By Bart Barry-
A large portion of my thoughts in the last few months has gone to the consequences of a psychological compass that does not point due north but instead a few or many degrees east or west of its magnetic calling and the events – disease and depression and addiction, specifically (and often kinfolk) – that can cause such untrustworthiness. I’ve been having many fewer relatable thoughts lately so nothing should be read into the outsized portion of this thinking; it’s more like a portion of a fraction than anything direr.
No subject more interesting than this happened in our sport Saturday, and as some of this might pertain to Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev’s upcoming rematch, it feels appropriate as not a time to treat such things.
The metaphor to the compass feels aptest because there are few scenarios more dispiriting than finding oneself lost in the woods with a compass one doubts. But here’s one: Being lost in the woods with a faulty compass one trusts absolutely. Magnetism and electricity and polarity and the rest ensure this doesn’t happen, but all the more reason to use it as a metaphor. Blinded by rage, as an example of a competing metaphor, feels comparatively flimsy; the blind person is well aware he doesn’t have sight and compensates for his blindness in sundry ways. Depression and disease and addiction in general do not work quite that way; a diseased person is not blind at all but rather filled with vibrant sight of a world that is sideways or motioning backwards or colored otherwise.
This is why oldfashioned appeals to bootstrapping and willfulness bring exponents of satisfaction more to their speechmakers than their audiences: “I remember when I overcame blah blah blah by making a list of blah blah blah and doing blah blah blah, daily!”
Yes, but what if you can’t help misplacing your list, or finding your whiteboard routinely erased, or adhering to a calendar that mixes days with weeks and hours?
A lesser malady to all this and a nearly universal part of the human condition is anxiety. Back when I had many more relatable thoughts than I have lately I committed a disproportionate portion of these thoughts to anxiety’s eradication. Identifying one’s anxiety, though, becomes an exercise fulfilling as picking oneself up by his own hair: a robust and ceaseless search for anxiety’s every harbinger evinces nothing so much as anxiety, and what could be more anxious than an anxiety-hunt that causes anxiety? And around.
And around.
There are ways to begin in a better direction, yes – and if anyone relates painfully to any of this, at least try a meditation routine of some sort before arcing the white towel over toprope – but if there be an ultimate solution, however temporarily enjoyed, it resides, again and probably, in anxiety’s eradication, not its maintenance. And the irony of that riddle is here: Anxiety reduces in most cases to narcissism, and a partial remedy to that seems to be this: Endeavor to make others like the version of themselves they are in your presence. Inwards to outwards to inwards to outwards; the remedy to the first problem, faithfully applied, is nearly the opposite of the second problem’s remedy. #WelcomeToLife
This is a boxing column?
OK, OK.
The art of championship prizefighting – used in this case like a synonym for combat between two evenly matched men – is many times the art of discomfiting another man by repeatedly making him do something he does not wish to do till he is exhausted. Sluggers do this by giving their opponents pain with each blow; boxers do this by frustrating their opponents’ offense and punctuating that frustration with counters that sting; volume punchers do it by setting a pace that is at least a beat or two faster than their opponents’ natural fighting rhythms.
Being thus discomfited becomes an emotional or at least mental state from which the world’s best prizefighters must recover quickly. It’s a function of proper conditioning much as the physical elements are – who can return closest to full strength, however defined, in the 60 seconds between rounds (while the very best, like Floyd Mayweather, are able to do it midround).
Since this entire column is an aside of sorts, let’s have one more: Emotional states work like this, too, for all of us, and the folks we consider the stablest are at best marginally less prone to disequilibrium from life’s quotidian events but mark themselves exceptional via quicker recovery times.
Much of Andre Ward’s comportment since his questionable decisioning of Sergey Kovalev in November, one hopes, is attributable to some effort to discomfit Kovalev prefight by making Kovalev so angry his compass stops pointing due north. Some of this, too, could be a matter of good luck: Ward’s generally unlikable demeanor and his promoter’s generally accepted incompetence are events Kovalev mistakes for personal affronts, but beyond a certain talent threshold, we already know, the greatest professional accomplishments are leavened significantly by luck.
Trying to divine the arbitrary border where talent ends and luck begins (beginning with the luck of one’s genetic predispositions that begin with the luck of one’s parents) is an anxious fool’s errand that unduly courts what anxiety someday can court disease, depression and addiction. And we shan’t have that.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
