“When We Get Knocked Down, We Get Back Up.”
Let me say right up front…this is a quasi-political piece. But stay with me because it’s actually more.
It’s about a basic reality of life and living.
I’m a news junkie. Watch without fail. Being a journalism undergrad, it’s a mainstay for me. I’d still work for a news organization even today. Few things matter more than facts and information.
Last night, just like millions of others, I went to sleep feeling like I just watched an accident that I didn’t want to see, yet couldn’t look away.
And this morning, I woke with a deja vu sick-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach feeling like I did 8 years ago after election night. I don’t drink, but it had to have been the closest thing to a hangover imaginable. Today wasn’t much different.
Much can happen in 90-minutes.
And last night, this presidential “debate” was like being tossed off a boat. Not slowly, but fast. And going down like the sea creatures that feed off the bottom.
I agonized over what I was watching and hearing.
I felt myself saying aloud…what the hell is happening here. I kept asking myself what’a wrong with Joe. I was blaming his prep team for overworking an 81 year-old-man, filling his head with data and stats and running him through mock debates to his exhaustion.
I was pissed at these experts.
And despite deciding not to listen to any of the pundits or commentators afterward as I felt emotionally drained, I hopped into bed and watched anyway. For far too long.
I listened to the “he needs to be replaced” and “someone else needs to step up to save our Democracy” statements from the mouths of many. And many who I respect and would vote for myself.
By 12:30 in the morning, I was exhausted and agreed with many of them. Maybe there’s a part of me right now that still does, but it’s complicated.
And then today, a little more than 12 hours later, I heard President Biden speaking at a rally.
He stopped me cold. I thought…wait. What’s going on here? What happened? Where was he last night? I felt betrayed in a strange way.
And then, along with this man honestly acknowledging his truths with heart and integrity — I don’t walk like I did before, I don’t debate like I did before, I have trouble with my words, he said something that brought me to tears.
He said…”When we get knocked down, we get back up.” Holy crap.
This said it all. About him. About me. About us all.
I can only speak for myself, but I’ve been knocked down plenty in my life. Still am. Sometimes daily.
Days where the thought of continuing to push feels overwhelming.
Nights where sadness and grief make sleep challenging and elusive.
Weeks where it feels like I’m slogging through wet sand.
And then I went to notes I took from a book I just finished reading and highly recommend — “The Gift” by Edith Eger…
…where she says, “If we give up now, we’ll never get to see what happens next.”
If we give up, can we regroup and get back up again? Do we have what it takes to do so? Do we even want to? These issues often feel like a battle…with ourselves.
I thought about these words from Joe Biden and about last night’s “performance,” comparing it to a Broadway show that would have closed after opening night. But would it. How many days do we have the same, where we want to call it a day, or year, and just give up?
We blew something. We made a mistake. We made a bad choice. We were running on empty. Maybe we knew it at the time or not until afterward. But we weren’t on our game — or any game — and disappointed ourselves and sometimes others too.
It’s easy as hell to pack it in. To decide not to keep going. Sometimes we do need to stop for a bit. Try again. Walk another path.
It’s really a risk/reward proposition where only we know on which side we’re standing. Sometimes we take the risk without knowing whether there will be a reward on the other side. But we do it anyway.
President Biden did both. The risk was listening to his “handlers” and the reward was waking up today and walking *his* path, not one determined by others who may have tried to set him up for success, but failed miserably. There are no guarantees about what’s next, but he’s got my respect for getting back up yet again.
I wrote a piece here recently where I spoke about people caring for our loved ones and the need to listen to them or those who know them best. Sometimes, even with the best of intentions, we think we know what’s best but in reality, we blow it. And there are times when, if we listened and got out of our own heads and instead tried to embrace theirs, the outcomes could be so much different.
Joe Biden knows himself best. The problem with last night was that others assumed they knew him better. Now it’s a question of whether he can indeed get back up and stay there. Clearly he’s giving it his all.
I think this is one of the most important things I’ve learned and continue to learn about life. It’s not the getting knocked down, which is part of life, that matters. It’s the getting back up, time and time again, that matters.
Difficult as hell? You bet. But as Dr. Eger said…don’t you want to see what happens next?
