The Boxer

A Story by Jared Moss

An adolescent has a fascination with boxing.

There was a birth once. Its family knew this birth would be there. They had anticipated everything they knew about this infant, but when this infant came into their lives, they didn’t plan much. They only thought he would do what infants like him did. When the infant grew into a boy, he had known this.

The family knew this. But they forced all the splendid lives into their own, through the boxes and papers that glorified them. They praised this. To every corner of their life, they hailed these people. The boy wanted to become them.

The boy saw a magnificent warrior truly exist after long enough. He was there, closer than anything so great had ever been to him. Someone with so much glory, his conflicts were scattered away from him. Devoid of any procrastination or stalling, of any hopelessness or loss. This was the boxer and he showed the boy how he had to fight to make his life grand. He saw victory gained for the first time in his life. And he was taught what he needed to do for greatness. The boy saw his future in the boxer, as fluently as he could see his family's.

The boy had started training as the boxer, though it was tiring. He always told himself it would help the family when he grew. That all his sacrifices would be made up for when the family could prosper. And no matter what this training meant; his strength must be there.

But he began to fight an idea. He began to forget what greatness he wanted. Whenever he saw the family, he knew they must be saved. They could never become their best if they didn’t see pursuit, so the boy needed to show them. Even if the boy began to forget what boxing was. Even if his blows turned into punches, and even if he forgot why he should be great. But he had his strength. This must always be great, thought the boy.

The boy’s efforts were noticed as time went on. Real coaches and real boxers saw the boy, they saw how he trained, and how he put effort into becoming something bigger than he used to be. “This boy is golden,” the boxers said. But the boy only wanted to hear of his strength now. His life was dedicated to these things. The same things of glory and of greatness that built him. Only when his family could become what they longed for would this glory end.

The boy continued to train as he kept being golden in the eyes of everyone who wanted him to be. They saw he was enough now to become real like they were, and the boy was a boxer in their eyes. Something almost exactly as they were but separate from everything else about them. To them, the boy was only a boxer. The boy saw what they did. But the only person any of them could see were versions of everyone else. So, they set him in matches against his enemies, just as they had been. And the boy knew he had become the thing he idolized for so many years. But he didn’t know what else he could be. He kept being set up in the same matches, and the boy thought this was what he was supposed to be. But it was nothing. He was a real boxer now, and others saw him as real, a victorious triumph for the family and everyone around him. But he couldn’t feel this. Every victorious blow, every triumphant swing, and every movement he made was only just that. No shimmering glory, no powerful majesties. Only swings and punches. Success never came to him. All he had was that identity. That was successful. But he didn’t know.

The boy fought, for months, forgetting anything that wasn’t this. The boxer had flourished over. The boy’s glory had become nothing. The only thing he had left was the same desire the family wouldn’t wither away. But the family hadn’t even started. They felt good, as they always had been. The boy wanted them to be magnificent, to see all that he had done. If they took a glance, he could know everything meant something. But every time he stopped boxing, the family were glazed with their screens, too occupied for what was real.

The boy had kept training. He had to believe he could still become better. And he went back to the same idolizing past and looked towards the fighter. This was the greatest man to ever become great, someone fueled with a desire the boy only saw as magic. But now he refused to believe there was a difference between him and everything he wasn’t.

The boy waited. He waited, knowing he was false for forsaking his conflict, knowing he was better than the people he had been. And he clung to anything that could prove it. That grand, final match with the fighter, that would make him something that he needed to be. This would make him necessary.

He had finally seen what could make him satisfied with everything. He had found the fighter and stepped in the ring of conflict where everything would be. The boy would fight greatness and become it. He used every maneuver, every movement, every stroke of fury he could imagine tearing the fighter down. But the fighter had the fire and passion the boy saw was a myth. And, though the boy rejected this myth now, the fighter had something the boy had become afraid of. A sense of anguish, of glory and hope, of every emotion imaginable that the boy hadn’t known. The boy ignored this. He left himself a scared, angry, and bitter self only knowing what it was to fight. He finished like this. He made his greatest achievement. And the fighter fell at the boy’s hand, and the strongest one of all had become the boy. But the boy felt no reward. His cycle continued. And he was a boy.

His family was there then. He saw what he had done for them. He saw that they could finally be happy. But he was plagued.

“This is not great,” he thought. And the boy wasn’t great. He had forgotten the individual he was. There was so much reminding him of this legend he had made. There wasn’t enough room for someone. But he made himself room. He took all the gloves, all the sandbags, and glorious trophies.

They were left in the shallows of a ditch. And through the reflection of these falsehoods, the boy had seen something more than him. It wasn’t someone whose life was attached to a material man. It was simply a man.