Like Rocky and Neo

I blogged very little in 2024 in part because I was working on the publication of my latest book, The Golden Waffle Principle:  Finding Meaning In Teaching.  Now that it is set to come out later this month (see my website for more information), I look forward to blogging on a more regular basis. 

In 2006, Rocky Balboa came out of retirement.  After sixteen years since the previous film in the Rocky franchise, Sylvester Stallone explored the challenges facing an aging athlete who wanted to see whether he still had what it took to go the distance.  Seven years before Rocky climbed back into the ring, a computer programmer who thought his name was Thomas Anderson discovered that he was actually Neo, The One long awaited to free captive minds from The Matrix.  Taken together, both of these films, along with a poem from 1842 based on an event from Roman antiquity, have something to tell us about facing the challenges of daily life.

Getting Hit

In Rocky Balboa, the sixth film of the award-winning boxing franchise, the former heavyweight champ talks straight with his son, now a young businessman.

Rocky:  [W]hen things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow.  Let me tell you something you already know.  The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows.  It's a very mean and nasty place, and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.  You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life.  But it ain't how hard you hit.  It's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward.  How much can you take and keep moving forward.  That's how winning is done!  But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers, saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him or her or anybody!  Cowards do that, and that ain't you!  You're better than that!

We all know this, but, like Rocky's son, we need to be reminded from time to time, yet that is not the point of this post.  I want to look at the kinds of punches life throws.  There are times when it seems as if life is trying to take us out with one knockout punch, perhaps through a devastating loss or a betrayal or catastrophic news.  More often, however, we seem to be the victim of a rain of body blows, those jabs to the torso that do not K.O. boxers, but that weaken them to the point they cannot continue.  But if a boxing metaphor is not to your taste, consider a hailstorm of bullets.

Neo Against the Agents

In the philosophical/theological/sci-fi film The Matrix, Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is the target of malevolent programs personified as Agents.  After one of them kills him, a character named Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) expresses to him her love, by which he is resurrected as Neo, the savior for whom many have been waiting.  Multiple Agents then discharge their weapons toward him, but now he merely looks curiously at the bullets as they freeze in the air and then fall to the ground.  When his chief nemesis Agent Smith rushes to attack him, Neo fights him almost casually, more fascinated by watching his own hands move than by any threat from Smith.

I want to be like Neo.  When I think about the hits that life dishes out, they seem to me more like body blows than a singular, knockout punch.  They are the small bullets of annoyance and frustration and burden rather than a nuclear bomb of devastating power.  Yet how does one do what Neo did?  How does one face enemies with strength rather than with stress?  In his case, it came from knowing who he truly was.  Once the love of Trinity restored him to life, and the biblical parallel here is unmistakable, his clear and grounded identity as The One allowed him to see threats for what they really were, and when it came to their source, Agent Smith, he did not so much as deign to look at him.

Ignoring the Craven Ranks

In 1842 Thomas Babington Macaulay published a book of poems titled Lays of Ancient Rome, the most famous of which is "Horatius."  It tells in rousing verse the story of Horatius Cocles, the Roman hero who, with two friends, defended the bridge into Rome against an invading army in the late 6th century B.C.  As the three warriors hold the far side, those on the Roman end work to hew down the bridge, and as it totters above the boiling tide, two of them run back before the boards crash into the waves.  The invading king invites Horatius to surrender, for he is now trapped on the bank with no way back to Rome.  Horatius, however, as with Neo, pays his enemy no regard.  In the words of Macaulay,

Round turned he, as not deigning

    Those craven ranks to see,

and dove into the river, still wearing his armor and bleeding from the fight, and swam across to the cheering welcome of his countrymen.

Horatius, Bernardo Strozzi (1581-1644)

I, for one, want to do just that.  I want to turn round and not so much as deign to look upon the craven ranks of stress, anxiety, worry, fear, pressure, and all the pretended fierceness of the things that would distract me from that to which God calls me each day.  This is only possible when I operate from an unshakably grounded knowledge that I am a friend of Jesus Christ and along with Him a beloved child of God.  It was in His unshakable identity as the Son of God, which had just been proclaimed for all to hear, that Jesus with cool strength and disregard for His enemy stood against Satan in the desert.

In one of the most stirring parts of the poem "Horatius," the titular hero calls out to his fellow Romans,

Now who will stand on either hand,

    And keep the bridge with me?

As we enter the new year, I want to stand in the strength of my identity in Christ against all the attacks of life.  Jesus Himself shows it can be done, and we have such rousing examples in our literature and dramatic tales.  Will you be one of those to stand with me?

The Popeye Challenge

What follows are the remarks I delivered at the 2013 Indiana's Future Conference, hosted by CELL, the Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning .  Special thanks to 2013 INTOY Suzanne Whitton for encouraging me to attend for introducing me to some of the educational leaders in our state.

I want to thank Dr. Janet Boyle, the Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning, and the University of Indianapolis for inviting me to the 2013 conference.

He began as many leaders do.  He came from a humble background and through raw perseverance achieved greatness.  After growing up an orphan, he found a career in the navy, eventually leaving the service, finding love, and caring for a young boy of his own.  He had a special kind of strength he could tap when facing the toughest challenges, a power that always seemed ready to help him achieve success.  I’m sure by now you have identified this person, one of the most famous people of the 20^th century.  I am, of course, talking about Popeye the Sailor Man.

I first came to understand that Popeye had uttered one of the greatest leadership principles when I was at the Global Leadership Summit at Willow Creek a few years ago.  Leadership author and pastor of one of the largest churches in America, Bill Hybels observed that when he was being attacked by Bluto and things seemed at their darkest, Popeye would say, “That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more.”  At that point he would obtain a can of spinach, often inhaling it through his pipe, and the result would become cartoon history. 

As leaders, we are motivated by the things we can’t stands no more.  We observe a wrong, an injustice, an inequality, and it sticks in our minds.  An issue becomes a cause, and we are off and running.  When I consider the Popeye challenge and pause to ask what it is that I can’t stand, I know immediately the answer.  As a Latin teacher, it is true that I love Classical Studies, the academic engagement with the languages and cultures of ancient Greece and Rome.  I thrill to the literature, philosophy, and deeds that have captivated the world’s attention for thousands of years, but my answer to the Popeye challenge is not about that.  What I can’t stand is to see someone not operating to his or her potential, someone who is not living from the sweet spot of his or her giftedness.  The reason this sets me ablaze and motivates me is that as a teacher I have been blessed to see so many who were operating in that sweet spot, and as Macaulay said in his famous poem “Horatius,” it is “right glorious to behold.”

My most recent opportunity to see this in students was just last week.  The high school where I teach has the largest chapter of the Junior Classical League in the state of Indiana.  Our students work through this organization to learn more about the Classical world, participate in academic and artistic competitions, and serve our community.  When we returned to school this fall, I was excited to put into practice what I had read in Liz Wiseman’s and Elise Foster’s book The Multiplier Effect, which you heard about yesterday.  Rather than direct much of their efforts, I turned our officers loose to see where their genius would take us.  The result has been, as the Romans would have said, mirabile visu, wonderful to see.  Two of our seniors, Samantha and Paige, inspired by our commitment to annual community service projects, decided to seek a grant from the United Way of Central Indiana.  Their plan is to establish a literacy garden at one of our elementary schools, complete with landscaping inspired by descriptions in Classical literature, a mural depicting Classical myths, and weather-proof bookcases that will allow the school community to take a book, leave a book as they share in the adventures of reading.  Watching these two young women present their plan with professionalism, passion, and persuasion before the grant committee was a highlight of my career, although they are but the most recent in a long history of working with capable teens.

I have also watched colleagues living out the full capacity of their giftedness.  I think of Ed in Virginia.  To see him teaching Dante or a Japanese Noh play is to see a true master teacher at work.  I think of Bill, who not only teaches history but lives it as a published historian and restorer of homes in the Irvington area of Indianapolis.  There is Jeannie, who after retirement from teaching English and Theory of Knowledge for the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, returns once a week in the afternoons because she was asked by a student to sponsor the philosophy club.  There is Jill, another retired English teacher whose gifts continue to serve students as a literacy specialist with the Indiana Department of Education.

Those of us in education have the best perspective from which to watch amazing people operating from their areas of genius.  If you see it even once, you will want to see it again and again.  You will find that you cannot stand to see an ounce of potential, a hint of creativity, a flicker of genius go undeveloped.  Fortunately for us, developing gifts is what educators do best.  It is written into our name.  From its Latin roots, we see that educators are literally those who lead forth.  We are the ones who see what others may not see in themselves.  We are the ones who lead latent gifts out of the darkness so they can light the world.

I am humbled and honored to have been chosen as the 2014 Indiana Teacher of the Year.  I was not selected because I am the best teacher in Indiana, but rather to represent the best, to help shine the light of public attention on educational leaders who are discovering and developing genius all around them.  Thank you again to CELL for doing just this kind of work, and thank you again for the opportunity to join you today.