The Wall
My friend hits daily against a wall. He aims toward two anonymously drawn chalk boxes, decides to start then hits one ball and begins counting, keeping track of all his streaks. The monolith gives him information. By pitting himself against it, he learns how to maneuver in real time. How to half-way, how to not-quite, how to try a different approach. He learns how to handle honest feedback, how to come to terms with fair, how to make peace with the annoying ever-winner.
The obstacle, a twelve-foot-tall training tool. His best buddy and, at once, his greatest rival.
The great, green barrier is his life-lab. A reflector constantly posing riddles that he alone might someday solve.
If our minutes were to be graphed, drawn with a pencil on paper providing an all-sides view, our days would likely look like a maze. A massive cluster of tunnels with multiple half-breaches and dead ends at every other turn. Walls are so everywhere (Where did that spiderweb come from? I need to cut that limb.) that many don’t even register as blockades in our minds. We simply bounce right off them, complicitly changing direction, strivers at the mercy of their brawn.
Just yesterday I ran into an invisible one with my face.
I was hungry. It was hot. I heard it thunder and I prayed that it would rain. But I really wanted to write.
The Cincinnati Open was on, Jess Pegula was playing. So was Taylor Fritz. The Fed Ex Cup was in a runaway. I poured a Diet Coke on ice. But I was really trying to write.
The blank page stared at me from my laptop, the blinking cursor taunting like a playground bully. I ignored it and walked down the driveway to check the box for mail.
The wall draws my attention to the random roads I take that I don’t want to. The way I let my mind run like a dog without a leash. When I finally sat down to do it, every sentence I constructed led to a closed barn door. Every thought-line hit a hurdle that I couldn’t clear. So, I called a writer friend who sometimes speaks in Haiku. He reminded me to not be so disgusted but to give thanks for, and rapt attention to, the wall. “It has plenty to tell you,” I think is what he said.
I didn’t care for his answer, but then I zoomed in tightly and it melted.
Sometimes walls are cinder blocks imprinted on tissue paper. Sometimes they are coarse-grained granite that cannot be burst through. But regardless of their height or breadth, they serve a purpose. A neutral Switzerland-ish purpose. They pass no judgement nor do they come with their hands out asking for anything. They just pop up. And in so doing, they remind us that it’s up to us. The decision, the effort, the focus, the move. The learning, the trusting, the loving. Every bit of it. It’s up to us, how and when, not all at once.
Walls teach us to adjust. Some hurdles we can learn to hop right over. Some we need to tunnel under; some we need to run around. Others have to be dismantled, a brick-by-brick endeavor to get to the other side. Some we wonder at and weep. The secret, if there is one, is to befriend them.
“Hi, I’m here,” the wall says. “Are you?”