Could you die in order to live?

When I send emails, I always put a quote at the bottom. At face value, it seems like your average, put-as-part-of-your-signature quote. But over the past several months, it's come to mean so much more to me than just that. The quote is from GK Chesterton (yeah I know, big surprise) and it's about courage.

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live, taking the form of a readiness to die."

I can't say that I ever felt like courage contradicted itself. I have always thought that courage was something to want, to aspire toward, to have. Even after I started putting this quote on my emails, I didn't recognize its full significance.

That is, until a debate round. It's so funny how things just hit you right in the middle of everyday, down-in-the-trenches life. We were debating against a nationally known team and feeling pretty stressed just going into the round. Mind you, this was the new resolution that we'd only had a couple of weeks to prepare for, and most of that time had been spent working on affirmative. Now, we were going negative against a really good team.

When the first speaker stood up and gave the speech, I grew more and more nervous. I don't usually get anxious during speech rounds or debate rounds- I have too many things going on in my head, too many feelings already without anxiety there to complicate them. So, having this intense nervousness was really new and very unwelcome for me.

As fate would have it, I was the first negative speaker. I sat at the prep table, using up as much time as I could, trying to see if I had something worthwhile to talk about. It wasn't that this was a particularly amazing case- it was just that my brain wasn't functioning right and I wasn't able to make heads or tails out of it.

When the timer called "2 minutes used," I knew that I had to stop. I was just trying to put off the inevitable.
I'm a debater. This is my job. I have a responsibility to my partner, to my club, to my coach, to my family, and to myself, to get up there and do the best job that I can. Don't think about how bad it'll be. Just get up there, say what you have to say, and don't start repeating yourself. Finish when you're done.

The speech was four minutes long. A usual constructive is usually double that. When I sat back down, I definitely didn't feel proud of myself. I wasn't pleased with what I had done, because I felt like it was beneath my capabilities.

But reflecting back on the round, I realized that courage had to play a part in that scenario. I wanted to "live." (meaning, get up and speak.) I knew that I had a responsibility to live. But that desire, that wish, had to be backed up by something real and constructive. I had to be ready and willing to sacrifice my own comfort and accomplish what needed done. I had to die to my vision of what I wanted the speech to look like and be okay with what the speech was. I had to die to thoughts of what the judge may think of my speaking style or lack thereof and focus on getting the words out of my mouth.

We won the round. It wasn't because of how I spoke, or how I did. I didn't know when I started that I'd win the round- but of course, we had a 50/50 chance of winning just going into the room. But if I didn't get up to speak, that chance would have dropped to 100/0, in favor of aff. By not speaking and not conquering myself, I would have forfeited the round. That's what I knew I couldn't do.
I wouldn't want to re-live that round, but at the same time I needed to learn the lesson. Courage isn't some word that stirs up feel-good emotions. It's a call to duty, a call to valor. It's a virtue that should always be blossoming and never stop growing. Because in our own way, we are all asked to rise to a challenge. And to conquer that challenge requires real, contradicting courage.

"This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it.

A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape.

He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine."

~GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 136

Potpourri

A lot to catch up on...

-success, failure, and debate.
For the first time I participated in Team Policy debate, so that meant I got to do a lot of research about taxes and US revenue generation policies. I definitely learned a lot from that, but more importantly I got a crash course in success and failure.
My partner and I decided at the beginning of the year that we wanted our goal to be NITOC (National Invitational Tournament of Champions). We thought that if we gave it our best, we could get there.
We did not do well in our first tournament. We got a very low score and low speaker points. After the initial disappointment, we both sat down, together and individually, to assess what we did wrong. I realized that I had let myself grow over-confident and quite honestly, that was a big part of what lost us the tournament.
The next two tournaments, we achieved an even score and were tantalizingly close to winning one more round in both tournaments, which would have allowed us to progress farther. However, we ended up not qualifying to NITOC-which means that we didn't make our goal. Therefore, in a literal sense of the word, we failed this year.
But after doing some thinking about it, I think that in a different way, we succeeded. We wanted to show ourselves just how well we could do- and we did. We also debated two different resolutions, since for one tournament we went to a different league. That meant that we had two weeks to write a case/gather neg information on the criminal justice system. We had an even score at that tournament, which I'm really pleased with. Overall, even though I of course wish we'd made our goal, we had a good year.
"Success is not to be measured so much by the position one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome." ~Booker T. Washington

-impromptu.
My last tournament was just a week ago, and I participated in impromptu. In this event, you draw three topics, pick one, and have two minutes to prepare a five minute speech. You can't take any notes up with you.
I didn't compete in this event all year long, but just for some practice, I decided to do it at this tournament. I'm so glad I did.
In my first round, I got the word "dare." I talked for over five minutes on why we should dare to do things, why we should take risks (because that word is synonymous with dare), etc. It was fun, and I liked the speech, even though I messed up once. I said, "We should dare to do whatever we want." The instant the words came out of my mouth, I knew it sounded wrong...but oh well, that's impromptu.
The second round, they had questions. Things like, "If you could have a superpower, what would it be?" >.< I really don't like those kind of hypothetical, never-going-to-happen scenarios for impromptu, and I think I would've had a really hard round if I hadn't drawn one of the questions I did. I got two lame questions and this one: "If you could do anything without failing, what would it be?" That's when I started grinning at the prep table.
I again filled my time because I got to talk all about success and failure and had such a fun round. Basically, it was a five minute version of everything I just wrote about success.
And third round, I got "defiance." This actually was my best round according to my judges, even though I didn't think so. This was enjoyable to speak on too, because I decided to look at the positive aspect of the word "defiance" instead of the negative way that everybody usually hears it.
And then I broke. Which wasn't expected at all. Really though, I was just having so much fun that I was really glad I broke in impromptu! :) Semi-finals round, I got the word "insufferable." Thinking back on it, I could have done a lot of different things with that speech that would've made it better, but it was still good. There were a bunch of super good competitors in that room, so I'm not surprised that I didn't make it to finals. But it was still a good ride and I had a ton of fun with impromptu- and that's really all that matters. A lot of competitors are forced to do impromptu, but it can be such a fun, insightful event if done well.
And to be absolutely honest, I think that a huge factor in why I broke is because of my topics. I was EXTREMELY blessed at this tournament to draw topics that I actually felt strongly about anyway and wanted to speak on. I'm not an amazing impromptu-er, by any stretch of the imagination. It's about speaking from your heart, every round. Whenever I start using head knowledge in an impromptu round, I don't do well at all. Even when you get a topic that you can't really relate to, go somewhere that means something to you. Become vulnerable. And have fun.

-quotes.
If you were to look at my laptop right now, you would see a whole bunch of virtual sticky notes. All of them have quotes on them about various things, so every time I turn on my laptop I get to instantly see all these quotes. (It really helps with impromptu, I had a quote for every round.) I've collected them over the year, so here are a couple of my favorites. I may post one or two once in a while, as their own blog post if I'm running low on time.

"The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman."
~GK Chesterton

"When the world tells you, "Give up," Hope whispers, "Try one more time."

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point."
~CS Lewis

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."
~Thomas Jefferson

"All right Mister, let me tell you what winning means. It means that you're willing to go longer, work harder, and give more than anyone else."
~Vincent Lombardi

-Titanic Heroes.
A lot is going on right now with Titanic Heroes and Benjamin and I are both really excited about it. We'll be presenting at the Christian Heritage conference this weekend, which is a pretty big deal and should be very rewarding.
Benjamin just put together this awesome video for Titanic Heroes...and because he's my brother, I'm going to brag on him and tell you that it really is amazing. We literally sat down on Wednesday evening, story-boarded the idea, and got it on YouTube last night. It looks super professional.
Blogger/YouTube are being dumb and won't let me put in the actual video so here's the link.
Introducing Titanic Heroes

-and just because Google rocks.