The Man in the Arena

Jun 20, 2025

Issue #227

NB: This issue contains potentially disturbing images that my SO recommended I not share, but which I thought were necessary to support my thesis.

You've probably heard the sports-related phrase “he left it all on the field” before. What does that mean? The first thing it reminds me of is a passage from a speech called “Citizenship in a Republic” that Teddy Roosevelt gave in Paris in 1910. I first saw this passage on the walls of my college fraternity house, and I've had a nicely framed copy of it in my office for years. The passage reads:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again...who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

As a young man who had already spent years playing football, soccer, track and baseball, this hit me like a truth bomb, and would serve me well during the years I would spend in the Army and playing pickleball and adult soccer.

There is something primal about men competing with other men in sports. (Sorry, ladies, I love you but if we want to approach self-actualization, we must compete against other men.) It just feels right, like something we were born to do. Guys compete; it's in our nature.

Playing sports is just another way to pursue excellence and mastery in a different domain while getting exercise, sunshine, fresh air, laughter and socialization at the same time. As Mark Sisson points out in his outstanding book The Primal Blueprint, play is just as vital to humans as being in nature or with a beloved pet. I highly recommend you find a way to play that also results in you obtaining exercise. Instead of a grim experience that feels more like torture in a gulag, you'll have a blast that will flood your body with feel-good hormones that will elevate the rest of your day.

Playing competitive sports is also the perfect place to get into flow, a psychological state in which you perform automatically, without thinking. In order to get better at something, you must be able to get into flow, and sports provides all of the necessary conditions. This discovery (by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) is without a doubt the most-cited concept/person in the personal effectiveness literature.

And as Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams pointed out in one of his books, when you achieve excellence in one domain (such as sports), it usually carries through to other domains. How you do one thing is how you do everything.

Unfortunately, in today's perverted, unnatural world, most men (those who are sedentary and obese, on the Standard American Diet, whose bodies are full of prescription drugs and other toxins) have substituted hours of sitting in a La-Z-Boy watching spectator sports as a weak facsimile of the real thing. I don't believe that a man can be fully masculine if he doesn't play sports. I say that I don't watch sports, I play them. (BTW, this morning I was in awe of my 81-year old female friend not just playing pickleball, but doing so at a competitive level. If she can do it, you can too.)

If you play sports and take it seriously, you'll probably start to consider yourself an athlete at some point. As I'm reading about in the book Areté: Activate Your Heroic Potential, our self-image is extremely important and pretty much determines our performance and fate. If you identify as an athlete, your brain will remind you that you should do things like exercise and eat clean.

So what does “leaving it all on the field” mean to me? Let me give you an example from two weeks ago when I was playing pickleball. I was back near my baseline when one of my opponents hit a low, diagonal dink near the net on my side of the court. I sprinted up to scoop up the ball and get it back over the net, but then I needed a deceleration lane. Normally I just run past the net into my opponent's alley, but this time my path curved 90 degrees so that I was running very close to and parallel with the net onto my partner's side of the court. It was a challenging “get,” but everything was going fine until I suddenly found myself flying through the air.

My first point of contact was my shoulder on top of the net cord, with my left arm falling on my opponents' side of the net. Later a large yellow and dark green bruise developed on my bicep.

My second point of contact was my left knee.

My third point of contact was my right knee.

As I extracted my face from the net, my initial reaction was curiosity, as it was a mystery how I suddenly arrived at that place. Turns out I tripped over the metal clip that secures the strap that goes over the center of the net to the ground. BTW, I did get the ball back over the net, but since I touched a part of the net, it was a fault.

This was not only the worst pickleball injury I've ever had, it was the worst one I've ever seen in over 11 years of play. After applying bandages to my wounds, I even played a few more games before I realized that my knee was not 100%.

What was interesting is that other than the four strawberries on my body, I felt great for the rest of the day, not just physically but mentally and emotionally. (It did take at least a week before I could fully bend my knees again.) I think it was because I knew that I had been in the arena, with my body marred by dust and sweat and blood. I had strived valiantly and erred, and come short again and again. I knew the great enthusiasms and great devotions. Although I failed this time, I did so while daring greatly so that my place will never be with “those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Yes, I was banged up, but it didn't matter, because I felt self-actualized.

In conclusion, for me, “leaving it all on the court” means leaving my sweat, skin, hair and blood, as a result of valiant play. This morning I noticed that 12 days after my accident, my skin is still very much on the court. If they don't have to use a pressure washer on the court after you play, then you really haven't left it all on the court. :-)

The Man in the Arena

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