Rise Up

How many times in your life have you been shot down?  Or, if you’re like me on some days, how many times a day have you been metaphorically beaten down?

Maybe your work just wasn’t up to par.  Or maybe you can’t hit par, the real par in your golf game.

Perhaps everything you tried, failed or was rejected.  Or try as hard as you can, you can’t make headway, or worse, fall back a peg.

We’ve all been knocked down and had to get back up again.  It’s about the proverbial get back atop the horse after you’ve been thrown to the ground.  Or who hasn’t fallen off of their bike, only to get back on the saddle again.

I grew up going to the roller-skating rink and in the process, we learned that you fall down periodically and you just get back up and do it all over again.  I think I benefited from that experience of falling down and getting back up.

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from trauma.  Studies over the last fifty years show that the most significant factor in how resilient you are in the face of difficult situations is how loved you felt as a child.  That’s something to ponder.

I’ve known some people who’ve faced unimaginably difficult situations and bounced back seemingly quickly.  Then there are others who, after years, even decades, can’t seem to fully recover after a relatively minor psychological or physical boo-boo.

As an adult hiker, I’ve had my share of fall-downs.  As a middle-old adult I realize that falling down isn’t the end of the world.  It might hurt sometimes more than others, but eventually most of us recover, to do it all over again.  We don’t stay down.

How many rounds in terms of the fight, does a fighter get knocked down yet gets back up to fight some more?  Being knocked down seems to be on a continuum from the life knocked out of us or our family members or friends, literally, to getting the wind knocked out of you for a few seconds.

Some of us have been knocked out of a job that we dreamed of.  Or, we’ve been knocked out of a relationship that we thought was ours and it failed, died or was stolen.  We’ve had our health knocked out of us, to be cured or cared for so that we can recover our get-up-and-go.

I realize that the same circumstances that knock me out may not knock you down and vice versa.  The thing that we share, however, is that we both got back up, in our own way, or you wouldn’t be reading this.

I wonder if a sort of resilience is built into our humanity?  I’m guessing we all have the capacity to learn how to get back up and do it all again after being knocked down.  But some of us have and some of us haven’t developed the skill.

In 1314, Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland said to his troops shortly before walloping the English at Bannockburn, “If at first you don’t succeed try, try and try again.”  It’s best, we’re told, not to fear failure but rather fear not trying.

Andra Day sings in her amazingly uplifting song, Rise Up, “You’re broken down and tired of living life on a merry go round…. And you can’t find the fighter, but I see it in you…. All we need is hope, and for that we have each other….  And we will rise up, rise like the day, rise up, rise unafraid…. We’ll take the world to its feet and move mountains…. We’ll rise up, high like the waves, rise up, in spite of the ache….” 

As with each day the sun rises anew, we’re endued with the hope that we too can rise up to face another day.  You never know what this day will bring, let’s rise up and check it out.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.