Yin vs YangThe Battle for Success in Life

In my last post I told you how I got my ass kicked on a regular basis. I’m sure you had a laugh. Such is life. Another childhood story about courage.

I’m sure many of you have a brother or sister, cousin or family member whose aim in life was to torture your existence. I have older boy cousins. They are about 10-13 years older than me. Their idea of fun when we were little was things like, filling my sneakers with tadpoles,driving me on a snowmobile and flipping it on purpose, to shooting BB guns at me as I run for my life. Those BB’s hurt like hell!

One summer I went to stay with my Uncle Jim and Aunt Lucile and my 3 older cousins: James, Joseph, and Keith. Boy did I have fun, there’s nothing like hanging out with the older kids when your 10. But along with acting cool comes a price to pay. Everyday we would do something together. Rather they would do something to the proverbial guinea pig …ME.

One night we watched a horror film together. I was really scared. Not even so much from the movie. I thought to myself “wow, I have not been harmed in some shape for or fashion today.  Somethings up…” Sometimes it was the usual rush and tackle. Other times their tricks were more cerebral. This time they devised a plan to lure me into one of their spare bedrooms and before I knew it I was ambushed. One lifted me by my legs and and the other lifted me under my arms. They placed me sideways like a pig in a blanket in an old rickety beat up metal folding cot.

FOLDED AND LOCKED IT!

Thank God when I was 10 I was a toothpick. They locked the latch as I am screaming bloody murder. I swore I would take my revenge on them and have their heads on a platter (who was I kidding I didn’t own any swords and didn’t even know what a platter was I was 10), as they stuck me in a closet, locked in a cot, my arms next to me, and only my head and feet sticking out of the sides. A living Chris in a blanket or a cot.

I yelled and did my best Hulk impression but nothing worked. I was stuck. To make matters worse, my cousin Keith, who was the youngest and most diabolical of them all, used to capture animals in the woods, some which he kept… They told me there were snakes in the closet, LOOSE!

I freaked. I honestly was in the closet for probably about a half hour. They both stood outside the door hissing for 30 minutes. Kicking and banging the door, while I was stuck in the dark closet. I was completely traumatized by this experience. So much so, that it carried over into later years. Anytime I got stuck in an elevator or a confined place I would completely lose my cool. Sweat would bead up and fall down my face frantically. I would start to panic and lose my breath. This stayed with me for a long time up until adulthood.  One time I was with my fiance (then girlfriend) in a store, and I started to sweat because it was crowded. I mean sweat, like heavily. Who wants to be next to the human water fountain?

A few years into college I took a summer job with a friend. We ran electric wires for outdoor lighting. The job was a summer thing so I was pretty bored of it. One job we had to run the coaxial cable from the deck of the house under a wooden deck, to the gazebo which was about 50 feet away. Under the deck was a crawl space about 2 1/2 feet high. This would give me enough breathing room to military crawl the entire way. However I had to be facing the deck, so instead I had to shimmy on my back the entire way. My friend who was a Marine got into a very bad car accident right home from the service and broke his back in 3 places. Suffice to say he couldn’t get under the deck. So I had no choice but to do it.

I started to freak out inside. Then I calmed myself down and realized I was the only person who could do this at that moment, it needed to be done and there is no choice in the matter. When your in a situation when it’s now or never sometimes you don’t have the luxury to rationalize. I laid down and started to shimmy, at first really slow. Then I started to think to myself, ‘WOW I am going to be attacked by a king cobra.’ I said to myself, ‘Self..’ lol.  No I didn’t say that.  That would make me insane.  I said ‘Chris, you are not in the closet.  That was 15 years ago. You are here in the dirt safe under a deck. Now sit up (no don’t sit up) and act right.’ That’s what my grandfather would say to me when I acted up as a young one. From that moment on my fear was gone. I actually got the job done faster than I thought.  After a while I actually enjoyed doing it. I felt like I could have brought a 6-pack and a few TV dinners down there to camp out for a week.

The point of this story is not about me getting tortured through out childhood. It’s to show how we all drag old memories into the present. We are not the past. The past is gone and it will never return. Conversely the future is forever tomorrow, and the only glimpse of the future you ever get is in the now. Don’t take your past failures or issues into the present. They are nothing but old baggage that’s out of style. Trash ‘em!  As people I feel we are much too hard on ourselves. We forgive others so easily but we forgive ourselves the least. Realize its a new day, and with that comes new opportunities. Courage is measured in many ways, staying resolute in the face of your fears is the building blocks of courage.

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Growing up I was always rather shy. I got picked on a few times in school. It wasn’t as if I was really afraid of other kids, rather, just unprepared. One time when I was young an older kid on our block used to pick on me relentlessly. I mean this kid would take ice cream out of other kids hands (I grew up in Brooklyn and there was a whole army of these type of kids)…Anyhow one day this kid made my little sister cry (mind you my sister was 3 and I was 8 ) I can’t remember specifically what had happen, but we got into an altercation over it and he punched me in the chin. It didn’t hurt all that much. For some odd reason I didn’t hit him back. My grandfather was standing in the window. I was shocked more than anything I guess. Probably a little too young to have an inflated ego to mend. Old enough to know that I just got punched by the neighborhood bully…

When I went inside my grandfather came over to me in a hurry. He said “Don’t you ever let someone take advantage of you, you do whatever you have to in the face of fear.” Actually….Being a WW2 Vet and tough as nails plus a very blunt man. It sounded more like “Come here! You see that guy over there? If someone bigger than you ever hits you like that again. You grab the nearest object and hit him with it. Then ask him if he still has a problem!” Now I am not promoting violence in the least. And neither was he, but he was saying something the older generation got well, stand up for yourself.

2 days later, here comes Niko (the same bully, a big Greek 13 year old boy, from down the block).. My grandfather the day before, cut down a Mimosa tree in our backyard. He sawed all the logs into pieces for the garbage men to take. In Brooklyn if you don’t make your garbage organized they have a habit of “not seeing it”. They were piled in a heap by the driveway. Niko as usual had something abusive to say to me, then pushed me over the logs..I fell, and for a split second even though I was afraid, reasoning measured the odds quickly and I figured they sucked. In one motion I grabbed a piece of log that would start a wonderful fire. Blam!!! I clocked him right in the forehead… He ran home crying.  Suffice to say he never bothered me again. Matter of fact we became friends afterwards.

My point to this story about getting my ass kicked on a consistent basis is this:

Courage is not about being a superhero. Superheros I am sure they are even scared putting on their tights! Even soldiers or trained combatants are afraid. Its not about having no fear. That’s a cliche. In real life fear lets you know something is not right. It’s a survival mechanism. It’s about being afraid and controlling yourself enough to do something anyway. That’s in situations with bullies, and in life. A great quote from the movie Three Kings “You do the thing you are scared shit-less of, THEN you get the courage. Not before.” A soldier remarks “well that’s a raw deal..” I guess so but look on the bright side, it’s through the doing of that which you are terrified of, you find out how courageous you really are. You find your capacity is limitless.

Courage

1.the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.