Meltdowns. They don’t just happen at nuclear power plants. When life jostles your equilibrium and stretches your nerves like a brittle rubber band around a bundle of circumstances it’s too small for, it doesn’t take much to turn you into an emotional Chernobyl. One wrong word, one hiccup in your plans, one miniscule irritation and–BOOM! Handling a challenge with balance is a challenge all its own. But it’s worth mastering. Just imagine how it would be if, when everything else seemed to melt down, you didn’t.
Several years ago, my mountain biking brothers showed me a series of videos highlighting the difference between mountain bikers and soccer players, which I remember from time to time as life goes up and down. Mostly when it goes down because that’s when I behave like a soccer player.
Apparently, professional soccer players are renowned wimps. Collapsing like someone vaporized their skeleton if an opponent’s head dares graze theirs. Doing agonized somersaults because someone stepped on their toes. Looking to the ref for sympathy and justice like a disbelieving six-year-old on the playground because someone in a contact sport had the audacity to make contact.
In fairness, I’ve heard, they move at such speeds and with such power that it really doesn’t take much to throw them off balance. And I don’t know how sharp their cleats are, but I suppose it’s not as nice having them on your toes as it is having them under. The collapsing and maybe even the pain, assuming it didn’t happen because you used your opponent’s arm to elbow yourself in the face, might be legitimate.
But the ensuing drama is exactly that. Drama. The exaggerated soccer player’s pain we’ve come to know and ridicule is nothing more than a ploy to call down fouls on their opponents for their own advantage.
It’s ridiculous.
Says the person who’s as practiced as any soccer player at playing the victim.
I always think when I’m done wallowing that I’d really prefer to fit the mountain biker’s mold. Simply stand up from a spectacular crash and walk it off. And that was going to be this post’s message. “Face your challenges like a mountain biker, not a soccer player.”
But when I watched those videos again to refresh my memory, I changed my mind.
Soccer players may act like wusses, but mountain bikers–at least these ones–are insane. Whatever wings Red Bull gives you, they don’t work when you ride your bike off a cliff.
Don’t be like either one.
At least, not all the way.
The Response of the Overwrought
My dad, in my admittedly limited experience, had a very temperate disposition. If he ever melted down, lost his patience, raised his voice, it wasn’t in my presence. Maybe I witnessed frustration occasionally, but would anyone else call it that? No throwing his hands in the air–or anything else through it. No exasperated, “Aaggh!” Just some quiet mutterings to himself.
So I was surprised one day near the end of his life when he became noticeably irritated over the bread crumbs my nephew was dropping on the floor.
How could someone so steady get so upset over bread crumbs? (When I say upset, think lighting a match. Not a fuse. Just the match. His reaction was mild by almost any other standard. Just not by his.)
At face value, maybe it had the essence of overreactive soccer player.
But behind it was a two-and-a-half-year cancer battle and the frustrating helplessness of a body rapidly shutting down.
If someone melts down or breaks character over nothing–it’s not always nothing. They didn’t collapse because someone stepped on their toes. They collapsed because their toes are black and blue and broken from being stepped on a thousand times already. From running anyway, kicking the ball anyway, because the game still had to be played. Think how many times they could have gone down but didn’t and suddenly the straw that broke their back doesn’t seem so trivial.
Some of us are babies when things go south, and we need to grow up. That’s a fact. It’s too often true of me. Maybe you, too.
But sometimes an exaggerated response on the outside is exactly what the turmoil inside calls for. Or at least justifies.
Balance for the Overwrought
All this isn’t to say that because you’re justified, you’re right. When was the last time you felt like your best self in a meltdown?
That would be never for me. Justified or not.
Ideally, we’re all progressing to a state of mind and heart where human nature doesn’t bulldoze our patience when it’s tried. That’s the ultimate balance in a challenge. To have such peace in God’s love and such faith in his plan that nothing upsets you in the first place, no matter what you’ve been through.
Is that even attainable in this life? With practice, I think it at least gets easier. But as long as we’re stumbling, fumbling humans, we will probably never always maintain our equilibrium on the field.
The balance comes when you’re aware you’ve lost it. And in what you do next.
Stay on the ground? Spit in your opponent’s face? Hold a grudge? Wallow?
Or stand up. Shake their hand. Get back in the game. Or go sit on the bench for a while. There’s nothing wrong with that. Time-outs aren’t just for kids.
Successfully handling a challenge with balance isn’t about never losing your balance. It’s about how fast you can find it again.
I’ve had to find my balance again a lot these last many years. But enough time has passed to notice a trend.
The quicker I find it this time, the less I lose it next time.
Handling a Challenge with Balance When Pride is Involved
Sometimes I act like a soccer player for the same reason soccer players act like soccer players. Because I want my rolling on the ground in agony to be someone else’s fault. Because I need to grow up. Have some integrity. Take some responsibility. Be a better sport.
Sometimes I act like a soccer player because an ongoing strain that’s beyond my control has stretched my nerves and emotions thin, and it doesn’t take more than a nudge to tip me over the edge.
And sometimes I act like a soccer player because I first acted like a mountain biker.
I have a burden complex. Not about carrying one, but about being one. It’s a blessing/curse that runs in my family. Easier to just do things ourselves than ask for help. (Plus, we might be a tad obsessive. We like things how we like them.)
Sometimes that’s a strength that develops skills and resilience you didn’t know you had.
But sometimes it’s just a really good way to crash and burn.
There are people who don’t handle enough. And there are people who handle too much.
I’m a little of both.
I ride my bike off the edge of too many cliffs hoping, sometimes honestly believing, that while I fly through the air, I’ll figure out how to land. And then I crunch the tire rim and somersault over the handlebars.
Shocker.
And then, of course, instead of walking it off, there’s soccer drama. Which might be a little more proportionate to the size of the crash, but does it deserve much sympathy? I didn’t have to ride off a cliff.
Pride goes before a fall. Before you handle a challenge by riding your bike off a cliff, acknowledge your limitations. And respect them. There are better ways to get down the mountain.
The Challenge of Balance Can Be Less of a Challenge
If you want to find your balance in a challenge, and keep it, you have to know what made you lose it. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t know what’s causing it. On every level.
It’s not enough to blame it on all the straw on your back. You have to know where it all came from. You have to be honest about where it all came from.
Some of it you don’t have a say in. You don’t decide to get sick, decide to lose a loved one, decide to have unanswered prayers. Sometimes riding off a cliff isn’t a choice. Life just pushes you.
But what you do next is always up to you, and if it can’t lighten the load, it at least doesn’t have to add to it. You can’t control what life piles on you, but you can control what you pile on you.
There’s room in this mortal existence to act like a soccer player sometimes. Life is hard. Have some compassion on yourself if you throw a tantrum about it now and then.
But don’t milk it. That just makes it harder.
Sometimes this mortal existence forces you to be a mountain biker. But don’t ride off any cliffs you don’t have to. And if you do cartwheel down a mountain, whether it’s your own fault or not, get back on your feet. If you have to wait for your broken legs to heal first, look to the day you will get back on your feet. And see what you can do to avoid another such calamity in the future.
It takes work to not melt down when everything else does, and though we live a hundred years, we may never fully master the art. But mastering is just as important as mastered. If you’re honest enough to know yourself enough to humble yourself enough to take ownership of the way you respond to having your toes stepped on or flying over the handlebars, at the very least, the challenge of finding balance in a challenge won’t be quite the challenge it used to be.
And now I would that ye should be humble, and be submissive and gentle; easy to be entreated; full of patience and long-suffering; being temperate in all things; being diligent in keeping the commandments of God at all times; asking for whatsoever things ye stand in need, both spiritual and temporal; always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive.
Alma 7:23
Thank you for reading. I hope this perspective brings some balance to whatever challenges you’re facing. Share your thoughts in the comments and share this post!
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