In Your Weakness Is Your Strength
Dave Hudson
When I was a young man – a boy, really – searching for academic direction, my mother would tell me that, if I were lucky, I might come across one special teacher who would grab my attention and turn me on to a subject – or to learning in general. I was lucky; in high school I found a teacher of German and English named John Small. This is a story, in part, of what I learned from that man. It begins with an ancient tale – read, discussed, analyzed, interpreted at great length in his classroom – the Iliad.
In his great epic Homer tells of a great warrior, Achilles, who leads the Greek army to victory against the Trojans in the long war of the 13th century B.C. Achilles, whose mother, the sea nymph Thetis, had dipped him in the River Styxx at birth to make him invulnerable, immortal like her, was not a god, but he was godlike. And like the gods, he was not devoid of human emotions – pride, envy, jealousy, anger, indignation. Near the end of the war he retired to his tent, refusing to fight, when Agamemnon, the Greek commander, took away from him Briseus, a young woman he had claimed as a prize of battle. Without him the Greeks were pushed back to the shore, all but overwhelmed. But when his friend Patroclus, wearing his armor, challenged the Trojans and was killed by Hector, the great Trojan hero, Achilles returned to battle, devastated and enraged. Like Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenneger, he slew Trojan after Trojan, and eventually, with the help of the goddess Athena, he killed Hector, and the Greeks went on to victory.
Rocky, Rambo, the Terminator, Masters of the Universe, Superman, Troy Aikman, Mia Hamm – they fascinate us. They represent Plato’s ideal – the idea, the essence, the model of the qualities of strength, valor, courage we value – and would attain. They are our Greek gods. We would be like them. Young children play the hero. I remember well at the age of six ordering my Superman belt from the back of the Wheaties box, and with that and my home-made cape, thinking long and hard about jumping off a high wall near my house. And older children – like us - emulate them. We would be strong, and brave, and powerful, and beautiful – honored and immortal. We seek the godlike physical image; we compete for supremacy – on the athletic field, in the workplace, and elsewhere.
At the age of thirteen, when I entered the ninth grade at the Taft School, a boys’ boarding school in Connecticut (that’s a prologue too long to tell here), I did not feel much like a superhero, but rather, quite the opposite. The son of short people, I was the epitome – the image – of small. At 4’8" and 80 pounds I was small – I had never known anyone my age as small as I was. To some extent my size defined me. I had strengths, and I was proud of them; I was smart, and I worked hard to excel in the arena of academics – to be the best. And I remember the pediatrician, Dr. Pick - a Hungarian refugee – pointing to his head and heart when he weighed and measured me, saying "it’s what’s up here and in here that counts." But basketball was out, and I wasn’t much of a baseball player, and most of the girls were taller than me. I envied the other guys. I desperately wanted to be like them. I wished I’d had taller parents.
At Taft I met a man who, more than anyone else, would help me through these issues. John Small, German and English teacher, track and cross-country coach, was, simply, the most impressive man I had ever encountered. He had an unforgettable visage; of only average height, he had broad shoulders and powerful arms and chest, tapering to a slim waist and hips. He stood with perfect posture and carried himself with confidence and purpose. He was almost completely bald; the blond hair on the sides and back of his head was thin and close-cropped. Beneath a strong forehead glowed striking sky blue eyes. His features were distinctly chiseled – from a sharp, angular nose to slightly concave cheeks, thin, straight lips, and strong chin. His ruddy complexion belied hours of exposure to sun and weather. He was the Nordic ideal.
Mr. Small was just a few years past forty when I met him – and single. It was rumored that he had been married briefly as a young man, but those rumors remained unconfirmed. He enlisted in the army during World War II after graduating from high school, went to Europe, and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He never spoke of his war experience, but we imagined that it had been traumatic. He graduated from college in 1950, the famous class of veterans, and went on to a master’s degree in German.
We wondered why this rugged, handsome man had chosen to spend his life unmarried, teaching high school boys in a boarding school. I’m sure the reasons were many and complicated. I’ve alluded to some already. He was mysterious, and that mystery contributed to his charisma. Whatever the reasons, it seemed clear that he had dedicated his life to teaching – not just to the teaching of a subject material but to the nurturing of the whole person – spirit and soul as well as mind. Beneath the stern, austere exterior radiated genuine warmth, kindness, and interest in his students.
There was something of the ascetic in him, a requirement for a boarding school master, I suppose. He was comfortable in his tiny, three-room apartment in the main building of the school – with his books, his Bach, his pipe, his German beer, and, most evenings after dinner, his students. If he had a life beyond those walls, we had no idea what it may have been. We only knew that he disappeared in his Porche every Sunday morning, returning in time for dinner.
John seemed to exist in a place somewhat apart from the school and its administrative structure. For us his authority did not derive from tenure, longevity, or position. Although age and experience surely contributed to his wisdom, it was his wisdom that commanded our respect. He thought deeply. He considered carefully. He was not glib. He was never pedantic or ideological; he never spoke the party line. He was careful not to undermine the school administration, but he let us know in subtle ways that he understood our perspective. He was John Small.
He was not a publicly religious man. We rarely, if ever, saw him in the weekly church service all students were required to attend. But an aura of wisdom surrounded him – wisdom with a certain spiritual quality. He was the knight charged with the mission of passing on the values and ideals of a culture – courage, honor, integrity, compassion, love of truth and beauty – and we were his eager apprentices.
I took classes with Mr. Small for four years, but it was on the cross-country course that I learned the greatest lessons. I joined the team for a variety of reasons having little to do with running – I was too small for football; I knew nothing about soccer, and I had met some runners. I had no special running talent. But I threw myself into it, as was my nature, worked hard, often to the point of complete exhaustion, and achieved some moderate success. I admired the good ones - the upperclassmen with the long, sinewy bodies, powerful legs, runners’ builds – and I thought of them as other. I would be like them, but I had no expectation of ever being in their league, those who looked like Greek gods to me.
John Small knew otherwise, and he would lead me to some truths he knew. On the athletic field he was the undisputed master. He had brought the sport of cross-country to the school; he had studied its literature; and he had become an outstanding coach with a long record of success. As much as we may have dreaded a particular workout, we never questioned its purpose. He was the authority.
For him competitive long-distance running was a metaphor for life – a vehicle through which he could teach very powerful lessons. Winning was very important to him, but not for its own sake. It was important because it was integral to the experience. Without the goal of victory the lesson was diminished.
There was drama in his methods. Every day at practice after a warm-up run, he gathered us together to talk about a recent race or one on the horizon. He praised those who had excelled, those who had improved, and those who had exhibited exceptional effort or courage. He knew the records of our adversaries, their times and talents, and in these meetings he would lay out a formula for victory. He knew what each of us must do for the team to beat a given opponent, and he placed specific individual challenges before us. Smith must beat Jones, and so forth, for the team to win. It could not have been clearer.
But his was not the typical, cheerleading effort. He thoughtfully led us to introspection – to taking inventory of inner resources and strengths that he knew were there – of which we were oblivious. He believed in us, and he asked us to believe in ourselves – to find strength where we might not expect it. "In your weakness is your strength," he told us. Cross-country was our test or crucible – not mere exercise and fresh air – though we got plenty of that. We accepted a challenge, threw body and soul into training, competed, won or lost, but, regardless of the outcome, once we had accepted the challenge, we gained in ways we little understood at the time.
In your weakness is your strength! As a fifteen year-old, I struggled with that paradox. How could I be strong if I was weak – and I knew I was weak At 5’ and 100# I was the smallest person in the school – and would be until I graduated. I was skinny and of average speed. How could those attributes be described as strengths? I couldn’t see strength in weakness; to be strong meant being without weakness.
As parents we want our children to be without weakness. In a recent Atlantic Monthly article David Brooks describes the Herculean efforts (there are those gods again) that parents make today to ensure that their children are not weak – that their potential is fully realized – that they enter the race of life advantaged. Kate, my wife, is a special education teacher. She works daily with children with very specific weaknesses – learning disabilities with labels and names. Leah is one of these children. She has struggled with reading because of difficulty with sound/symbol relationships and with arithmetic because of its linear process. Her parents would have her fixed – to have the weakness eliminated – the natural desire of all parents. – as Thetis dipped Achilles in the River Styx to immortalize him.
But to be human is to be weak – to have weakness. We cannot grow or mature – be fully-functioning people - until we accept our weaknesses as part of us. We can remediate them, as Kate remediates the learning disabilities of her students and gives them strategies to deal with who they are, but many weaknesses we can’t eliminate, can’t fix away. We would be like the gods – or have our children be like the gods – but the gods are not without their weaknesses. With strength comes weakness; in the case of Achilles the very source of his great strength was his greatest weakness – the hand grasping his ankle prevented the magical water from wetting it.
Just as there are flaws in strength, there is strength in weakness, and we are liberated when we come to realize that. Kate sees it every day in her students. Leah struggles with abstract symbols, sound/symbol relationships, and linear thinking because she sees and thinks visually – in a particularly gifted way – making her a wonderful artist and, incidentally, a whiz at geometry. On a recent test of math skills, she performed poorly in arithmetic (as predicted), but she was off the chart in her comprehension of geometric concepts. It is not that she has strengths and weaknesses, which, of course, everyone does; her weakness is her greatest strength. Leah is working on her weaknesses, and she is making progress, but Kate is leading her parents to see the great talent that is the flip side of her deficits – and that their major challenge is not in "fixing" Leah, but nurturing her gifts. She will flower most brilliantly only when she comes to recognize them – and they can help her do that as she grows.
John Small helped me to that recognition. Although he never spelled it out in so many words, he led me to realize that I could use my size to advantage on the cross-country course – our course, in particular, a very hilly one. He suggested that I charge the hills, passing as many people as possible on my way up, knowing that with my short legs and light weight I could do that easier than the bigger guys. If I could hang on to my place on the flats and the downhills, then what I had gained on the uphills would make the difference. My success in the dreaded hill climb practice drills, in which we would sprint full speed up a steep hill a dozen times in succession, resting only on the jog back down to the bottom had given me some confidence, so I tried the strategy.
It worked. I was still not the fastest runner on the course, but I had found a way to succeed – to flourish – using my native attributes – without having to become someone else. I won only one race in my cross-country career, and the race which best illustrates the point was not that one. I remember it well – let me recount it. Near the end of the season of my senior year – Oct. 30, 1965, according to Coach Small’s yearbook article – we ran against a strong, undefeated team on their difficult, hilly course. The prospects for victory were not bright, for, as Small wrote, "we lacked the kind of dynamic front runner our team as had almost every previous year, and we did not have five runners who could finish high enough in the pack for the team to score well. Nonetheless, I was game. Encouraged by victory against a weaker team on our home course the week before, I went out with the leader, a big, strong, talented runner – one of the best in New England that year, staying right on his heels. On the first uphill I passed him, only to have him hang right behind me and pass me on the next downhill. However, I doggedly kept up the pattern, passing him on each hill, until, on the last long climb he failed to stay with me. I had demoralized him; short legs and lightness had beaten size and muscle. The last hundred yards was downhill, unfortunately, and, as I reached for the finish – spent - another of our opponents nipped me at the line. I was disappointed but not devastated; I had had my personal victory; my learning was confirmed.
And what of the gifts of John Small – his wisdom, his compassion, his sensitivity? Did they have a source in some hidden weakness – of which we were unaware – which had led him to his monastic life? I suspect so. He retired in the late eighties, an honored institution, praised and toasted at alumni dinners in New York and elsewhere. Not long after that I learned of his death in a letter from the headmaster of the school. It spoke of his last days, referring to pneumonia and multiple organ failure – a condition which sounded hauntingly familiar – like the ravages of AIDS.
To be weak, to have weakness, is fundamental to the human experience – and that of the gods. We are all weak in one way or another. We despair of our weaknesses, and we would have them disappear. We envy those whom we see as strong, and we wish to be like them. We are often crippled by our weakness, unable to fulfill our potential because we have resigned ourselves to defeat. We intimidate ourselves. We wallow in our ineptitude. Or we try to change ourselves, to fix ourselves, to eliminate the deficiency – to become someone else.
But also fundamental to the human condition are great sources of strength. Strength is not reserved for the hero or the superstar. It resides within all of us, often unseen – disguised as weakness – until it is revealed by a fresh perspective. When, in the wash of a new light, we see strength in our weakness and make peace with the person those characteristics represent, only then are we free to grow into rich, full lives.
Let me close with a modern parable of a 10-year-old boy who decided to study judo despite having lost his left arm in a devastating car accident. The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master. The boy was doing well, so he couldn’t understand why, after three months of training the master had taught him only one move.
"Sensei," the boy finally said, "Shouldn’t I be learning more moves?"
"This is the only move you know, but this is the only move you’ll ever need to know," the sensei replied.
Not quite understanding, but believing in his teacher, the boy kept training.
Several months later, the sensei took the boy to his first tournament. Surprising himself, the boy easily won his first two matches. The third match proved to be more difficult, but after some time, his opponent became impatient and charged; the boy deftly used his one move to win the match. Still amazed by his success, the boy was now in the finals.
This time, his opponent was bigger, stronger, and more experienced. For a while, the boy appeared to be overmatched. Concerned that the boy might get hurt, the referee called a time-out. He was about to stop the match when the sensei intervened.
"No," the sensei insisted, "Let him continue."
Soon after the match resumed, his opponent made a crucial mistake; he dropped his guard. Instantly, the boy used his move to pin him. The boy had won the match and the tournament. He was the champion.
On the way home, the boy and sensei reviewed every move in each and every match. Then the boy summoned the courage to ask what was really on his mind.
"Sensei, how did I win the tournament with only one move?"
"You won for two reasons," the sensei answered. "First, you’ve almost mastered one of the most difficult throws in all of judo. And second, the only known defense for that move is for your opponent to grab your left arm."
July 2002