The Road Not Taken

Olympic lifting often provides a perfect metaphor for life.

Many beginner lifters find that the hardest part of learning the clean/snatch is not the technique, but having the balls to drop under the bar- especially when it gets heavy. We spend our whole lives conditioning ourselves to watch out for heavy falling things, therefore it goes against everything your mind knows to propel your body under a heavy moving object. In order to be any good at the sport, that is exactly what you must do though. This requires you to shut out fear, and to boldly and ferociously pull yourself under- to take the drop of faith, faith that your body will be able to hold up what you have just caught. Like I say, olympic lifting distinguishes what kind of man you are- are you the kind that only power cleans/snatches because you are afraid to drop, or are you the kind that rips the  head off of freaking lions (to quote the great Donny Shankle).

Life can be very similar. We spend our whole lives taking the path of least resistance, the road most traveled, the easy way. It goes agains everything we know to go agains the grain and do what is more difficult. One of my favorite poems is by Robert Frost, and it speaks of this phenomenon:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry i could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then, took the other as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

It takes real gumption and a repression of fear to voyage into the unknown, to take the road less traveled. This hits home to me lately, because I have been offered a job in Beijing, China. One of the main reasons that I am struggling to accept it is because of pure fear; fear of the unknown, fear of the known, fear in the fact that all my safety nets (parents, friends, comforts) will be out from under me, and that the tight rope of life will be to thin and wobbly for me to stay on. I have a choice; to let that fear dominate me, or to sack up and take the road less traveled. It would be easy for me to stay here in Houston. It would be easy for me to not take the step of faith. But that is precisely the reason I must go, because it is not easy- it is very, very hard indeed. Part of what makes a man a man is his ability to go through seasons of forging. It is in the trials and fires of life that he truly discovers what kind of man he is.

In the end, there are still a lot of things that have to work out just right before I move to the other side of the planet- contractual stuff, not getting another strength position that I have been interviewing for, things with my family. But if the stars align and the decision comes down to if I want it or not, I will take it.

Be great. Rip the head off lions. Drop under the bar. Go down the road not taken.

Blessings.

"Ender through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it."

-Jesus, Matthew 7:13-14