[Greetings, friends, from Austin! These last four days, I had the pleasure of participating in a fitness networking event called High Performance Lifestyle Training (HPLT for short). It was yet another reminder of how blessed I am. It was three days of intense workouts, great conversations, and delicious dinners—all of my favorite things done alongside people who share a love for wellness and a zest for life. Part of the event (the Speaker Series hosted by good friends, the
) took place at our Squatch Frontier Fitness campus. Showing off the place to 100+ people as a part of ownership was a dream come true.My favorite part of the weekend was listening to Justice Richard Bernstein (the first blind state Supreme Court Justice) speak and then getting the opportunity to guide him through his first ice bath experience. After Justice Bernstein tested the water with his toes, he asked me if I could pick him up and set him in the water. So I did. I scooped him into my arms, eased him into the water, and then coached him through three minutes of breathing. It is a memory that will live with me for the rest of my life. Recalling it today, tears well in my eyes. Moments like that are why I train so hard. They are why I lift and run and jump. To be able to lift people up when they ask.
But before I led him through the ice, Justice Bernstein stood in front of 100 people and gave something like an address. It was both a story and a performance. Watching him, I felt like I was watching Cicero give one of his famed speeches. He stirred something in the hearts of everyone in attendance. In his speech, Justice Bernstein told his story. How he’s been legally blind since birth. How he’s completed several marathons, ironmans, and triathlons despite it all. How a New York cyclist biking through Central Park hit him from behind, going 30+ miles per hour, and shattered his hip and pelvis. How, through pain and adversity, his soul leaped higher toward God.
That—the elevating power of pain of adversity—is the subject of today’s essay.]
Yet He knows the way I have taken; when He has tested me, I will come forth as gold. (Job 23:10)
There are two parts of Justice Bernstein’s speech haunting me today. The first was his reference to an unnamed poet and poem, which imagined a man’s soul severed from its worldly attachment through suffering, then soaring upward to touch the face of God.1 The second was his invocation of the Biblical story of Jacob wrestling an angel (which I came to find out afterward is his favorite story).
Genesis 32:24-31 tells the (short) tale, beginning after Jacob sends his family back to Canaan with all his possessions and spends the night alone on a riverside.
So Jacob was left all alone, and there a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower Jacob, he struck the socket of Jacob’s hip and dislocated it as they wrestled. Then the man said, ‘Let me go, for it is daybreak.’
But Jacob replied, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’
‘What is your name?’ the man asked.
‘Jacob,’ he replied.
Then the man said, ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men, and you have prevailed.’
And Jacob requested, ‘Please tell me your name.’
But he replied, ‘Why do you ask my name?’ Then he blessed Jacob there.
So Jacob named the place Peniel,2 saying, ‘Indeed, I have seen God face to face, and yet my life was spared.’ The sun rose above him as he passed by Penuel, and he was limping because of his hip.
After citing Genesis, Justice Bernstein spoke of how he, like Jacob, had been hobbled at the hip when struck by a speeding cyclist (adding to a lifetime of being blind). How he, too, had wrestled with God and with angels after his accident. And how, when he was able to run again, demanded, like Jacob, a blessing from the divine (recalling his first marathon attempt post-cycling accident, Justice Bernstein revealed an inner dialogue between him and God where the Justice kept insisting “let me have this… let me have this… let me have this!”)
The story of Jacob wrestling an angel is a strange one. Over the years, many have argued over what it means. Some say it was a dream figure that he wrestled with, and the encounter was just a vision. Others say it was an angel or a pre-Christ embodiment of the Son that Jacob actually wrestled. Others still insist it was just another tale of a great cultural icon wrestling with a protective river spirit (like Achilles wrestling the river god Scamander or Menelaus wrestling the sea god Proteus).
Regardless of whom Jacob wrestled with, his story is one of an individual who gained an audience with the divine by persevering through pain. It is the story of a man who refused to surrender even after his hip was dislocated.
And while views differ widely on the story’s meaning, the unavoidable fact remains that the story has captured the imagination of artists throughout history, inspiring several pieces of music, countless works of art, and treatises full of commentary. Something about the story resonates with something deep inside us, even if our understanding of it remains elusive.
What possible message, you might ask (as I have and do), could this tale be trying to deliver?
In truth, I am as unsure as I’ve ever been. That’s partially why Justice Bernstein’s references to, and love for, the story are haunting me. But if I enter my heart and listen for what echos out in this moment, it’s something like this:
It’s in our persistence through pain and struggle that we come to see God face to face. We draw closer to our Maker when we allow ourselves to feel defeat and endure. When we lose to something greater we actually win.
When Jacob’s hip is dislocated and he refuses to yield, he affirms his body is not calling the shots; there is something deeper. Something stronger. Something more eternal and divine, capable of taking charge. And it is through pain that we are introduced to that indomitable spirit. Through pain, we establish a relationship with the invincible pieces of ourselves. Through pain we come to see God face to face.
I’ll end with a poem by one of my favorite writers—Rainer Maria Rilke. It’s titled The Man Watching (italics added for emphasis below) and references Jacob’s wrestling match, making the broad point that we grow by being defeated by constantly greater things.
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister.The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great.
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers’ sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
P.S. I am, in no way, shape, or form saying that everyone who suffers and experiences pain should simply suck it up and be grateful for every ounce of it; I’m merely making the case that when the inevitable pain and suffering of life come for us (and it will to each of us in differing doses), there is only one approach that might make something good out of a terrible situation—only one response that holds the hope of turning a tragedy into a comedy.
And that response involves finding purpose in your pain. Maybe it’s the loss of a loved one that causes you to cherish your time with the living. Perhaps the illness or misfortune you fight shows others just how powerful the human spirit is (like Job). Maybe it’s in reminding people, like the enduring example of Epictetus, that “[s]ickness is an impediment to the body, but not to the will, unless itself pleases. Lameness is an impediment to the leg, but not to the will...” Maybe your refusal to become resentful and bitter restores people’s confidence in the better angels of our nature.
Maybe it’s through your pain that you (and we) might come to see God face to face.
If anyone knows what poem this might be, PLEASE let me know… it’s killing me.
Meaning, “the face of God.”