What Would Rocky Do?

On grueling challenge, going the distance and the heroic power of Love

Dear Ones –

Six weeks ago, Freddi and I watched Rocky for the first time, and it has skyrocketed into his favorite movie of all time. Every day he practices the theme song on both the piano and trumpet. During National Lutheran School Spirit Week, he tried on a variety of outfits, trying to dress up as Rocky for Decade Day. And he had planned to name our puppy Rocky, until he met her and realized she couldn’t pull off the toughness.

When I ask him what he loves so much about the movie he shakes his head knowingly, as if to gently school me, and says, Mom, he’s the underdog. It’s beautiful.

What’s beautiful? I ask.

Well, like how he’s so tough and also loves his turtle, he says, and his voice is amazing, and he just goes the distance.

He endures, I say.

Yeah, exactly, Freddi agrees. He never gives up.

For most of this winter I have felt like early-movie Rocky. Over the hill and underperforming. Down and out and barely staying afloat. In over his head in a battle he’s not sure won’t end in his death. I am Rocky in a ratty sweatsuit, struggling my way up the 72 steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Step one: the consistently subzero temps. Step two: the series of school plays and cancellations for small, stupid dustings of barely-there snow. Step three: knee and hip rehab for body parts that will never actually fully rehab. Step four: family health scares, unexpected hospital visits, and sudden surgeries. Steps five, six, seven and onward: an Australian Labradoodle puppy whom the breeder calls highly social and I call highly anxious, who startles at a change in my breathing and howls when I leave her sight. The rest of the steps: my own rage, dismay and helplessness as I watch the violent acts of a cruel, racist, bizarrely immature government that make Freddi’s 5^th grade mean-girl classmates look poised and grown-up.

These days, I’m just crying a lot, my yoga student told me recently, detailing some of her own 72 steps.

Same, I said. Same.

Crying and picturing myself laying down on the steps, blowing my nose into the sleeve of my sweat suit and saying, No more. I give up.

But then I think of Rocky struggling on. Kicked out of his locker at the training gym. Boxing those cold, bloody carcasses at the slaughterhouse. Doggedly courting his shy pet-store crush who continues to ignore him. Trying, trying, continuing to try until slowly, slowly, he makes progress and at the end of the movie, he is bloody and battered and blind with his eyes swollen shut, but still standing and calling out in that fantastic Stallone accent, Adrian! Adrian! and then he smiles as she runs to him, assures him of her love, and we realize Oh! Love, as it turned out, was all he needed! It was love that powered him to go the distance. It was love – not winning - that was the reason he made it to the top of the steps.

A mind that is saturated by lovingkindness cannot be overcome by fear; writes Sharon Salzberg in her book ‘Lovingkindness’. Even if fear should arise, it will not overpower such a mind.

What else but the profound power of love can hold us through such grueling, stair-climbing times? What else but love can ignite our will enough to go outside in -10 degree temperatures every hour, to help a puppy to poop and then when that poop gets smeared into and caught in the hair around her butthole to wash that little butt with warm water and the appropriately sensitive soap so that she is clean? What else but love will allow so many people to put their own lives in danger in order to support their neighbors, in order to protest a cruel, deceptive government in defense of human rights and civil decency and basic justice?

What else is there that is more powerful than love?

We are often tuned into what is hard, what is not working, what is exhausting, what is shocking and terrible, where we are failing, where others are failing. That’s okay. Of course we see and feel strongly the biting winds that penetrate all of our layers! But how often do we also tune into the love that is keeping us alive, moving us, and powering us? How often do we notice how many stairs we’ve actually already climbed? How often do we notice the love that is our engine and our navigation system together, this connective force that shows us, even when we don’t know it, the next right step?

Lift your foot, move it forward, put it down, keep going.

The love that says, You may feel like the underdog, but look, it’s beautiful, you are here, going the distance.

Mostly, if you’re anything like me, you feel and then tend more consciously to what is not working, even patting yourself on the back for staying aware of the atrocities and in some unconscious way thinking if you stay hooked in, you can be part of the solution, you can’t be accused of delusion, but instead, you forget that we can never know the whole story anyway and so you/we in staying constantly vigilant to the pain and horror and not-enoughness just get more and more drained and angry.

My suffering has my fingerprints all over it, says the meditation teacher Vinny Ferraro, in an interview with Dan Harris, adding that we can begin to notice how invested we are in our own suffering, how much we ourselves are choosing it on top of what is already hard.

Here’s the amazing thing. The forces of the mind that bring suffering – greed, aversion, hatred, delusion, dissatisfaction and resistance of all kinds – are said to be able to only temporarily hold down the positive forces of the mind, like love and wisdom.

But they can never destroy them, writes Salzberg. Love can uproot fear or anger or guilt because it is a greater power.

Wisdom from the puppy training class.

The other day one of my students told me that she has been learning a lot about green sea turtles because her adolescent son is passionate about helping them. Together, they have spent years researching these creatures and supporting nonprofits that are dedicated to keeping the species alive.

And just recently, she said, they have been removed from the endangered list!

Uplifted by the good news, we celebrated the far-sighted efforts of so many people to painstakingly invest in what, at times, probably seemed impossible. Later she sent me an interview with NPR.

Our gains are dependent on continuing to kind of keep our foot on the gas, says Bryan Wallace, who led the conservation group’s assessment of the turtles, and to continue to find, you know, the success stories - the things that are working, where they’re working and to keep up that momentum.

The greater power of love gives us the stamina and the direction and the gas to go a distance that fear never could. How can we keep choosing to look for where and how that is happening?

Puppies, igloos, kids. Keep on noticing the love. As Freddi says, It’s beautiful.

I love the surprising ending of Rocky. Spoiler alert (haha! I’m probably the only middle-aged person who hadn’t seen this iconic film?!): he doesn’t win!! I don’t know for sure, but it seems like it may be the only Hollywood underdog movie where the underdog doesn’t, in the end, beat the bully, land the trophy, bag the hot chick, or become the wealthy CEO. Instead, though the judges award the win to his rival, the crowd honors him more for never being knocked out. Fifteen rounds and still standing.

What would it be like to live in - to create! - a culture that celebrates those beings and people and places who don’t win awards but who endure? Who go the distance - despite setbacks, grief, doubt - powered by the love that is their vision? Those green sea turtles and immigrants and single mothers and all of us. All of us who show up consistently for that which is life-giving, who refuse to sit down on the steps, who recognize the heartbeat of something bigger than fear at work, who let that heartbeat - however quiet it becomes at times, however erratic it can feel - power them forward.

And what does this powering forward actually look and feel like?

Let’s put it this way. When I thought about having a puppy - for five years! - I knew logically it would be hard work – I’d done all the appropriate research and prep – but inside my thick, dreamy skull I pictured myself bounding up 72 steps and pumping my fists at the top. I saw gorgeous walks, days of snuggling, and rapturous car rides. I saw myself doing what I always do but now having an adorable creature by my side. (Thanks to my dog-owning friends who make it look easy!). I didn’t know - until I knew! - how this painstaking, high learning curve care would feel in my body. The sweat soaking through the suit. The feel of knuckles on a carcass rib cage. The smash of fist to face again and again.

After the fight, Rocky I.

Mother, Freddi says in a withering voice when I explain how I’m comparing these past weeks to what Rocky went through. Don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic?

Fair enough.

But without drama, I don’t know how I’d be getting through this. And by that I mean, without a big imagination, without creative vision, without big words and big images and big theme song anthems. I need to see this tedious, doubt-riddled dailyness of showing up for exactly what it is: downright heroic.

No external condition can prevent love, writes Salzberg, as dramatically as any Eye of the Tiger lyric.

No one and no thing can stop it.

In the end, then, Love is the hero. It moves in us whether we know it or not. It is always here whether we choose to see it or not. It holds us whether we tune in enough to sense it or not.

So why not call upon it since it is here already? Why not remember that even in our swollen-eye blindness, we can yell, Adrian! Adrian! and love will always show up.

No one and no thing can stop it.

From somewhere on those endless steps, I am heroically yours in going the distance as well as I can, putting one foot in front of the other, celebrating the fact that I’m still standing, choosing to notice the love that is supporting each movement – friends, family, dog trainers in Australia, birdsong, beauty, ice skating, puppy snacks, Freddi’s humor and honesty, the Rocky theme song, great fiction, the good news of people loving people, silence, fireplaces, prayer, my yoga students and coaching clients, Christians speaking out against the false Christianity of the government and acting in and from the love that Jesus taught and embodied, yoga, the sound of my teachers’ voices, the feel of a side stretch, and the face of Charlie Angel saying either I love you or I don’t exactly know who you are but you give me my food and for that I thank you –

With the love that is always here,

Sara

A vintage mink. Dramatically styled hair. A puppy that looks like a stuffed animal. Keeping the vision big.

Feeling into the moments where Love says, Hey, I’m here.

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Tell me your enduring joys! Tell me your stories of goodness! Tell me where you are feeling the hope to carry on in love! We need that from each other to restore our energy and keep us tapped into the good that is here. Comments, emails, phone calls. I’m here for the love-actions and love-evidence you want to share!

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For support in daily remembering that you are inherently good and powered by love, come to yoga on Tuesday and Saturday mornings, reach out for some coaching, hypnosis and spiritual direction/support, and practice resting in the peace that is beyond words in yoga nidra. Write here for more info!

Also, 1-2 spots just opened up for the yoga retreat I’m leading with my amazing sister Julie Peacock from April 16-19 in Gardiner, NY. Write me for more details.