Wrestling with Giants

Antaeus was a Greek god, son of the Mother Earth Goddess Gaia. He was a giant who challenged and defeated all comers in wrestling matches. One of Hercules’ 12 Labors was to fight Antaeus. A little while into the fight, Hercules realized that every time he threw him down to the ground, Antaeus rose up stronger, fortified by the contact with the Earth, his mother, the source of his strength. So Hercules holds him up aloft and then finishes him off in a strangling bear hug. 

I think of this myth often when life throws me down to the ground, when people or institutions betray me, attack me, disappoint me. While at first, I feel bruised and trampled upon, I often end up rising up stronger. Except when I’m lifted up— as every modern person is— into cyberspace and spun around until I’m dizzy and roundly defeated by the bear hug of things that don’t work. Like the PaymentWorks (the very title a lie—it doesn’t!) method of getting paid for my work by a University that refuses to simply mail me a check and yet, offers no help as I navigate a system that consistently refuses to accept me. 

Here I think of the poet Rainer Marie Rilke and find some comfort in his extraordinary poem “The Man Watching.” Though indeed I must continue this maddening battle with machines if I want to get paid, it’s helpful to remember that organizing my life around the trivia of daily life is not where I live or want to live. Rilke says: 

…What we choose to fight is so tiny! 
What fights with us is so great. 
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm, 
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things, 
and the triumph itself makes us small. 

The things that define my life are three powerful one-syllable words— Orff, Jazz and Zen. Each is a monstrous giant that constantly throws me to the ground. Nobody ever wins against these three. But with dedication and perseverance and resolve, though I get slammed down time and time again, I often rise up stronger and have brief moments when I’m on top and the giant is at rest, conceding a momentary defeat. The class that resisted my lessons suddenly yields and astonishes themselves with the beauty they’re capable of creating. (This happened today!). After sessions of dubious jazz piano solos, suddenly I’m dancing through the chord changes like the Nicholas Brothers, alive, coherent, vibrant, free. By sticking to the same morning meditation for most every day of the last 50 years, the rise and fall of my breath sometimes dissolves this limited physical body and connects me with the true nature of the resplendent Universe. 

The occasional triumph is only made possible by the ongoing defeats. Back to Rilke: 

What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us. 
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers' sinews 
grew long like metal strings, 
he felt them under his fingers 
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel 
(who often simply declined the fight) 
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand, 
that kneaded him as if to change his shape. 

Winning does not tempt that man. 
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, 
by constantly greater beings.

There is no glory in figuring out the right password to the Website. Ah, but to be defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings. That’s where the juice of life is.

Bring it on!