One of the perils of learning how to box is that you end up getting punched.
So far it hasn't been that bad -- more like getting bopped. (I'm the boxing equivalent of a pink belt, so I'm just dodging pads.)
However, the principle remains: you see a fist come flying at you, you duck. You come back up, you punch. You snooze, pow.
There is something uniquely humiliating about this. I'm slow. I don't like being attacked. I don't like being made to do something according to barked instructions, and then do it over and over and over until I get it right.
The indignant little girl in me wants to stomp her foot and say she's not playing. The indignant adult in me wants to say screw it, I don't have time. Both the girl and the adult want an ice cream cone.
Yet I hold on. I'm not sure if I find discipline secretly sexy, if I like that sweat-drenched, exhausted feeling afterward, or if I just enjoy the simple satisfaction of progress. (After beating the crap out of me, the woman I'm boxing with always cheerfully says how well it's going.)
I never thought I could do this. After many series of inelegant swings and bops, I've almost cried. You have to trust the other person and just plow through it.
I guess this is called taking your lumps . . .
3 comments:
One good thing about getting hit is that it demystifies the experience. A lot of people like us have been shielded from birth from physical violence, and so have an exaggerated sense of how bad it is. For children, especially, who understand the world very physically, I suspect this isn't a good thing.
I don't know if I agree with you. Much like the child who is bitten by a dog and subsequently lives his life in fear of dogs, the child who is hit might see fists everywhere. Don't you think?
I suppose so. In my scenario, the hitting becomes experience, and the personality draws upon it; in yours, it becomes trauma, and the personality withdraws from it. I guess either one can happen.
Folk wisdom says you should get back on a horse immediately after being thrown. I guess folk wisdom sees the fall as a trauma in the making, but one that can be turned back into experience by timely action. Maybe it's a fine line.
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