One constant in everyone’s life is, at some point, we will be told to mature. Whether it be 1st Corinthians (when I became a man, I gave up childish ways), the Desiderata (Take kindly the council of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth) or your significant other (Aren’t you ever going to GROW UP?!) it’s a pretty common theme, one that we all face in our lives. I had one of those moments this past week, but not for the usual reasons.
I have been watching professional wrestling my entire life. I don’t remember a Saturday morning as a kid when I wasn’t watching it. I even remember that fateful day, when I was about ten years old. I was watching Pedro Morales, one of my favorites, defending his Intercontinental championship. He was losing, with his opponent doing damage to his right knee, but like any good champion Pedro rallied, and was all set to deliver his finishing move and win the match. Problem is, his finishing move was an atomic knee drop. He went to use the bad knee, failed, and lost. I turned to my dad, befuddled and sad, and asked “Why would he use his bad knee?” My dad got a very uncomfortable look on his face, and I could tell what it was he didn’t want to tell me.
I continued to watch it pretty regularly anyway, even buying a few of the PPV events. Recently I was DVR’ing the weekly episodes, which made it possible to watch a two hour show in 45 minutes. But lately I decided that I was going to stop watching. Not because I was suddenly mature, not because I wanted to stop wasting time watching television (I’m currently watching The Incredibles for about the fifth time, if not more) and not because there has suddenly been a huge change in how they do it. The reason I stopped watching was because of something that was already part of who I am.
I got tired of watching bad guys win.
There have always been good guys and bad guys in wrestling. (“Faces” and “Heels” in wrestling parlance.) And of course, even though the matches are scripted, it would get real boring if the good guys won every match. I just found myself realizing that I didn’t need the negative reinforcement in my life. I’d watch it to relax, to take my mind away from the stressful crap parts of life, and here I was watching the crap be rewarded. I don’t need that. As the fantastically positive painter Bob Ross said when asked about his calm demeanor and happiness, “Shoot, if you want bad stuff, watch the news.”
And it’s easy for someone to read this and say that I’m doing my ostrich impersonation and burying my head in the sand. And it’s easy to look at this as actually being more childish by refusing to accept and face the negative parts of life. That’s not the case at all. I accept that there are negative things in this world, some in our control and some out of it. It is sometimes because of negative things that we become better people, whether it be responding to a crisis or learning from mistakes. I don’t hide from what is going on in the world. I read the paper-such as it is down here-every day. I understand that, no matter what we do, bad things will happen. I don’t care what environmentalist might say about the renewal of forests; Colorado on fire is not a positive thing. This is our world, warts and all.
But we all have a choice of what we allow in our lives. Make no mistake, everything that is in our lives affects us. The challenge is to eliminate as much of the negative influences that we can, or at least find a way to balance them. You may not be able to change the dour attitude your boss walks around all day with, but you can balance it by focusing your energy on the positive attributes of your job. You can make the effort to refrain from socializing with friends who are pessimistic and instead find a new social outlet with positive people. I can’t put out the fires, I can’t create peace in the Middle East, and I can’t even stop friends from dying of cancer. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste what precious time I have celebrating the glorification of negativity.
I got too many stories to write and sunsets to watch.
PopcornJackTerry 