Heart Is Not Enough (Simple Twist of Fate)

Complacence is the enemy of life.

A new book about
the death of
Chris Benoit
helped me
understand
what happened
a little better.

While I will
always respect
what he did
in the ring,
Benoit was
almost asking
for a bad end.

Part of it
wasn't even
his fault;
part of it
was that he
was the very
opposite of
another Chris,
Jericho, who
wrote a definitive
book about a
career in the sport
(as a fan & competitor),
and basically
spelled out
the kind of
passion that
was never any
good, about a
camp "run" by
the Hart family
that was probably
the least helpful
thing Jericho did
in his early days
(although a
friendship with
Lance Storm
was certainly
worth it).

That camp was
a legacy of
an idea that
pain was all
that you needed,
or rather, just
the idea of
formality, nothing
real (no heart),
just a business
transaction, like
the real dungeon
itself, where Benoit
studied, where all
the Harts find their
rite, even Bret,
even Owen.

But heart is not enough.

Jericho realized
quite early that
it wasn't enough to
accept and embrace
everything put
before you as
some sort of
necessity, but
rather that you
needed to make
your own way.

What Benoit got
was a simple twist of fate.

What Benoit got
was the dead end
of a tradition
that asked too much,
and he gave too much,
and thought it was okay
to speak up only
so often, to accept
and make do, make pure,
keep the tradition alive,
a broken foundation
already, although
he didn't know it.

In Texas, a father
drove almost his
whole brood into the ground,
and in Canada, the same will
pushed brothers too far
along the same path,
one to a life he couldn't
take seriously, and the
other far too much,
and both to bitter ends.

And Benoit, he was part of
that generation, growing
into it, being accepted
too easily, finding
his way by losing it,
and when all fell down
around him, he went, too.

Heart is not enough.

What happened to Benoit
and Jericho avoided
was the acceptance that
life could be passion
and passion alone,
with no perspective,
only awful complacence,
not in the sense
that he couldn't identity
the raw deals he sometimes
got, but that he never
learned to handle them,
only look the other way.

I respect the man
and what he did in the ring
to this day, and understand
what happened to him,
how he brought it on himself
and couldn't help it,
because that's just
what he had bought himself
into.

He found himself with a simple twist of fate.

In life, he had all the respect
in the world, but in death,
he lost all of it, because
no one, not even himself,
would ever breach the subject,
the simple question, was
it really enough? Was his
passion enough to cover
all the expenses, all
the toil and success
and the admiration of his fans?

Kurt Angle would have been next.

Kurt would have been next
and he seemed even more
violently headed for
the same collision,
the same collapse below him,
but he had too many signs,
not even counting those
who fell before him,
to ignore them, and
it may be true that
finally, we have seen
the last of the catastrophes,
at least of that generation.

Benoit might have in defeat
accomplished that much,
closed the chapter in that book,
where new chapters still remain,
in a sport that demands
perfection more than any other,
and punishes more greatly
when the absolute isn't true.

I hope and I pray
that this is true,
that somehow the message
sinks through,
that passion,
that heart is not enough,
that even a simple twist of fate,
in success or failure,
cannot cover for the lack
of a simple balance,
something more than
what's important,
in a life that shines so brightly.