The Stroke

I row one stroke at a time. When I strap my feet in to the ergometer or racing shell, I try to keep this in mind. A race in the sport of rowing consists of a few hundred pulls of the oar, each harder and ultimately more crucial than the previous. I stare at the back of the rower in front of me. I think to myself that he is going through the same pain as I am, but is he truly experiencing it the same way as me? When I push off the foot stretcher and lean on the oar, is the pain that shoots through my quadriceps the same pain that explodes in his? I breathe deep each stroke, trying to maintain some sort of consistency throughout the whole race. If I don't breathe properly, I won't make it out alive. I try to take my mind off the numbing pain of my muscles and concentrate on my breathing. Each breath as steady as I can make it. I try desperately not to gasp for air but instead draw it in to my lungs evenly and quickly. Each stroke I take is history a fraction of a second later and thus no longer is of concern to me except to reference how hard I should pull the next stroke: much, much harder. The water that splashes in my face is incidental and I pretend that it's blood spraying from the animal that I am slowly killing: weakness. It struggles for survival but doesn't stand a chance at the end of the race. It has left me and lost the battle. I have left every ounce of energy on the water and I struggle to sit upright, but now I am allowed to gasp for air like I've never had the pleasure of breathing before. I look at the course in front of me, littered with bloody limbs and guts from that animal I've just slain. My sense of hearing returns and I am no longer listening to only my rapid heartbeat. The dockmaster yells on the bullhorn to bring it in and I snap back to reality, check my hands to make sure it really wasn't blood that I was seeing and silently lean on the oar far more lightly and return to the dock.

Much like rowing, I try to live one "stroke" at a time. Each day must be conquered more forcefully than the previous. If it is not, I risk falling in to an unbreakable cycle of monotony that lacks the excitement of an unknown future. Fortunately, I have not had any major setbacks in my life. I remember my mother telling me my grandmother was in the hospital after suffering a stroke in a grocery store parking lot and probably wasn't going to live much longer. I remember crying for a few minutes. Perhaps this was the first real notion of human mortality that I experienced. I was not sad, however. She was old, and as far as I know led a fulfilling life full of happiness and love. What more could I wish for her? She even got one of her biggest wishes realized: sending my sister and I to college. I eventually accepted the fact that she had passed and my family and I continued living our lives, but I've never forgotten the fact that I owe a part of my university existence to my grandparents. That is why I can't and usually don't let incidental things bother me. Someone in the Crew Club talks about me behind my back because of a leadership decision I made...so what? That's part of leading a group of people. I make a fool of myself in front of an attractive girl by recoiling like a scared box turtle and forgetting what kinds of things to talk about...who cares? I'm lucky in this moment to have a girlfriend that loves me the in the same way that I love her. Everything that's happened to me in the past four years has been either positive or rewarding or incidental.

I take the negatives in my life like I take the pain of rowing.
I beat down one painful stroke at a time, beckoning each future one to take its best shot.