”
“You need more scars. You need to live.”
“I have the super power of trying one more time.”
-A Steward Kiddio
He was playing by himself. Lost in a 5-year-old world of make believe. The couches were probably space ships or rafts floating in a sea of lava. He was probably one of the X-Men or an Avenger, or a Power Ranger, or possibly even an Airbender.
He was jumping and spinning in his acrobatic, highly athletic and rhythmic way. Dodging bad guys and incorporating karate whenever necessary. Occasionally he would make stirring motions with his arms, as if he was wrapping the whole room up around his wrists and then he would fling his arms forward tossing everything straight to the ground with a surging power.
I was reading on a couch on the far side of the room, a couch that had not managed to be transformed quite yet into any sort of transportation device. Looking up every now and then to assess the damage of flinging body parts, I found myself smiling at his boyish intensity.
Lost in a paragraph of my book, I jumped when I heard a smack on the floor. I couldn’t see him. I could only guess he had missed the leap from one piece of furniture to the next and had landed wounded somewhere in between. I looked over anticipating the tears and the jumping, something he has taken to doing when he is hysterically hurt and angry-scared about it. But the tears didn’t happen, and neither did the jumping. Instead I heard a groan, and then in an irritated voice, “Why do I have to fall?”
This was the contemplation moment, as if he was asking himself, “Do I break character or do I incorporate this into my story?”
And then in a sort of encouraging whisper to himself, like a dawn of insight was breaking with the careful choosing of every passing word, he said, “I fell, so the missiles wouldn’t get me! I would rather get hurt than die.”
He stood to his feet, and within a split second was spin-kicking the bad guys who had crept up on him in his moment of weakness. He was back at it, completely unaware that the woman in the spaceship on the far end of the room was reaching for a marker and an index card so she could document the truth she had heard echoing in his words.
Our battles are incomparable, our bad guys dressed in different costumes, but the lesson is the same. It hurts to fall, and we hate that it’s in our nature. It’s infuriating to have our plans not play out like we expected, and it’s embarrassing to lay there in a crumpled ball on the floor.
We so desperately want to blame ourselves or someone else, to rage with tears or jumping or an angry voice screaming, “You idiot. You screwed up.” But the thing is, as we lay there in a heap of supposed failure, that dawn of insight breaks, and we have the option of letting the light expose us, so that it can also heal us. The light that tells us, “You made quite an impressive leap and guess what? It didn’t kill you! You’re still very much alive! And wouldn’t you rather get hurt than die?”
We have the option of incorporating the fall into our heroic story.
Groaning, squinting at the light and dusting off our highly wrinkled super hero cape, we rise to our feet and think, “Yes, yes I suppose I would.” No sooner do we stand we feel the swipe of a sword move through the air, just missing our throat, leaving us no time for nursing wounds. Just like that we’re back in it, and somehow, if we let ourself, we feel stronger for the falling.
It is like you are sitting with me … seeing my tears and reading my thoughts. Because you just wrote about one of my favorite superheros. Photos and everything!
[The light that tells us, “You made quite an impressive leap and guess what? It didn’t kill you! You’re still very much alive! And wouldn’t you rather get hurt than die?”] Yes! Because my leap was to begin an exercise class yesterday that has left me a heap of mumbly-ache. And the realization that this is either the best decision of my life or another “this-is-too-much-for-MS” realization. Either way … It did *not* kill me!! I am still very much alive!! ox
I know this has been a dreadfully trying week. I see you, and I think you’re still an impressive leaper. I don’t think we can put a time limit on the amount of time we have to lay in a heap. I know you; even when you have to lie still you’re actively gathering strength for your next flight.
“‘We feel stronger for the falling.” Oh those are such beautiful and freeing words. I need that in my own life today.
I recently created a page that said something like:
In our own eyes, we are only as tall
as we let ourselves stand after a fall.
Something like that. I’m too lazy to get up and get my journal and see what I wrote. But I think what’s most important is that we can each live out our superhero lives in our own ways. We all have bad guys to fight off, and weapons and capes and — oh — imagined enemies.
Imagined enemies. I need to think about who those are in my own life.
I recall this old song I knew in college and one line said, “The saints are just the sinners who fall down…and get up.” Reminds me of your art journal page.
Imagined enemies. Interesting thought. My mind flashes to that Nash guy in A Beautiful Mind. He had made up enemies. Or at least that’s what he was told. I’ve been thinking about him a lot today.
“I have the super power of trying one more time.”
how incredible <3 how much I love, and needed this post
And your 5-year-old?! Freakin' awesome lil dude!
yes. i concur.
“In our own eyes, we are only as tall
as we let ourselves stand after a fall.”
these words pierce my inner, in several ways <3 thank you for sharing, Mandy
“you need more scars. you need to live.”
and that quote from one of your kiddios.
and your son figuring out that he fell because he would rather get hurt than die, and those missiles were coming.
all of this!
today my son said this to me while looking through his galactic kaleidoscope: “it’s so weird, the horriblest things, these weird stackings, turn into something so beautiful.” sometime i’ll write a post about this.
lovely. love the phrase “the horriblest things.”
“I have the super power of trying one more time.”
I’m starting to believe that I, too, have that same super power. Learning to control it is an interesting journey. Remembering I have it the times I need to put it to use is always a challange. And when I do remember, there’s always the thought “you’re just gonna have to do this over and over and over, but never succeed”. Like, what good is the super power of trying one more time if there never is the satisfaction of not having to use it? I’m starting to think that’s not all there is though. Maybe there’s more to life than succeeding. Maybe I don’t have to cross the finish line I was aiming for when I started. Maybe it’s fine to change your mind, turn around and go another direction, cross another finish line. And then go on yet another adventure because finishing that race wasn’t exciting enough.
I don’t know where I’m going with this anymore. But maybe that’s the point? Learning, improvising, evolving. I hope so. It sure looks more exciting than clinging to what I used to believe in because I’m scared of change.
process change in my own life right now. it’s a wild ride for sure.
so much Beauty in this post…so much courage.
enough for all of us.