THE WALL
By Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut
(This is a chapter 21 excerpt
from my book SURVIVAL THOUGHTS FOR THE CONTINUALLY DEPRESSED, written and
published in 1998)
One day I came upon a wall I knew and looked at it
differently than all the other times before. On this bright and cheerful day it
came into my head that I would do well to scale it.
I knew the wall
intimately. Each day I passed it on my way to my seat in the first grade. The
wall was only a few blocks from my home and every day I would stare up at it,
and think thoughts.
Across a span of
many years, the elongated concrete structure had given way to the pressure of
shifting earth. This caused it to protrude forward in many spots so that it did
not quite stand up and down any more, like it had before.
Already a challenge, this would add to the task, I
reasoned. And so gave it my first try.
I scaled her, quickly approaching the top, and doing so with growing optimism. But in trying to swing out and up to the flat ledge of the wall, the law of gravity suddenly somehow kicked in, and I plummeted from its great lip, several feet to the hard ground below.
There I lay, breath stolen, but still determined to do it better on my next attempt. Each time the same result occurred, and I got up, dusted off, looked around to ensure privacy, and started to re-scale again, only to get the very same result as the very first.
A wrestling with reality ensued; it was not exactly a natural thing for me to go over the wall; one clear thing was on the line though, in my young spirit and mind: my budding six-year old pride and dignity.
Finally, after many more attempts than seemed reasonable and necessary, and with my little body battered and bruised, I limped homeward, dejected.
I could never quite get on top of the ledge of that wall. And now the only thing preventing me from trying again was a little body that had lapsed into some kind of paralysis.
It was not to be that I would defy the law of that wall.
Passing the wall during the next few weeks, it seemed to now speak to me.
"I cannot be climbed by you. I am great, and old, and you are a boy of but six. You are not strong enough, smart enough, determined enough."
Already in my few years of life I had learned to take on obstacles as they presented themselves to me. And somewhere I had gotten the message to not easily give up.
Fierce pride and a will to win are necessary elements to succeed in the daily battles of life. But the wall demonstrated the need for much more than that. Intelligent submissions to realities in our world not only serve to reduce our pain - they can also show us ways to balance a fighting instinct with the need to sometimes surrender.
There are simply times when a situation in life has to be assessed and examined and interpreted in more than one way.
I started watching cloud formations as I passed the wall after that; or chasing butterflies - in short, my mind and spirit respected the wall, yielding to it from that point on. The wall had been there for a showdown to come one day. As we were not the same, I had to discover the differences between it and me.
Sometimes it's a matter of giving life it's proper due. Pride and determination are wonderful characteristics to possess. But so is the intelligence to determine whether some kind of meaningless arrogance is at work in our lives.
Years later my chance did come to stand a victor over the wall. When the city decided to take it down in favor of a new housing project, they delivered a huge wrecking ball to do the work.
I watched the event bittersweet event from across the street; I observed as the great obstacle of my youth steadily was reduced to dust and rubble, right before my eyes.
No need or opportunity would ever exist to challenge this wall again. In life, however, be sure that we arrive at the base of many walls to ask ourselves the question of what to do about it.
Sometimes in life we have to find a way to climb over our walls. Sometimes we are better off to go around them. Given enough time, in ways that we usually don't anticipate or plan for, our walls will come down in some other way.
Our special challenge is to envision what to do, and when to do it. Once in a while, when the situation calls for it, I close my eyes, get the wall in my mind's eye, and ask it:
"Are you worth all this pain? Can you be defeated some other way? Are you playing with my pride? Are you best left alone?"
What to do?
How to do it?
Which is the best course for our survival?
Sometimes life gets the better of me. I know I have not done my best. I am wounded, wondering what now to do. And when I know I have to, I look up at my wall and proclaim, "For now, we will just say that you win. I won't try and go over you. I bid you well, but someday
Someday your time will come; know then that your wrecking ball will come for you."
When put into perspective now, from this much more advanced age of my early fifties, all walls don't always need climbed. Surrender sometimes brings the strength we need - often leaving body and mind and spirit less bruised in the process.
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