I Know Why You Wrestle, Do You?

Joe Rau vs Alan Vera at the 2024 United States Olympic Team Trials. Photo Credit: Ryan Blake 

We cut weight, skip meals, sweat off five pounds just to drink back four. We enter into competitions that inevitably return emotional and physical pain. We step out on the mat in front of our friends, family and complete strangers dressed in outfits that most of our parents wouldn’t let us wear to a Halloween party. 

It all seems a little nuts. Why dedicate ourselves to the grueling sport of wrestling in a world that offers so few incentives for physical confrontation or aggression? Why make life so much harder than it has to be? You could be watching that new Netflix show or flipping through TikTok after all. 

In the book, The Man Who Wrestled With God, John Sanford writes,

“The unconscious constellates as difficult a situation as it can in order to get the most out of us. The call to psychological growth is universal.”

You wrestle because something within you says, “Answer the call!” to your Hero’s Journey. The urge to reach upward toward our potential is inside each of us. And perhaps, somehow, you’ve been drawn to the specific set of challenges that your unconscious needs in order for you to grow.

We can ignore the call for psychological growth but it will return. It may show up as an inner restlessness or a problematic behavior, again and again, until we can no longer deny it. Either we choose our unique outlet for challenge and transformation or life will choose it for us,

We become our whole-selves only through living out our Hero’s Journey. Your courage allows you to acknowledge it. Your action allows you to live it. For some, this will mean mastering a musical instrument, traveling the globe, starting a business, or speaking out about civil rights. But for you and me, it journey appears to be wrestling. Go live it.

-Joe Nord