iThink...thereFore, iAm

I had to break up a fight yesterday between two handballers. Both seasoned players, but one new to the group.

Due to different playing styles there were a few disagreements, and the new person was used to playing his way, as were we. Needless to say it doesn’t make for much friendly talk, but the clincher came when comments were made out of frustration.

On an attack wave, he stopped a pivot from getting the ball, stood in front of him nearly nose-to-nose and said something about not playing the game properly else he would have done much better. This was said to a person who’d been playing for a while, and he wasn’t exactly a very small-sized person.

Neither of them were, and the comment resulted in explosive anger from the pivot. Insults were hurled and heard across the court, deregatory remarks on race and nationality and age and so on - it’s amazing what things one can think of when one’s angry. A couple of us had to step inbetween the two of them when fists were raised and poised to strike, and given that the rest of us were probably at least a head shorter than either of them, and maybe half their weight, I’ve gotta say that it was a freaky position to be in, when their biceps are being flexed in your face.

I managed to pull the pivot aside, making him look in my eyes as I spoke to him.

“You don’t have to go to that place. You don’t have to be this. You can be the bigger person - you can walk away.”

He later took the frustration out on another player, knocking him flat to the ground.

After the match, hands were shaken, apologies were exchanged, and unfortunately bruises were nursed. I walked to the bus stop thinking how different it would have been if no remarks were made in the first place, or if they were made but not reacted against. What if we really just walked away from a battle that didn’t need to be fought. There was no loss - the game would have gone on regardless. There was no medal, no winner, no loser, if they just walked away. They didn’t, and given the moods after we left, everyone lost.

“You can be the bigger person - you can walk away.”

=========

There are some battles that we will face and we should fight. These are battles that are crucial to our growth, that will shape who we are and what we become. But there are battles that will fall in our path that will tempt us to expend our energy for something very little and unnecessary. It is for this reason countless people work themselves and their families to death in the pursuit of something that seems so small - in the heart of every man, he wants to know whether he makes the mark, whether he is good enough. And some take to fighting every battle that is in their path, draining their energy for the crucial battles that come and then failing in the process, hindering the fullness of their potential, what they could have been.

Some of us are so determined to win that we wish to win everything. To prove the answer to our question “do I have what it takes?”, we fight endlessly and relentlessly at the smallest things, weakning ourselves for the big fight. It is an age old strategem used in war since the days of Sun Tze, and it still works today in the spiritual, physical and emotional realms. 

We must realize that we can choose our battles.

We must realize that we can walk away.

=======

Two hours later, at home and showered, I found myself repeating the same thing to myself as I lay on a tear-soaked pillow for the umpteeth time.

“You can be the bigger person.”

“You can walk away.”