A Most Beautiful Thing

by Arshay Cooper

I look at Marc and I know he is the nightmare that I asked for who will push me past my limits, until I know that I am fully awake and always ready to go.

I tell him he has to come to church with me, and he says he will on Sunday. We hang up the phone, and my heart is heavy for him. At the same time, I’m angry. I’m mad about where we live and how we’re growing up. I’m pissed that the odds are always stacked against us, so everything is a struggle. I’m jealous of the guys we race because the odds are with them. I wonder if it makes rowing—and life—easier for them.

Every time I sit on this machine I ask myself why I am doing this. Indoor season is all a mental game and it’s hard not to let doubt creep in.

The power of speaking the right words to a young person can do something magical. I feel unstoppable.

In my head, I’m thinking that everyone deserves that high school sweetheart, but quickly I realize I’m not anyone’s sweetheart. Grace is my friend, but the person that makes me smile is also the same person that makes me frown. I realize Marc is teaching me about discipline but I have a feeling he knows more and wants me to get over her and stay focused.

Alvin told me he thinks they both decided to get wealthy just so they had more to give. I admire their choice to live a selfless life because I’ve grown up around takers all my life.

“I know. I just haven’t been honest with myself.” I don’t know if Marc, Alvin, Josh, or anyone else has ever felt what I am feeling right now. It is the worst feeling, like my chest is cut open with a knife and a blowtorch is blowing away at it. Getting punched in the face would feel better than this, and for the first time ever there is no one around to do it. I tell her I have to go, and she understands. If it were raining I would look up at the sky and cry so no one would know the difference.

My thoughts are racing as I am rowing. She doesn’t know that I’ve trained so hard to transform my body to look good for her. She doesn’t know that I run extra laps, hurt my teammates, rent romantic movies, spend hours daydreaming, draw pictures, skip homework, lose sleep, and pray for her. She will never know.

I spend my spare time researching the sport, and Marc has helped break things down for me. My favorite story is when the Americans took gold in Germany.

The team is throwing my hands up. I don’t know what’s happening. I am #1 in the city and #35 in the country for the Junior Men 2K. I am excited to see if I can web search my name and have my score pop up. I also broke my record, testing at 7 minutes for seventeen-year-olds. Alvin didn’t rank but proved to himself that he can compete. He hugs me and says next stop spring break training.

We’ve finally earned the one thing that we were searching for: respect. Respect from our coaches, family, friends, the school, the football team, and now St. Ignatius Loyola. It was lonely for us without that respect in the early days of rowing. Marc has worked hard to teach us to respect ourselves, our bodies, our time, our boat, our competitors, our teammates, and the crew culture. When we finally figured that out, the world overflowed with an abundance of respect right into our laps. Manley Crew is ready to make a big impact.

A captain is not chosen just for ability, or talent, or strength, but for their leadership. Captains should be the first to set foot in the boathouse and the last to leave, not the coaches. A captain understands that every push-up, sit-up, diet, sprain, scar, lecture, and sprint is not a punishment but a way of life and a state of mind.

I didn’t think we could get along with people who didn’t look like us but rowing changed that for me.

This experience was just never just about rowing. It was about bridging the water. When I think about Harriet Tubman, I don’t think about her career as a union spy, but I think of freedom. When I hear the name Dr. King, I don’t imagine an educated pastor, but I picture hope. When Gandhi is spoken of, I think of peace and not his occupation as an attorney. When you represent something larger than yourself and your career, real change happens. So when we step out into that boat in Grand Rapids, I don’t want people to see a crew team but young men who rowed against the current of life and survived.

I don’t care if you’re an Olympian, a Harvard rower, or test at four minutes in a 2,000-meter piece—there are no rowers I would rather row with than these guys. None of us had ever said as much as hello to each other in the halls before rowing, but now we are brothers.

He once said win or lose, rowing is the tool you use to fix things.

The history we make today is simple: that we survived. I survived my past. In crew you move ahead by looking in the opposite direction. I learned that it’s okay to look back, as long as you keep moving forward.

I love my city, it made me who I am. But I cannot accept the violence. What if the local police officers, gang members, aldermen, clergy, firemen, doctors, school principals, basketball teams, grocery-store owners, prosecutors, and community all got together weekly to barbecue, play games, watch sports on an outside projector, play cards, attend Sunday services, teach their trades, build a park, speak, shake hands, learn names, mentor, educate, swap books, give jobs, and trust like our rowing team did. What would the community look like?

Once, there was a boy walking along a beach. There had just been a storm, and starfish had been scattered along the sands. The boy knew the fish would die, so he began to fling the fish to the sea. But every time he threw a starfish, another would wash ashore. An old man happened along and saw what the child was doing. He called out, “Boy, what are you doing?” “Saving the starfish!” replied the boy. “But your attempts are useless, child! Every time you save one, another one returns, often the same one! You can’t save them all, so why bother trying? Why does it matter anyway?” called the old man. The boy thought about this for a while, a starfish in his hand; he answered, “Well, it matters to this one.” And then he flung the starfish into the welcoming sea.