“The loudest boos always come from the cheapest seats” - Babe Ruth
There’s a passage I think about almost every day. It’s from Roosevelt’s Citizenship in a Republic, delivered in Paris in 1910. The entire address is brilliant, but one section has become a personal creed for me—the part most people now know as The Man in the Arena.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,
or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
but who does actually strive to do the deeds;
who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions;
who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,
so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls
who neither know victory nor defeat.”
And this past week? It was a hell of a time in the arena. We served up every kind of spectacle—high highs and low lows. Acts of all sorts: deep dish daddy-ish, betrayals, real estate wins, conflict and closure. It was nonstop action, the kind of week that leaves you soul-tired and strangely grateful to still be standing. And there’s a unique satisfaction in it too—that feeling of beating the odds and pulling a miracle out of thin air to save the day.
That’s how I want to live: present in the struggle, willing to be bruised and dust-covered in the arena, not polished and safe in the stands. A rough day on the floor, fully spent, is worth more to me than a comfortable lifetime on the sidelines.
I want to live out loud, knowing I left it all on the field, in the arena. To give everything I’ve got to the life that’s in front of me, to risk the blows and the failures, and still keep showing up. It doesn’t need to be challenging—but I’m not afraid when it is. And when it is, part of me likes that too. There’s something honest about the sweat and dust of effort, something deeply satisfying in knowing I poured myself into it.
This is when I sleep easiest—when I know I met the day head-on. I didn’t hold back, I didn’t hide. I brought all of me to it, and that’s enough.
Of course, the peace never lasts uncontested. This week, someone tried to disturb it. I got heckled from the cheap seats.
People with limited views and no real understanding of what I’m carrying decided to weigh in. One even suggested they’d “noticed a remarkable decline” in Charlie’s condition over the two months I’ve been here—as if my showing up every day, in the thick of elder law, estate planning, long-term care, and dementia, was the problem.
In the past, I might have absorbed that, doubted myself, tried to explain or defend. Not this time.
This time, I stood grounded and said, No. I’m not going to be spoken to that way. I’m not going to receive this energy from you.
Their words didn’t hit the mark because I knew, in my bones, they were wrong about me. So wrong that it didn’t even matter to try to correct them. And standing in that kind of self-love felt incredible.
It was a hard fight. But it was a clean win.
I came out here knowing this was going to be an arena. I expected difficulty. What I didn’t expect was how much more I’d be given in the process—more battles, more revelations, more opportunities to face what’s been unaddressed for decades.
And I’m not resisting any of it. I’m running right at it.
Because what’s happening in the process is that I’m falling in love with who I’m becoming.
I’m becoming the person who can stand in the fire and not flinch. The person who can meet the toughest situation of her life with enthusiasm and courage. And I know—when I get to the other side of this—there will be nothing left to shy away from.
There’s no challenge ahead of me that can compare with what’s already behind me.
Choosing to be the person in the arena every single day gives me more than I ever imagined. Soul-tiring at times, yes. It’s not easy. But there’s a deep, singular pleasure in meeting a hard fight and coming out the other side knowing I didn’t turn away.
Yes, some days it’s exhausting—but it’s also so fucking worth it. That part isn’t even up for debate. The return always outweighs the cost. Even the roughest day in the arena gives more than it takes: lessons that shape me, resilience that carries me, grit I can trust, proof that I can endure. And that kind of proof? You can’t buy it. You can’t fake it. You only earn it by showing up.
The only way to know you can do hard things is to do them. To walk toward the challenge instead of waiting for it to find you. And it’s law: whatever you choose to face loses its power over you.
So let me ask you—what’s the arena you know you need to step into, but haven’t yet? What’s the thing you keep circling, carrying, pushing to the edges of your mind? Who would you be on the other side of that battle? How much more mental real estate would open up for you? How much more emotional bandwidth would you gain if that giant thing wasn’t always looming in the background?
Because victory isn’t possible from the sidelines. It belongs only to those in the arena. And we’re winning out here.
-Sunny
