to know

I watched a fight on the TV for the first time in a long time last night.

I’ve seen all the Rocky movies…I’ve watched some Jean Claude Van Damme movies…I’ve seen guys beat each other up in movies quite a bit.

But I haven’t watched much boxing.

We aren’t a big sports family…no strong interest in football or baseball or even cricket.  We just don’t watch much sports on television or go to any games.

But I watched this fight between a champion and a relatively unknown Russian fighter that was pretty amazing.

The title holder ended up retaining the title by decision…but watch some of the highlights from the match and see if you don’t think that maybe the challenger, beaten and bloody, didn’t really win this battle.

Watching this fight made me wonder how it must feel to know that you were beaten.  You won the fight because you landed more punches…you won because the judges decided that you had scored more points during the fight than the other guy…you won because the referee didn’t rule a knockdown when it was right to do that.

You “won” because a panel of judges decided you were the winner even though you were beaten by another man who would not quit fighting.

How would it feel to carry that knowledge around?

Most of our victories or defeats are quiet ones.

No one knows about most of them.  They aren’t televised.

Sometimes anonymity is a real kindness.

We don’t do battle in a ring in front of millions.  We don’t have to let the world see our failures…or get to show everyone our victories.

For most of us, that’s not a part of our reality.

But I was thinking about these fighters and how they must feel after a fight like this one that is decided by a panel of judges…and then I started thinking about the things that we carry with us that get us through our “battles” in life.

There are small victories that we carry with us that get us through…there are things that we do for ourselves or for others that we bring with us wherever we go that carry us through hard times.

These fighters have this moment to live with for the rest of their lives.

It won’t define their lives…it’s not something that they’ll probably show any outward signs of it affecting them…but it will be a part of who they are for the rest of their lives.

Whether or not they think about it very much in the future, they will always know what this fight meant.

We will all have our victories and defeats in our lives.

That’s just the way it seems to go.

We will all have moments that we carry with us that bolster us in hard times. We all will have things that we can look towards that tell us that our lives have had meaning….and that we can make a positive difference in another person’s life, no matter how small and unglamorous the contribution might seem.

We matter.

That’s a good thing to know.

About Peter Rorvig

I'm a non-practicing artist, a mailman, a husband, a father...not listed in order of importance. I believe that things can always get better....and that things are usually better than we think.

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