(Originally published on September 8, 2014)
Sometimes, while securing a sheet of canvas over a frame of wood and steel while half a dozen giant men in spandex wait impatiently for me to finish so they can pretend to punch each other, I find myself thinking: I wonder if novice monks have days like this.
It’s an odd thought to have. I can’t imagine what putting together a professional wrestling ring has in common with preparing the altar for morning service other than the fact that they are both fields so specialized that the average person can live his or her entire life blissfully unaware that such a skill even exists.
Granted, that could be true of a lot of things. Every morning after my shower, I pull a towel off a rack, dry myself with it, and drop it on the floor without ever once thinking, “Hey, somebody MADE that.”
I don’t make towels though. I DO help with the setting up and tearing down of wrestling rings. Over the last few months of my career in professional wrestling as a referee/ring announcer/commissioner, it has become the part of the show I most look forward to and the part I most dread.
In its finished form, a wrestling ring is unmistakeable, a raised four sided platform with ropes running along the sides, held in place by posts at each corner. Everybody--even non-fans--can recognize a match-ready wrestling ring when they see it.
On the other hand, I’m willing to bet most of those same people could peer into the back of a ring truck at an unassembled ring and haven’t a clue what they were seeing. Unassembled, a wrestling ring looks like nothing more than a mismatched jumble of canvas, wood, cable, and steel.
And while finished wrestling rings all look pretty much the same, the process of putting them together can be surprisingly different from ring to ring. Each time I find myself working with a new one, I feel like I’m starting over.
Still, there’s something satisfying about it. Part of it is the repetitive physical nature of lifting and carrying. Part of it is the satisfaction of seeing something grow from nothing. And part of it is the illicit thrill of learning a craft that 99.9% of the population doesn’t even know exists.
There’s just one problem.
I’m not very good at putting together wrestling rings.
Sure, I'm better than the average person on the street. There might only be six people in the city that know how to put this specific ring together better than I do. The only problem is, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE IS IN THIS ROOM.
I am the weakest link.
And not just in terms of knowledge. Being the only non-wrestler in the room, I am physically the weakest, slowest, smallest, and least-coordinated human on the roster, David Spade riding with the Sons of Anarchy.
In years past, I have compensated for my lack of ability and knowledge by mastering the fine art of Getting Out Of The Way.
You’d be surprised at how hard it can be to do that--how when we feel uncertain or out of our depth, the urge to try and make ourselves useful or prove our worth can be overpowering. The result tends to be meddling, clustering around offering opinions, or ’helping’ in ways that creates more problems than it solves when often the best course of action is to stand quietly aside and let the people who know what they’re doing do what they know.
Getting out of the way is not an option for me these days. The organization I’m currently working with has a small local crew, which means everybody has to help. If I don’t show up and help, it doesn’t get done on time. This is especially true after the show where the wrestlers tend to be either recovering from their matches or meeting with fans.
I’m completely unqualified for this job, and I need to do it anyway.
The parts of it that I’m comfortable with are fine. They’re actually kind of fun.
It’s the parts that I don’t know so well or that I’m physically unable to handle that stress me out. It means I have to ask for help, and I hate that. By having to ask, I feel like I’m just confirming what everybody knows, but is too polite to say: That I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m incompetent, that I’m a burden to pro wrestling society, a free-loading waste of space, unfit to contribute in any way.
I either want to know what to do and be capable of doing it competently OR I want to not have to do it at all.
Instead, here I am, feeling like a child trapped in an adult’s body, looking around for someone to recognize my distress and rescue me from it.
Why should I have to do this? Why isn’t Wrestler X helping? He’s strong. He knows what he’s doing. Instead he’s just sitting there on the stage in his underwear with his boots unlaced texting.
The funny thing is, I bet I’m not alone.
The Promoter is trying to find transportation and accommodations for the out-of-town wrestlers while balancing the cash from the show and arranging for the ring truck while thinking to himself: I could use some help around here. Why do I have to be the one to do everything?
The Head of Ring Crew is struggling to balance coils of ring rope on his shoulders while patiently answering my questions without losing his temper and wondering what to do about the blood and table splinters all over the canvas that he has neither the time nor the equipment to properly clean. And the only person he has to help is the awkward ring announcer who doesn’t know what he’s doing. Why do I have to be the one to have to figure everything out? Why won’t somebody else step up?
The woman working Front of the House is dealing with selling tickets and keeping track of merchandise and security and making sure the venue is clean before we leave and...wait a minute. Why is it her job to do security? Isn’t she already doing more than enough? Isn’t it someone else’s turn yet?
Which brings me back to the subject of being a novice. I wonder if they have these same thoughts.
I wonder if they think: “Sure. I’ll do the incense. I’ll do the incense and sweep the cloisters and help with breakfast and organize the lay people and I’ll do it while bowing and smiling and not showing a hint of frustration while you swan around in your fancy purple kesa telling me to ‘say ‘yes’ to everything’ when what I’d really like is to say yes to shoving a stick of incense up your…”
A senior monk once told me: “We want to be around people we like doing things we’re competent at. Being a novice monk is doing things you don’t know how to do with people you wouldn’t necessarily choose to do it with. That‘s what makes a monastery a different kind of from almost anything else. There‘s no escape.”
Months later, I find myself arguing with that same monk in my head. No, that’s not what makes a monastery different from anything else, I tell the monk in my brain. That’s what a monastery the SAME as everything else. There is never any escape.
It doesn’t matter whether we’re learning to be a parent, starting a new job, returning to school, scurrying hither and thither in black robes, or learning how to secure the ring ropes to the post so that El Ciclon, the Spanish Hurricane doesn’t take an awkward tumble when he goes to drop the big elbow on “Showtime” Sammy Starr.
It isn’t fair. This shouldn’t be my responsibility. Can’t people see I’m doing my best? I already have too much to do. Why won’t someone do this for me? How come the only time I get feedback is when I do something wrong? How about some credit, just a little appreciation for what I’ve already done instead being expected to do even more?
Decisions have to be made with incomplete information; things have to be done without the necessary skill or experience; and often we are the only people available to do them.
Maybe we’re all novices.
Or maybe I don’t need to think of these things. I can feel the fear and insecurity and—instead of making comparisons or wondering what others are thinking—I can go back to what is important now: the slap of wood on wood, the tension in the steel cables, and—as I pull to secure canvas to frame—the feel of rope sliding through my palms.
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