I hope I‘m not the only person whose life circles back to different versions of the same question:
Should I sink my energy into tackling new ambitious projects? Into chasing some noble goal?
Or … should my ambition be to relax off the hero button for a while; to settle into a more natural, less-stressful life rhythm? Could the simple acts of living and loving somehow be just as noble?
To top it all off, I face this question without the infamously Christian “life verse”. (I have a life Bible, does that count?)
I don’t even have a life mission statement tacked to my mirror or refrigerator or car dashboard.
What I do have is a little visual that’s all my own. It doesn’t feel commercial or gimmicky or demanded of me by some charismatic leadership figure. The visual is inspired by a quote that I ran across a long time ago and it stuck in my soul like a dart to a bullseye.
The quote is from Teddy Roosevelt.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
The visual in my mind when I read it is a mix of all the epic arena scenes—a little bit Ben Hur, a little bit Gladiator, maybe even a little bit Rudy.
All of those arenas boil down to a visual, something I could sketch for you on one of those old school transparencies that people used to lay on projectors. In the scene, there are two main spaces—the playing field where champions do battle and the platformed seats where spectators sit.
The obvious thing to say here is that I want to be the man in the arena, right?
And I do. I would rather be criticized for attempting something valiant, than to never know what it tastes like to do so. I want to spend as much time on the field as I possibly can. I want to always believe there is one more fight to be had. To thirst for my Rocky 5, 6, and 7.
BUT … the older I get, the more I believe that although I want to spend the majority of life in the arena, it’s not healthy to live one’s whole life there.
People who try to fight every day, day after day, often become unnaturally exhausted. Their leadership starts to come from a desperate place; they start to develop ruthless qualities that subtract from their humanity.
Some days, its right to pour it out on the playing field—to bleed and be wounded with the best of them. But on a few reserved days or stretches of life, it might be just as right to sit on the sidelines; to recoup, to learn, and to believe in someone else’s battle.
That’s not less courage or nobility talking, it’s the wisdom life beats into me.
Because here’s the thing: I want to spend the majority of life in the arena, not just now—not just for this year, not just for this decade, but for the long haul. Forty years from now, if you check in on me, I want you to see me armoring up my frail, elderly body and leading a new charge.
To love the arena life that long requires a balance, I think. It means loving the many days where I grit my teeth and fight, but to equally love the life stages when it’s my turn to experience renewal and invest in or celebrate someone else advancing.
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