I don't expect wives, or kids, friends, therapists or anything else to help when I am in emotional arrears. Very few people, unless they have depression understand depression. And of the one-hundred or so things people toss out there to bolster you approximately one-hundred-and-one make you feel worse.
David Brooks in last week's New York Times had an excellent column about a lifelong friend of his who killed himself. It was called "Losing My Friend Pete." But again, I'm not sure how many people can fathom the pain of depression if they don't actually feel it themselves.
One trick I've learned over the last few years is this: I go to YouTube and I watch whatever form of boxing matches I can find featuring perhaps the greatest heavyweight champion of them all, Joe Louis.
Louis was heavyweight champion for longer than anyone else in the history of the most brutal of sports, for twelve years. His overall record was 66 wins against just three loses. And for the dozen years or so of his heavyweight reign, he fought with unusual frequency. At one point his opponents were unofficially enshrined into something sports reporters called "The Bum of the Month Club." That's right, Louis fought something like 12 times a year. Unheard of activity for about the last 75 years.
In the fight above, an prematurely-old Louis is fighting a superior and very spry "Jersey" Joe Walcott. Walcott is taunting Louis, dancing around him. He knocks Louis on his keister early in the fight. And dances around Louis in a manner that presages the antics of Muhammad Ali twenty years later.
What I love about Louis is this. No matter what or who is hitting him, no matter the pain or fear he is facing, his visage remains stoical and his pugilistic style remains immutable. In his resoluteness, Louis is unlike anyone else I've ever seen. He is unshakably him.
When he gets knocked down, as we all do, he gets up. Which we don't all do. We don't all try.
And he does what he does.
He inches ever forward. Slowly, inexorably forward. In fact, through all the fights I've seen him fight, even in his final fight when Louis at an old 37 lost to undefeated 28-year-old, Rocky Marciano, I'm not sure I ever saw Joe Louis back-up. Louis always seemed to be inching forward, literally like an inchworm. First his front foot would move a bit, his back would catch up and again and again. He moved like a tectonic plate. Unstoppable.
I look at Louis when I am sad, which is not unusual. I watch him for his utter persistence. For his ability to not deviate from what got him to the top. For his dedication to not losing his head when hit in the head, or even being knocked down. And for his savage response when he sees the smallest opening, the slimmest advantage. He leaps at it, but without hurrying.
I read something not long ago by an economist--a long way off from the squared circle and the Marquees of Queensberry. He remarked on one of the great maladies of both our era and our business. I'll call it the "touchdown-run effect."
If you go to a ballgame and there's a spectacular play that takes a few seconds to unfold, everyone will stand up to get a better view of the play. The thing we should notice about that is that by everyone standing up, no one gets a better view. Everyone's ability to see the action is exactly the same as if everyone stayed seated in their seats.
In the world and in advertising, we do the same thing. We leap on the new, the celebrity voice-over, the hot director. We leap on some new technique, chat gpt, anamorphic lensing, whatever is hot and the latest to give ourselves an edge. But by the time we do, everyone else has done the same as well. Our edge, our rushing to the front of the line has been obviated by everyone else rushing to the front of the line as well.
Very few people--and even fewer organizational entities--have the wisdom of a Joe Louis.
Most leap and grasp at the new new thing. No matter how ephemeral and vaporous it is.
I could do the same looking for a way to manage the depression that plagues me--a depression that was exacerbated by being insulted and discarded by the agency I gave a quarter of my life to. However, I know there are no straws worth grasping at. I'd rather find an internal steadiness that although slower than breakthrough is a lot more viable and a lot more reliable.
This involves my core of un-fair-weather friends. This involves self-appreciation. This involves this discipline of work work and more work.
I am not a boxing fan. I've been to just one professional fight in all my life. And I haven't used my fists with intent since a bar-fight against a kid two classes ahead of me in college, a southpaw who went on to be drafted by the Yankees but never got north of Ft. Lauderdale.
I won. At least I think I did.
But when I look at old films of Joe Louis, I don't see corruption, violence or brain-damage of boxing. I don't see two men fighting each other.
I see one man fighting for his life. I see one man sticking to his code.
That's a man I can relate to.
As an old boss told me once: I try all things. I achieve what I can.
No comments:
Post a Comment