Handlebars

” Look at me/ look at me/ hands in the air and it’s great to be alive…” (Flobots)

I was watching a show about a fight club. It was started by 3 men trained in martial arts.  They would attend tournaments, but at these tournaments the fighters wore heavy padding and followed rules and had blunt objects. And because of the rules, they pretty much knew what the fighter’s next move would be. So they started this fight club in order to see if all their training would actually hold up to someone really attacking them. There are no rules in the fight club. And the only protection they wear is a face mask, like fencers wear and some padding on the arms. It’s brutal. People get hurt. People bleed. Who in their right mind would want to do this? The people showcased in this TV show are your “average joes”. There was an EMT, a writer/bartender, a massage therapist, some business analyst, etc. etc. Why do they fight? Their answers were unexpected.  Some of them are trained in martial arts, but most of them came here to fufill a personal goal. The writer/ bartender is actually afraid of fighting; afraid of confrontation. He feels that in order to overcome this fear, he has to fight. The corrections officer fights because he recently recovered from a spinal injury. He feels he needs to fight in order to complete his therapy, mentally and physically.  The EMT hates fighting. He gets anxious at every gathering of the fight club. He feels as though he is going to throw up. At first he said, he did it just to see if he could do it. But he keeps coming back. And he keeps fighting. Why? . One could look at this fight club and very easily pass judgement on it by saying it’s a metaphor on how we percieve males in our society or how males percieve themselves; our society has driven them to do this in order to feel adequate and that it’s all ego. That’s valid. But there is something primeval about fighting; bodies crashing into each other, screaming, pulling, punching. It’s raw emotion. There’s only one thought involved: Survive. The strategy? Fight.

So fighting is life. There are so many emotions involed when we fight; fear, anger, passion, love. How do you know you’re alive if you don’t fight? We all fight; all the time. Maybe its not always physical but its a fight all the same. Maybe its for a cause you believe in, or for something you want. Maybe you fight to make positive changes for your community, for those last 5 pounds or for that really good parking spot.

I fight. I fight myself everyday. I fight to get up in the morning. I fight for some sleep at night. I fight to convice others that I’m ok and I fight to believe that myself. I fight not to isolate. I fight the bad thoughts and the urge to end it all. And I promise to continue to fight; everyday, every morning, I will get up to face the day and conquer my anxieties. I promise I will fight by any means possible in order to survive and know that I am alive Read the rest of this entry »