“I want to be somebody.”
“Everybody is somebody.”
“Somebody special. A champion.”
Donatelli’s thin lips tightened. “Everybody wants to be a champion. That’s not enough. You have to start by wanting to be a contender, the man coming up, the man who knows there’s a good chance he’ll never get to the top, the man who’s willing to sweat and bleed to get up as high as his legs and his brains and his heart will take him…”1
The Contender, one of my favorite books. Without giving too much away, the plot follows Alfred Brooks, a young man who lives in the ghettos of Manhattan. He’s stuck in a society that tells him how he should think and act; his friends are always prodding him into do the wrong things.
The excerpt above is from a segment in the book where Alfred is considering boxing as a profession. He’s told by Donatelli, a local gym manager, that the road to the ring is brutal:
“…And nothing’s promised you, nothing’s ever promised you.”2
This is life. We are never promised anything, not even our own security! Now, I don’t say this to frighten you, but to make you think.
I’ll give you a real-life example: Between 1939-1941, the US stood far away from World War II. We didn’t want to get too involved in “someone else’s” fight. Then, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. We thought we were safe, we were sure we were safe. We owned our safety. Yet, after Pearl Harbor, we had to earn that safety. That’s why, partly, America joined WWII.
Nothing’s ever promised you.
Still, the best part is, we are always given the opportunity to work, fight, sweat, and bleed for our dreams. Sure, there are countless obstacles in life, but nothing worth having was or is ever achieved easily. Man has legs, a brain, and a heart. As long as we are ready and willing to pour out every ounce of energy, even working at something we hate, just to get us to what we love, then we will fully appreciate our dreams and goals. It’s not about winning, society can make anyone into a winner. It’s about fighting the good fight.
—Rupert Anndelle
So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
—1 Corinthians 9:26-27 (ESV)
1 Robert Lipsyte, The Contender (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1967), 35.
2 Robert Lipsyte, The Contender (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1967), 36.
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