Post by Asriel Buzzard on Jan 5, 2021 4:32:13 GMT -6
Hebrews 10:36 “For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.”
Often, these days, people talk about the need to be resilient. They mean that it is important to be able to bounce back from setbacks and times when you are knocked flat on your back.
Am I a resilient man?
Sure. I have become one. The fact that I am still here, after all the setbacks, is resilience made manifest. That I have not simply ceased to try, ceased to move forward, ceased to be… is proof of my resilience in the face of setback after knockdown and knockdown after setback throughout my life.
Casting my eyes back to the newspaper, I crumple the page which I had been reading about the most recent tragedy to befall the world. The ink of the newspaper colouring my fingers as I stretch back in my chair and exhale.
1 Corinthians 16:13 “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.”
When I was a boy, those setbacks began in earnest. However, one strikes me the hardest, even if I did not realise why at the time.
Before I left my school and my family behind for the Legion (or the First Legion of Christ’s Kingdom to give it their full name), I did not have many friends. In fact, I was an insular and quiet boy at school.
However, there was one boy who spoke to me often. He was a tall, African American boy named George who was also insular and quiet. A kind and gentle soul, perhaps sensing a kinship with me based on being similar troubled individuals, he struck up conversation with me most days. He was pleasant and we spoke often but, if I’m honest, I never considered him a friend as such.
When I left school, I didn’t see or speak to George again. I was spending my time on the Legion’s ranch, I was spending time with my new friends and learning a new way to live.
A few years after I last saw him, I was looking at a newspaper that someone had left on a bus one day and I read about his death.
George had been in a grocery store and ended up in a confrontation with the staff. He had punched a man who tried to remove him from the store and after he left, brandished a small, blunt knife as a means of threatening those around him and the police who confronted him. They followed him back to his house – almost a dozen of them - and when he wouldn’t drop the “weapon” they shot him dead in front of his family.
I sat on the bus dazed by this news. He wasn’t a violent boy, he was a troubled boy and it seemed that his demons had got the better of him. Rather than a dangerous thug, he was a troubled young man who needed help, not bullets.
A young man ignored and failed by a system that chooses to ignore those who need help in favour of focusing upon those who are loud and demanding attention. A man who could still have been with us now if the system and most people knew how to reach out with an open hand rather than an itchy trigger finger or a fist.
When I returned to the ranch, other young men were also talking about him. However, they were discussing this from another perspective with a celebratory tone.
He was dangerous. He was a threat. He was a violent criminal with a long rap sheet. The police had done the right thing.
“You didn’t know him!” I thought as they spat lies and rumours but I kept quiet. Over the years, I would come to believe the prejudices and stereotypes that led them to celebrate this young man’s death. And then, in years to come, I would unlearn them.
However, at the time, it knocked me down and I wasn’t sure how I would be able to get back up.
Galatians 6:9 “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
What does this have to do with professional wrestling, you may ask. I could thumb through this newspaper to try to find any reference to professional wrestling but I think I would be unsuccessful. Our careers and our chances within the industry do not happen within a vacuum. The resilience that we build up outside of professional wrestling equips us to deal with the issues we face within it. The same is true for arrogance or privilege, these traits which are built up away from the industry lead to professional wrestlers who cannot deal with setbacks or knockdowns.
As I reflect on my resilience throughout my life, I also reflect upon my first half a year in EWC. A period bookended by wins in show opening matches against no-name talents. A period where the disappointments outweigh the positives, despite not actually being pinned at any point during 2020 in EWC. Being so unceremoniously dumped out of the EWC Rumble, losing by count out to Scorpio, watching Bosa snatch the pinfall at WrestleFest… It has been a year where my resilience has been tested.
However, I am more than able to come back from these setbacks. That I can overcome the amount of death, dismay and destruction that has found its way into my personal life equips me to overcome setbacks in my new professional life.
While 2020 has not been my year, it has been closer to being my year than any year has been since I was born. I am richer, I am stronger, I am smarter and I am more aware of the world than at any point in my life.
2020 may not have been my year but I don’t see any reason why 2021 cannot be.
Romans 8:18 “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
As I toss the newspaper into the trash today, I think back to how floored I was when I came across the news about that young man who I went to school with.
That I have been able to bounce back without help and support, for the most part, is more miracle than strength of character. I could easily have been the young boy whose demons got the better of him and whose death was reported in the newspaper.
The fact that I was not is an added impetus to keep moving forward and to achieve more in 2021.
For those who cannot.
For eternal glory.
Rest in peace, George.
