Fight

Categories: Uncategorized Apr 20, 2014

Did you know you were born to be a fighter? Search yourself, you know that this is true. This is just one of the reasons why many of us grow up loving movies like Rocky. We love the underdog. We love the story of a good fight; a fight for justice, a fight to overcome, a fight for freedom. We are all born to be fighters.

This is most evident when we are children. As children, from the moment we are born, we wage war against our biggest foe, gravity. That's right. All of us, when we were youngsters, fought gravity with everything we had. Moment by moment, it was constantly pulling at us, trying to keep us down. And yet, moment by moment, we fought it, we pushed back against it and we tried to overcome it's pull. Gravity was relentless in its pull against us. But our tenacity was even more relentless. Against all odds, against the unwavering pull of gravity, we pushed back. We dared to raise our heads. Attempt after attempt, , we fought. We fought to move, we fought to stand. And eventually, we overcame gravity's grasp. We grew strong with out struggles, and we stood, like the mini-conquerors we were born to be. We defeated gravity.

Or so it would seem. Gravity is relentless. Its pull never stops. Once we "overcame" gravity, we were always supposed to easily fight against it with ease. A good fighter makes fighting look easy, right? But something has gone wrong. Many adults are losing the war against gravity. They have let their guard down. They have yielded to its subtle pull until they no longer have the strength or energy to fight it. Some adults even grow to fear gravity. They fear falling, they fear not being able to push back against it, they fear they cannot stand should they end up on the ground.

This is wrong! We were born to fight. But gravity was not intended to be our nemesis. It was to be our training partner, the "foe" that we were made to spar with all of our lives. Gravity was to become our sparring partner, so that we would always be good fighters, so that we would always easily conquer it. We were made to become good fighters of gravity so we could become good fighters of life's other challenges.

The moment we stopped moving, the moment we traded in playgrounds and parks for recliners and couches, is the moment we quit sparring with gravity. We arrogantly assumed that battle had been won and we no longer needed to fight it. But we were wrong and we have forgotten who we are. We are fighters, not loungers. Children use relentless drive to learn to move, crawl, stand, and climb. They are filled with "fight." Adults, on the other hand, seem to trade in the simple truths of wisdom for the cunning deceptions of logic. We end up believing we don't need to move and play, we don't need to spar with gravity. After all, we have "adult" things to tend to.

Before we know it, gravity's pull becomes so strong, it effects our drive and our passion. Not only do we lose our physical strength to easily overcome gravity, but we lose our emotional strength as well. Foes like apathy and lethargy raise their ugly heads against us and we have no fight left in us to drive them away. Their pull, much like gravity, is relentless. Eventually, we drown in the cares and fears of the world, powerless to overcome them.

But this is not how it is intended to be. We are fighters! We were made to fight gravity. We were also made to easily overcome apathy and lethargy. I'm not even sure we are even supposed to know what those things are. But we do. We actually know many things and "foes" we should not know because we don't engage in the wonderful things we were made to do. We have put down one of our greatest weapons: Movement.

It is sad that we fear falling. It is sad that adults fear not being able to get up off the floor. It is sad that we run to the comfort of a couch over the adventure of a sunset. This needs to change. It is time to arm ourselves again. It is time to start purposefully sparring with gravity, to learn how to move against it, to push away from it in every way imaginable. The more we move, the more we "fight", the more we realize our identity: We are fighters - overcomers, adventurers, life embracers, and rose smellers! At least we were made to be. We cannot be who we were made to be if we don't embrace the things we were made to do.

Fight.

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