Things Worth Doing

by Scylla

I know I started a “to be continued” piece in the last issue, and it may be continued, but not today. Let’s face it - it wasn’t all that good. On the other hand, I’ve been trying to write this piece for about a year, and it feels like it might come out good tonight.

The Joyful Scream of Rage and Pain

About three months ago I’m working out on the Versaclimber, watching VH-1. I’ve been going for about ten minutes, and feel nice and loose, when all of a sudden “Beautiful Day” by U2 comes on. Without thinking I kick it up into high gear and start punching it with all I’ve got. It’s a long song, and about halfway through, I’m spent. Something about that song, though, does something to me (there are lots of songs like that,) and instead of slowing down, I punish the pain with excess. My heart is hammering and the sweat is pouring into my eyes so I can’t see. My lungs are really burning, but I punish it all with excess pushing harder. The Joyful Scream of Rage and Pain fills my being, and there is nothing but effort.

My sounds of effort must be as loud as the whining machinery, and my daughter (who’s always curious about her insane father) comes into the room. Maybe she senses it, maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s me, but she goes with it, and she starts dancing and running around the room with the total abandon of a two year old.

I glance at the machine, and my heart rate is over 200 beats per minute; I’m thrashing it out as hard as I can. My normal 45-minute workout runs at 115 meters per minute of climb. I’m at about 180 now. I can’t go on. I can’t keep this up.

But….

Fuck it.

The Joyful Scream of Rage and Pain is final effort. It’s everything I’ve got. A well-trained horse will run until its heart literally explodes, and I’m not much better than such a beast. Horses understand the Joyful Scream of Rage and Pain. It’s built into them. Running from a predator, it doesn’t matter if you die with your heart exploding or at the teeth of a lion. You’re still dead. Might as well do it running.

So, I push on. I know I’m turning red, and then purple. My body is building heat far faster than it can sweat it out. I’m consuming oxygen and fuel far faster than my body can supply it. Somewhere out there there is a redline, but The Joyful Scream of Rage and Pain that fills me says that that doesn’t matter at all, and I go with it.

The song finishes and I ease back all the way down to about 65 meters a minute, gasping like a fish. When I look up my wife is staring at me from the doorway.

That was three months ago. I think it made a hell of an impression on my daughter. She still says, “It’s a beautiful day!” and runs around the room. “C’mon Daddy.” I think she understands the Joyful Scream of Rage and Pain. If she does, she got it from me. My wife thinks I’m nuts. I’ve alluded to it several times on the board, hoping somebody would say, “Yeah, I know that!” Nobody has.

Which is odd, because it seems to me that it’s the most worthwhile thing in life.

The first time I heard the Joyful Scream of Rage and Pain,” I was 12 or 13. My father took me with him to Sarajevo for the Winter Olympics. He was an executive with ABC at the time.

There was a problem on the flight. There was a bad snowstorm - a blizzard, really. The Sarajevan air-traffic controllers weren’t considered very good, and there was an effort to replace them, which failed, and they resented it. Maybe that had something to do with what happened.

We were on final approach and I was sitting in the window seat. I head the flaps come down, and the gear. The nose started to come up for landing. And then, all of a sudden, the engines spooled up, and the plane shuddered. If you were on that plane, you instantly knew something was wrong. As the plane shook, and the engines’ whine continued to rise dramatically, you also knew that it might be too late.

The plane kept shaking, and then it banked hard to the right. All this time, the engines continued to spool faster and faster, and the noise went from that roar, to something you felt in your bones, and they kept roaring louder and louder. Impossibly louder. I knew nothing about jet engines and I still don’t, but again, if you were on that plane you knew what was going on. Somewhere on the throttle there is a label that must say “full power.” Further above that there must be another label that say “emergency power.” Somewhere far past that, up above the stops, there must be another label that says, “Fuck it!”

At that moment you knew the pilot had white knuckles on that throttle handle doing his best to jam it way past “Fuck it!” in an attempt to keep the plane airborne. The engines screamed with an effort far beyond their design parameters. You just knew they were never meant for this - that parts were burning up and bearings were seizing up with heat. It was their death scream.

Oddly though, it didn’t seem to me like a scream of protest. It was a roar of dying approval.

The sound of dying jet engines roaring on a 747 in questionable circumstances is the Joyful Scream of Rage and Pain.

As the plane shuddered and turned, and the engines screamed an impossible pitch, I couldn’t help but smile though I was scared shitless. I was covered in goosebumps, and I felt that whatever happened, this was a fine, fine moment. The effort itself was transcendent.

Well, we didn’t crash. There was snow removal equipment on the runway. When the plane aborted, the pilot had to make a hard turn to miss the mountain at the end of the airport. I remember the pilot actually cursed when he told us what a near thing it had been. He wasn’t giving those sonsabitches another shot, and he nursed the plane about 20 minutes to Zagreb and declared an emergency.

That sound was the first time I felt the Joyful Scream of Rage and Pain fill me.

I’ve felt it a lot of times since then. It’s become an important part of my life.

I felt it while I was training to be a lifeguard. You had to learn what it was like to drown, and the way they did it was to have you swim back and forth across a pool under supreme supervision without breathing until you either passed out or started drowning.

You were supposed to pass out. It was considered bad form to start drowning.

What happens is this: If you walked up to the average person and closed off their air supply, they would struggle for about four minutes or so before they passed out. Most people, though, can’t voluntarily hold their breath for anywhere near that long. It just hurts too much, and the reflex to breathe is too strong to overcome.

But, if you’re trying to find and grab somebody who just went under the surface and disappeared from view, they won’t be in the same place when you come up for air and try again. Your best shot at getting them is the first one. Similarly if a guy has his fingers caught in a grate at the bottom of a pool (you’d be surprised how often this happens,) and you’re trying to free him, your chances aren’t as good if you can’t stay underwater and keep working for more than thirty seconds at a time.

So, if you want to be a good lifeguard, you need to know what your limits are, and you need to be able to operate at them. Being able to hold your breath for three minutes or more can and often does mean the difference in saving somebody’s life.

In order to do all this, you need to know those limits, which means you either have to pass out or drown. Drowning was considered bad form because that meant you lost control. You stopped thinking and instincts took over, you inhaled water, and your arms windmilled wildly and you simply became a victim. If you passed out, that means you maintained control all the way to the end.

That’s what they told me, anyway.

So, I got picked first. I took a deep breath, and I actually followed the good advice I’d been given (which was to gradually exhale and exert myself as much as possible in order to speed up the process).

Through the second lap I was okay, and then I felt myself slowing, and my lungs convulsing and I felt that I had to come up and take a breath (and if you did this they got really pissed off.) I started to panic, and felt weak, and without words my body started forming rationalizations and compelling arguments as to why this was a bad idea and I needed to stop right now, and breathe.

I kept swimming though, and somewhere inside me, when I really really needed it, the dying animal inside me decided that this was a final effort, that death was coming and it didn’t matter, I couldn’t breathe and I had to swim, and I was filled with the Joyful Scream of Rage and Pain, and pounded the water, and kept swimming and swimming. Just one more stroke, everything I had until everything went black.

Less than half the people were able to do it, and it’s something I’m overly proud of. I was really glad I was able to do it, because those that failed after two tries, had twenty pounds strapped to their legs and had to jump in the deep end and tread water until they started to drown. That looked a lot worse.

I feel it a lot. I felt it when I got badly burned. I’ve felt it when I lifted too much weight, and got trapped underneath it, and had to get it up or suffocate. Some part of me said “Fuck it! This is it!” and managed to tap everything my body had without reservation or regard to the damage.

It seems that I’ve become friendly with that feeling, and it’s become important to me, and it seems like something I can count on. It happens sometimes when I’m running, or doing all kinds of things.

I don’t think it’s just an adrenaline rush, or even a focused one. I think it’s something more.

I think the Joyful Scream of Rage and Pain is an instinct we all have, but that most people never tap. We’re taught pain is a bad thing and we take medication to alleviate the mildest forms of it. I just read on the board tonight a couple of people talking about how exercise hurts.

I can’t understand such a thing. It seems to me that a person who would say it has gone their whole life having never pushed themselves far enough, or hard enough, or they’d know that exercise feels GOOD! Certainly such a person has never gone so far with themselves that their primitive reptile brain sings out the Joyful Scream of Rage and Pain.

I know I’m sounding preachy but it seems to me that extreme effort is its own reward. It sharpens you physically, but far more importantly, it really is a purely cerebral thing. How sharply can you focus your will? How far can you push yourself?

It doesn’t seem a moot question. It’s the rare life that won’t encounter a time when such a thing is of use. Physical emergencies and accidents are a part of it. What will you do? What will you be capable of? Do you give up and drown, or does the Joyful Scream sing through your body until you push through and breach the surface?

And, while our challenges may not be physical, will you be able to do the hard things? Will you even know?

Will things just happen, or will you play a part?

The way I figure it is this: Those engines on that plane would have screamed just as loud whether the plane hit the mountain or not. Futility had nothing to do with the effort.

There’s a common saying “It’s what you do when it counts.” I think that’s wrong. The thing that matters the most is what you do when it no longer matters at all.

I’ve only talked about the physical, because that’s what I’m most comfortable with, but many face other difficulties than the physical. Depression, with or without cause, things can happen that can make a life fall apart: Divorce, the loss of livelihood, financial ruin, loss of custody of children. Anything, really.

The Joyful Scream of Rage and Pain, final effort in the face of failure or futility is my answer to you for those things that sap your strength and will, that make you want to give up, cry or drown.

All but the very luckiest of us will face these things, and before you do it is wise to become friends with your final limits.

I think exploring those limits, whether they are physical or emotional, is probably the thing that’s most worth doing in your life, and that it’s worth doing often. Marathoners call it “hitting the wall.” It’s a character-building experience.

In our own way, we all have to decide whether we go gentle or not into that good night.