“Against the Grain”
“Ready, Set, Hut!” Peterson catches the ball on the 25, he cuts across the grain 15, 10, 5 touchdown eagles!! If you have ever been in Clyde on a Friday night, chances are, you’ve heard our faithful announcer Jonesy’s famous catchphrase: cut across the grain. He would say this when someone would take the ball across the wide part of the field to avoid a defender. He would say this because it is much more difficult to go across the field than it is to go up the field. But sometimes it is necessary to cut across the field to gain more yards.
Beyond our announcer, football and woodworking have long been intertwined for me. My woodworking teacher, Mr. Carlson was also a football coach and a leader in my church. In the wood shop, Mr. Carlson taught me how to make different cuts and use different tools. Everything from the table saw to the miter box. The table saw is typically used to make long cuts on a board with the grain. But every so often, when the board is too wide to use the miter box, you would have to make the difficult cross-grain cut with the table saw. This cut can be tougher to keep the board straight and it also can be dangerous because it is more likely for a board to get thrown if it gets caught. But if you are able to accomplish this you will end up with a superior product because instead of gluing two pieces of board together, you have one solid piece of wood.
This difficult cut is reflective of the school of philosophy that I subscribe to. Now I know what you’re thinking, philosophy? That sounds boring, believe me I thought the same thing until I discovered stoicism. Stoicism essentially is the belief that it is important to do difficult things for the sake of doing difficult things. My friend Walker helped me realize what this truly looked like. I absolutely hate running, hate everything about it, its boring, tedious, and often times painful. I would much rather slide into a bench rack, or do a set of curls. But deep down I know that running is important so when I was at a conference earlier this year and heard Walker saying he was wanting to go for a run I jumped at the opportunity. Now what I forgot was that Walker is a very deceiving name and he as actually a pretty good runner who was training for a marathon. I could tell from the get go that he was a lot more
prepared for this, he had his special running shoes, his special running app on his phone, and his special running playlist to listen to. I was in trouble. So we started running, and I was doing okay until we got to the first hill. we were only halfway up when I realized I was out of breath. We got a mile in and I was trying to not show how much I was struggling. but around a mile and a quarter I threw my pride out the window and asked Walker to stop for a minute. (hunch over) “It’s got to be the cold weather,” I said to him in between deep inhales and exhales. Walker who was barely breathing hard at all politely agreed, even though I knew it was barely bothering him. We ran to the hotel where he dropped me off and continued his run while I went up to my room and collapsed on the floor. Walker decided to train for this marathon because he wanted to challenge himself, and even though I will not be running a marathon any time soon, it was inspiring and pushed me to improve my running abilities.
Life can be as easy as we want it to be. But success without struggle takes away from the reward. We as humans take much more pride in something we had to put effort into as opposed to something that was just handed to us. If we are striving for something that means that we are still alive. Stoicism is the idea of living life with this mentality. How can we implement stoicism in our daily lives? Take this simple act of Stoicism as an example: if we find ourselves in a room that is not the most comfortable temperature, maybe it’s a little too hot or a little too cold we should do our best to be content, if we do this we will find ourselves being content in a larger range of temperatures and will be more prepared if we can’t change the temperature. We should get comfortable being uncomfortable. We should challenge ourselves little by little to become tougher and stronger to deal with unexpected situations because as the Chinese proverb goes, “it’s better to be a warrior in a garden, then a gardener in a war”.
John F Kennedy, who was President at the time of the space race once said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard”. We all know that going to the moon is hard but how hard was it? Well for one thing we have more computing power in the smartphones in our pocket than in the computers that they had for the Apollo 11 mission. That’s right- the same thing that we spend hours a day watching tik toks has more computing power than the computers it took to put a man on the moon. The goal to put a man on the moon was not something that was easy, It cost millions of dollars and tested the best scientists in the world to their limits. because when we do difficult things, we learn valuable truths about ourselves that allow us to grow further.
Another problem with the mission to put a man on the moon was that no one had attempted to walk on a surface other than earth, so, much of this mission would be completely foreign. The people involved had to figure things out on their own. Similar to this on a much smaller scale when I ran for a district office, I didn’t really know what to expect. It was a super foreign concept for me to try to talk in front of a bunch of people. But I was willing to give it a shot. When I was first elected, I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t know what to think of my new team, they all seemed so outgoing and confident, and I was lost. I was a shy farm kid and didn’t know what to think or do. But by stepping out of my comfort zone to run I learned valuable lessons about myself, and I ended up with some of the best friends I could have ever asked for.
I actually had to run for district office twice- the first time when I wasn’t elected, it devastated me. All my plans and dreams were shattered. The next year I almost didn’t run, I thought that if I faced that same failure two years in a row it would absolutely crush me. I did not want to spend the rest of my life believing that I was a failure because I ran twice and couldn’t get elected either time. It would have been much easier to simply watch and say “I could have if I wanted to”. But my dad told me something that will always stick with me, you would not be a failure if you don’t achieve your goals, you would be a
failure if you don’t chase them at all. It’s better to fail forward than to live with your feet on solid ground that goes neither forward nor backward.
Theodore Rosevelt, a remarkable man who did hard things, shared this powerful message in his famous speech citizenship in a republic speech, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Think for a minute about a challenge you are currently facing, now think about the people in the arena by your side building you up. Identify those people, thank them, appreciate them, and focus on them because they are the ones who want what’s best for you. In the same way now think about those who are in the stands, with no skin in the game, the ones with the cheapest seats all the way in the nosebleed section. The people who want to see you fail because they didn’t have the guts to try themselves. Remember that their opinions may hold useful suggestions, but these opinions should never be your focus. cast those opinions out because if you focus too much on the negative voices you will lose sight of those who are by your side. Many people in older generations are going to say that we are lazy or entitled, that we’ve never had to work for anything in our lives. I say we have a chance prove all these people wrong. We have the ability to make the change that this world so desperately needs, We have the chance to work through our differences and make the world a better place
But to do this we have to get out of our comfort zone
Kansas FFA
We have to do hard things
We have to work
We have to fight
We have to. Go. Against. The grain!