Struggle On Purpose

MyLife Essay Contest

Fighters train to fight by fighting.

Visualize your everyday internal spiritual or emotional struggles in the way of the grapplers described in Tanya. This way we can consider actionable solutions to pervasive anxiety, frustration, and even depression due to the mistaken idea that finite happiness is actually attainable, that the pursuit of happiness has an end.

This pursuit has no end. It is important to learn that there are victories and defeats, successes and failures. Growth occurs with both, because of both. Battling inclinations to do things you know you’ll regret? It’s time to think like a fighter.

Early in Chapter 26 of Likutei Amarim, the Alter Rebbe uses the metaphor of two wrestlers in discussing the internal battles between our good inclination and that of the other direction. The Alter Rebbe explains that one who is not lazy and perseveres with determination can defeat a more physically imposing and capable opponent.

Victory depends on attitude as much as aptitude, if not more. But a fighting spirit is mere wind when confronted with a technically sound and devastating judo throw or powerful flying fists, knees, and elbows.

We have to build our fighter inside. And not just with books and lectures. That’s like hitting the punching bag. It’s a good work out, it helps us to stay fit, but the bag doesn’t hit back.

A modern MMA fighter spends many hours on a daily basis drilling techniques in wrestling and grappling, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, striking, working on strength and conditioning – days with schedules and goals, meetings, diet plans, and the business of trying to acquire sponsors to support his lifestyle he’d like to make his career.

But the cage is the truth of it. And so they meet their teammates in the cage and fight through shadow boxing, dirty boxing, light contact, heavier contact, implementing the combinations, set ups, takedowns, and submissions they’ve drilled over and over. Slip a punch, deliver a hook to set up a body kick. Moving, breathing, flowing with it, learning and learning every burning step of the way that the win is in the heart, that the body simply needs to catch up to the heart.

So you train the body. And in training the body, you train the spirit, your will. Constantly, for the fight will come. And when it comes, on the other side of the cage won’t stand a partner whose goal is your growth, improvement, and achievement. On the other side, at least temporarily, is an opponent. Your enemy.

Fighters have so much to teach us about the heart’s determination and perseverance, and how to move under pressure. Because there’s always a fight for all of us, in all of us, so fight we must. And win or lose, the outcome has to teach us something in order to improve for the next time. There’s always another problem to solve, issue to face, decision to make. There’s always another fighter trained just as you are, with the same intensity and purpose, waiting to be called out and meet you in the ring.

Here we have our dual inclinations meeting in the ring. Good fighters know they have to end the fight before the fight ends them. The often quoted Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”

But metaphysics is in the streets. The fight at our core – the center ring under the focused lights – must be reflected in our daily lives if we are to succeed in our spiritual lives. So we have to struggle on purpose. With purpose, too, but decidedly. Because purpose is divine and the fighting is holy.

So the key is to find something to be purposeful about, to train ourselves to accept challenge and defeat and to recognize the importance of not giving up if we want to achieve with any sense of accomplishment. The fight is about taking something on that you want to see to continuous fruition, to achieve a level of personal growth. Take that on and you’ll be well equipped to take on the emotional or spiritual battles that await.

What’s your fight?

Accepting the Alter Rebbe’s metaphor, visualizing our struggles as such, and accepting too that these given struggles should be occasions to recognize Gd’s very presence and guidance in your corner for this fight and every other, we should then know of ourselves that the body has to catch up with the heart. So we need to train it.

The intellectual and spiritual battle of our minds requires study. But it also requires drills.

And fighters train to fight by fighting.

How is all of this applicable? How does it translate to the streets, to real life?

Is the mundane day-to-day your prison or your Eden? What are your passions? Are you challenged by life or challenging life? Are you ever purposefully risking failure doing something you love?

I suggest that integral training for the spiritual fight can be found in the physical world. There is a plethora of evidence that play, movement, and creative endeavors alleviate anxieties, pressures, depression, and even pain. What are those but symptoms of soul wrenching defeats of the spirit inherent in the intellect or emotions?

Out of the books, away from the desk, outside of your job – if you’re not lucky enough to work for a living at your passion – there are things we can do to challenge ourselves and grow through trial and error, triumph and failure, in such ways that enhance our understanding of the fight, where our strengths are, where our weaknesses bring us down. And putting effort into these activities, hobbies, passions, and even whims can give us the sense of accomplishment and achievement we need to develop the right attitude a strategist needs to overcome any opponent before the fight even begins.

Play guitar. And then learn to play the guitar. You will find it difficult. It will get easier, until you find more difficult pieces to play. And then you might want to write your own songs. It doesn’t get any easier. You’ll love it.

Bang a drum. And then learn to play the drums. Find a rhythm that moves you. Then find another.

Fill a canvas with paints. And then learn to paint. Choose your medium: oil, watercolor. Then choose another. Speak in color and shadow and light, see the pliability of the world around you in pencil or chalk or ink.

The pursuit of happiness has no end goal. The pursuit is everything. The beauty of life is the struggle of life. Create.

Shape clay, sing, dance, or go to the gym and box, grapple, or swim like no one else on the planet.

Cook dinner with your favorite herbs and meats. And then try some recipes. Have guests over. Serve your mother-in-law your newest creation. Try vegan, Thai, Mediterranean, Caribbean, or Indian. Over cook, under cook, burn your rice. Learn, retry, taste heaven.

Fill a page with words infused with your truth. (Actually, keep doing that no matter what you end up doing.) Do it often. Learn about what you actually think. Tap into the central facts of the issues. Or play with language and paint meaning with words.

Find that thing you love to do or have loved to do or want to love to do. And do it. The doing gets done in the doing. Living is practice for life. Fighting is practice for the fight.

Find that thing and do it for fun. And then do it to learn, to struggle how to do it better, and with purity of intent.

You will smile. You will sweat. You will stumble. You will cry. You will utterly fail. But if you maintain that visualization of your soul in conflict, a grappler, a fighter, then you will know that there’s no giving up. There’s just getting up. And getting at it again.

So you train your mind and your body to melt the ice of doubt and laziness held in the course shell of your flesh, muscle, and bone – you build your ability to push yourself to the edge, to challenge yourself in order to get to the core self and express that truth in the world because that’s the truth with which you will fulfill your purpose in the constant creation of existence.

The conflict of our souls, visualized as the Alter Rebbe expounded, is the image of determination, perseverance, and heart working in concert with the body, ready to pound the evil inclination into submission. Until the next time.

About the Author:

David Karpel is forever struggling. A middle school and high school English and Social Studies teacher, he thanks G-d he is married to the funniest woman in the world and that they have two freakishly well-behaved children. He has also attained a black belt in tae kwon do, has been certified as a Krav Maga instructor, and regularly trains in Brazilian jiu jitsu and muay Thai.