Fighting

I’ve never been in a fist fight before, so I don’t know what it’s like. But I’ve talked with some people who have told me stories of their fights.

One good story I heard about fighting was told to me the other night when my wife and I were over at some friends’ house for dinner. They’re a nice married couple who are still in college and share our faith. The husband, who I will call Joe, told me the story of his growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

He said that he grew up in a rough neighborhood and went to a rough school. So rough, in fact, that nearly all the boys had been in several fights. According to Joe, in the school hallways, during passing periods and lunch and before and after school, 99% of the students walked through the halls with their heads down. 1%, the biggest and toughest males, walked with their heads up. If you made eye contact with another guy for longer than a second, it was a fight.

Joe was naturally a sensitive, intelligent, and curious young man. But after growing up in that type of harsh school environment, he hardened emotionally and spiritually. He described his experience in that school as being “in survival mode,” always paranoid about having to fight.

When he was a junior or senior in high school, his family moved to Mesa, Arizona. He decided that he didn’t want to fight anymore. He didn’t want anybody to bother him. So he decided that on the first day he would beat up somebody so bad that nobody would ever mess with him again. The first day that he was at the new school, he planned to hold his head up while he walked down the hallway. He was going to beat up the first male who made eye contact with him. He was going to clobber him, maybe break a bone, and maybe send him to the hospital.

So the first day of school comes, he makes eye contact with another guy, looks down, and he starts to charge after him. Joe makes a fist and gets ready to punch the guy in the face, and then he takes another look at the guy. The guy is flabbergasted and terrified; he puts his hands in front of his face and shouts, “Whoa!” At that moment, Joe stops his advance and realizes that the guy he is about to punch is scared and shocked. Joe then realized that he didn’t have to fight, and he thought that maybe this school was different than his old school in Albuquerque. Joe felt kind of embarrassed and he said to the stranger he was about to pummel, “I’m sorry…” and then went on his way.

My friend Joe said that that was a turning point in his life. After that moment, Joe began to improve emotionally and spiritually. What a story, huh?

What do we learn from the story? Um, maybe we learn that one should live in a nice neighborhood and send his or her kids to a nice school.

Also, we can learn that delicate, beautiful things cannot survive in harsh environments. Joe was a delicate, beautiful thing. Like I said, he was naturally spiritual, sensitive, artistic and extremely intelligent, but after being in a lot of fights and after constantly living in fear at school, his finer sensibilities and characteristics gave way to a rougher, more animalistic way of living and thinking.

From this story we can learn that delicate, beautiful things need a good environment in which to survive and blossom. If such an environment is not created and maintained, sooner or later we'll thirst for man's blood. But if such a caring, favorable environment is created and maintained, we'll have many wonderful afternoons chatting, smiling, enjoying things and creating and appreciating beautiful things.