When teaching profile essays to my composition students, I assign them a reading about Juan Jose Padilla, the famous one-eyed matador from Spain.
The novelist Karen Russell wrote the profile piece titled “The Blind Faith of Juan Jose Padilla, the One-Eyed Matador” for GQ in 2012, and it is so damn good that it seems unfair to her fellow writers.
For those who may be unfamiliar with Padilla—and, let’s face it, he is not exactly a household name in the United States—his story is bizarre, yet strangely inspiring, in a dancing-with-madness type of way.
Padilla is one of the most famous matadors in the world, and in 2011, he was gored during a bullfight in Zaragoza, Spain. The bull named Marques tore up the left side of Padilla’s face with its horn, which went through the left eye socket, pretty much impaling his eyeball, and nearly killing the matador.
However, Padilla, a husband and father to two young children at the time, could not envision (pun intended) a life without bullfighting. It was his art and his passion. Then, improbably, Padilla returned to the bullring five months after the goring, with sight in only one-eye and wearing a patch on the other.
Is this stupid? Or is it inspirational, a testament to human resilience? It depends on how you look at the glass.
Then, in 2017, Padilla was gored again in the right thigh and chest by a bull named Hortensia1, ripping off his eye patch and sending his glass eye flying; then yet-again, in 2018, a bull scalped Padilla, taking off an eight-inch chunk of skin from his head.
Finally, in 2018, Padilla retired after a successful corrida in Zaragoza.
When I give the students the follow-up articles and we discuss them, most of students believe that Padilla was a fool to keep returning to the bullring, and it is not hard to see their point. As a husband and father, Padilla was playing dangerous games with his life.
“He seems to be willing to throw away everything in order to stab bulls for a living,” one student wrote in his response to the piece.
But I can also understand where Padilla is coming from, and anyone with a genuine passion for something in their life can probably understand it as well.
If you’re fortunate to discover that one thing that you’re passionate about in life, that thing that gives your life much of its meaning and joy, the idea of having that thing taken from you feels like your soul is being stolen.
And this certainly happens to people all of the time, and every time it does, it never fails to be a tragedy. I can understand why Padilla kept going back to the bullring, despite the fact that it might someday cost him his life.
He went back because the alternative was worse.
Does this make him self-centered? Of course. Most artists and athletes tend to be a little self-centered. To be successful in their personal pursuits, they have to be.
And maybe we all need to remind ourselves to be a little more like the one-eyed matador. Time is ticking, and you never know when that bull’s horn is coming for you.
- I’m not quite sure why I’m including the bulls’ names, but it seems important. ↩︎