“Courage is fear holding on a minute longer. ” – George S. Patton
Facing Trials
We’ve all been there. We all have days, or weeks, or months – or even sometimes years when we feel pushed to the brink. When it feels like life is determined to stop us in our tracks and cary us off a cliff. One thing after another seems to pile up until we are buried.
We have moments when we look at our situation and say, “I have no idea how I’m going to do this.” We are ready to give up. Throw in the towel. Take the easy road.
What do you do in such a moment? How do you make it through to the next good day? When you are beaten, and down; when you are utterly spent and feel as though you have nothing left to give. How do you dig deep enough to push a little further?
It’s simple: Hold On.
Three experiences in my life have taught me the skill of holding on. It isn’t easy, but it’s simple, and it has paid off for me every time.
Wrestling with Life
I wrestled in high school. I wasn’t very good. My entire sophomore year passed by without a win. Match after match I lost. I began to think I was a hopeless wrestler. I was years behind my opponents. Most of them had been training since they were kids. I realized that year that I wasn’t going to have a winning record. So I had to find other ways to succeed. I decided I wasn’t going to get pinned anymore. I didn’t care if I tore my shoulder clear out of my socket, my opponents were not going to pin me.
I remember when I made that decision. It was the last round of a match during that sophomore year. I was outmatched. The guy was simply toying with me. He’d run me ragged, worn me down for two rounds and now, here in the third, he was ready to finish me off. Getting pinned is not just losing. It’s being told there is no way for you to win. That there’s nothing left to do. It’s humiliating, and brings a strong taste of bile to any wrestler worth his weight. The other wrestler was lean and strong. I was tired, and inexperienced, and he knew it. I could see his confidence as I looked into his eyes. I was scared. He shot in on my legs and when I countered he quickly swept around behind me, locked my elbow deep in his arm and pulled, while wrapping his legs around me and rolling me backward. In a split second I went from standing on my feet to laying on the mat, landing with solid, dull thud.
With one shoulder already on the mat, the wind knocked out of me and my body painfully contorted as he pulled my limbs in unnatural directions, I knew I was about to be pinned. My free hand flew to the mat, flattened out and propped my shoulder up a few precarious inches off the mat. I was going to lose. Just like I had before. In humiliation and defeat. I was going to be pinned. My muscles started shaking from the strain of keeping my shoulder off the mat. I couldn’t keep doing this any longer. My muscles were going to give out. It was over. Then, just as I was about to let go and give in, I heard my coach yelling at me over the crowd. “Hold ON! HOLD ON!” I twisted my head to look at him. He was pointing at the clock. Thirteen seconds left. Everything slowed. My coach’s voice was an echo bouncing around in my head, desperately trying to reach through to my brain and give me just a little more strength.
That’s when it happened. There at the end of my strength, when I thought I had nothing left, I decided that this was not how it was going to end. I felt it more than I thought it, but I knew I was not going to be pinned anymore. I pushed my shoulder off the mat. I strained against the power and flexibility of my opponent. I threw my head back onto the mat and arched my back with all my might. 9. 8. 7… Sweat was rolling into my eyes. My legs were shaking. My arms were shaking. My shoulder was hovering barely above the mat and I could hear my opponent patiently, comfortably breathing and pulling his hold in tighter. 5. 4. 3… I sucked my breath in and held it. 2. 1. It was over. I had done it! I lost that match. But I had turned a corner in my life. I hadn’t been pinned.
In those thirteen seconds I dug deeper inside of myself than I had ever done before. I found strength I didn’t know I had. My coach could see the victory that had just occurred, and he knew what it meant to me. As I returned to the bench, he wrapped me up in a bear hug, and shook his hand through my hair. “I’m proud of you, son” he told me. “You held on.” Wrestling was different from that day on. I had a fight inside of me that I had never known before.
At the End of Your Rope
Once, while rock climbing as a novice climber, I was given the chance to “lead climb.” This entails setting up the rope by starting from the bottom without being tied into anything that’s attached to the wall. As you climb, you look for bolts with metal flanges attached to the wall. When you reach one, you take special straps with carabiners on them called quick draws. You attach them to the bolt and then clip your rope to the quick draw. Until you connect your rope to a quick draw, you are unprotected. It is essential to find them quickly so that you have something to catch you and stop you from falling several feet to your last quick draw. Lead climbing is more difficult, and more dangerous than top roping. In top roping, you are constantly being secured by a rope, connected to the wall, and to another person who is belaying you, and keeping you from falling. In lead climbing the belayer can only catch you once you have fallen past your last quick draw and the rope has tightened so that they can brake your fall.
On this particular day, I had climbed about 35 feet of a 45 foot wall. The holds on the cliff were sharp and narrow. They gave little to hold onto. As a novice climber, I had limited experience, and so had spent much of my energy errantly trying things that ultimately didn’t work. It sapped my energy. Now, I was four feet from the last quick draw, stuck on a wall, ten feet from the top. Once again, my muscles were shaking from exertion, and fear. I had originally taken up rock climbing as a way to overcome my fear of heights. This particular climb wasn’t doing anything to help my fears.
I had sucked myself up against the cliffside to conserve my strength as I figured out what to do. My mind was racing as I looked at each of the little outcroppings around me, desperate to find one that I could actually hold onto. Time was passing. My strength was beginning to fail. The next quick draw was just out of reach, which meant that a mistake would result in an eight foot fall until the rope finally caught me. Yeah right. I wasn’t about to go that route. But as I looked around me, I didn’t see much choice. Finally, I reached out and forced my fingers onto a tiny piece of rock with sharp, upturned edges that ground against my fingers.
It worked, and I clipped my rope into the bolt. Just as I did, I lost my footing. My feet slid off the wall and my hands were the only things keeping me from falling. Instinctively I flattened my fingers out on the ledge, and gripped it with everything I had. The sharp, upturned edges of rock tore into my skin and gave me the traction to stop my fall. I instantly began to bleed. There, literally hanging on a cliff, I was stuck. I was close to the end of the climb, but I couldn’t keep my strength from flowing out of my fingers with the blood. I looked up and saw the top of the wall. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. I was going to have to let go and take the fall and let the rope catch me. I didn’t have a choice but to give up, even though I had come so close.
It was in that brief moment that my friend who was belaying me at the bottom shouted up to me. I could hear his voice as the wind carried it up the cliffside, “Hold on! Don’t let go! You can do it!” I laughed. He was crazy. Then he said it again, “You can do this! Hold on!” I hung there for a few more seconds before, out of desperation, I flung my hand out to a hold a few feet from where I was. It stuck! Next, I moved my foot to match. Bleeding, and shaking from fear and exertion, I resumed climbing. It took me another several minutes, but I reached the top. I secured the rope in the anchor chain, and called down that I was finished, and had completed the climb. I couldn’t believe it, but I had done it.
Trapped by Life
Years later, a mentor and dear friend of mine was teaching me how to escape captivity while being handcuffed, hogtied, duct taped and hooded. He had been through a similar experience and was preparing me for an upcoming training course. In a grueling, brutal environment my friend had been held for several hours. Kicked. Punched. Drowned and electrocuted. Guards watched his every move. If he tried to get his hood to fall off his head, they’d replace it. If he was caught trying to tamper with the handcuffs, the rope, or the duct tape, the guards would tighten them, and make him pay for being caught. He was laying on his chest, and it was getting hard to breathe. The handcuffs were cutting off his circulation and making his fingers and arms numb. Exhaustion and fatigue were beginning to take his physical and mental faculties. He told me I’d likely have the same experience in my training.
I asked how he made it through. “Simple. You hold on. You last until you think you can’t last any longer. Then you breathe, and hold on just a little longer. – And then you start again.” He went on to tell me more about how to survive such an experience:
“You have to fight little battles. If you look at the whole thing you’re going to lose. You have to be willing to accept small victories at first. I started by licking the duct tape covering my mouth and neck. It weakened the tape until I was able to start nibbling little pieces away. With each little piece I celebrated in my mind. One by one I focused on the next piece until finally I was out of the tape. It was then that I knew I was going to escape.”
He did escape. He lasted as long as he thought he could. Then he held on just a little longer.
Lessons Learned
When you are pushed to the limit by life, and you’re ready to give up. Hold on for just a little longer. That in itself is a small victory.
These three experiences have become great lessons and metaphors in my life. I’ve realized that life in and of itself can feel like you are outmatched and wrestling an opponent far stronger and more skilled than you. Life can also feel like captivity. With every avenue of escape closed off and someone there, kicking you while you’re down. You can feel like you are at the end of your rope and holding on with just your fingernails, ready to fall off the edge.
Don’t do it. Hold on. You can make it just a little bit longer.
Take a moment to breathe, and listen for the voice that is always there, encouraging you to hold on just a little longer. There is more left in you.
PS:
I’m religious. As I look back on life and review these experiences, it is not lost on me that there has always been someone rooting for me. In these stories, they were real people, but in life, when I’m down and out; when I’m at the end of my rope and ready to quit… I take that deep breath and hold on. Then, I listen for that voice from heaven that is always there. Call it the Holy Ghost, call it a guardian angel, call it providence. One way or another, it’s always there when I’m ready to give up. It’s always whispering softly in my ear, “Hold on. Don’t give up. You can do this.”
Ending Apathy 