GoKawiilThere’s something romantic about the Cave. About grinding away at something in private. About training with headphones on in our own little world. About stepping away for six months to emerge “unrecognizable” to all those people we imagine thinking about us.
This masculine urge to “grind” seems to be gaining popularity. It reminds me of an incredible Under Armour ad for Michael Phelps’s iconic return to the 2016 Olympics which ended with the quote: “It’s what you do in the dark that puts you in the light.”
Yet the Cave, despite its darkness of solitude and dampness from sweat and suffer-porn, is comfortable. It lets us tinker with our own delusions. If we spend too much time in the Cave, our pupils dilate, and our assumptions start to look like reality. That somehow this training regimen will unlock athletic prowess, or that our perfectly polished product will be loved by millions of users around the globe. I find Paramore playing in my head.
“See, it’s easy to ignore trouble, when you’re living in a bubble.”
Culture has created a cozy Cave. Smart devices reward private fitness. Recommendation algorithms propagate our preexisting philosophy through personalized programming. AI tells us what we want to hear and bolsters our assumptions instead of challenging them. We grow so comfortable curating our Cave that we forget the vast, interesting, beautiful, and brutal world beyond its walls.
I say all this because I’ve spent years mistaking effort for progress. I learned this lesson nearly twenty years ago on a wrestling mat.
“So, what are you gonna do, when the world don’t orbit around you?”
As the cold winds off Lake Michigan blew snow over Kenowa Hills High School, two dozen young men grappled in a sweaty, windowless room. For four winters, I wrestled. I’d start the season in November, feeling strong and fit. Five months later, after hundreds of hours training in sweatsuits on an empty stomach and a dozen Saturdays spent in gyms across West Michigan, I’d enter April pale, malnourished, and occasionally plagued by a skin disease like impetigo. At one point, I cut seven pounds a week to make the 119-pound weight class. Despite all that, I loved wrestling more than any other sport and miss it dearly.
Not because I was good. In fact, I was terrible. I got pinned more often than I pinned and lost more often than I won. But those few times my arm was raised were sweeter than almost anything. There is something undeniably beautiful in wrestling’s brutality.
There’s no gear to give an advantage—no special cleats, rackets, or pads. There are no conditions to create excuses—no weather, no nets, no sun in the eyes. And there’s nothing to hide behind. Just you and your opponent for six minutes of utter exhaustion. When you win, you win. When you lose, you lose. Because we cannot guarantee that outcome, we obsess over the inputs.
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