I * attended an amazing play at UT titled Fight by Kimber Lee. It's the story of a young woman who is training to be a boxer in Newark, NJ amidst her mother's abandonment and her disabled father's psychological absence.
This quote was in the playbill:
"At a certain point, if he's going to get to the top of the boxing profession, a fighter has to learn the difference between the truth and a lie. The lie is thinking that submission is an acceptable option. The truth is that if you give up, afterward you'll realize that any of those punches that you thought you couldn't deal with, or those rough moments you didn't think you could make it through, were just moments. Enduring them is not nearly as tough as having to deal with the next day and the next month and the next year, knowing that you quit, that you failed, that you submitted. It's a trainer's job to make a fighter understand that difference, that the parts of a fight that are urgent last only seconds; seconds during which you have to stave off the convenient excuse--"I'm too tired" or "I hurt too much" or "I can't do this" or even simply "I'm not going to deal with this." Sometimes it just comes down to not floating -- just being there and understanding that if you give in, you'll hurt more tomorrow. Maybe there is no more important lesson to learn from boxing than that."
--Atlas, Teddy (well known boxing trainer). Playbill Fight. University of Texas Department of Theatre and Dance. 21 November 2010.
* Thanks to our RROC Librarian, Ms. Blumberg