From where that pavement is...

"...'cause there's no parachute that they can make for this

'cause I put my pain, my heart, my soul, my faith in this..."

My spiritual infancy brimmed with missionary zeal. Every faithful Christian should eventually find their way to missions and ministry. Christians who simply gave financial support and prayed were just ducking the hard work.

Did anyone ever say as much? No, not once.
Was this the overwhelming impression that I was left with? Yes, I and very many others.

As adamant as these zealots might have been in saying that there was no two-tier Christendom, they never realized that their works and words created such a world. They scoffed and laughed at the charismatics who segregate the faithful into those who've spoken in tongues and those who haven't, but they then frowned on those who elected to pursue a dream apart from third-world countries or clerical collars.

Two tiers? No, never. It's just that some people love God more and some not so much. Not being in ministry meant you either didn't love God or you didn't love people.

Unacceptable hypocrisy.

God cannot be God of all creation and God of only those who are in ministry.

Creation, so great and so wide and God's name is writ large over it all. And yet, I believed, I followed those who would confine Christendom to church walls, literal and otherwise. The otherwise refers to the begrudging concession that Christ may be loved outside a church building. But a discomfort plagues them if the love is not covered in crosses, soft lighting and tearful conversion stories.

But now, day by day, the glowing upswell in me burns brighter. I know where I'm going. For so much of my life, I feared that my teachers were right and that God was a petty Asian bureaucrat who wanted to lock me inside a church. No, far more powerful, far more gentle than I could have imagined, he beckons me towards a life I was trained to believe could never be mine.

There has never been a moment of greater rebellion and greater obedience for me. Throwing my hat in the ring, I'm going to be a writer. An echo from years past rings in my heart "If you won't take a chance on this, what will you take a chance on?" I'm not going to write for Christian media. I don't have the stomach for trying to be awkward and impish, skirting family-unfriendly realities. Screw that stupid shit. It's not going to be for academia as if I cared about impressing them and acquiring for myself their distinctions and honors anymore. I won't have a big organization to hide me. My parents taught me that security lay in size. There is no security in size. There's only security in the hollow of God's hand. And I believe that's exactly where I am. Throw away so many of the beliefs I've been taught, so many of the doctrines that finger-wagging reverend faces have instilled in me. Throw away the fears, the false needs, the empty materialism. Throw away the useless practices that no longer serve me. Rebel, reject and return to the naked freedom of knowing that God wants you to be yourself.

Daily

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." -- Aristotle

15. Finish the Badwater Ultramarathon.
16. Finish the Norseman Triathlon.
19. Have 100 works published in major media.
28. Bench press 2x bodyweight.
29. Deadlift over 500 lbs.
43. Clean and jerk a 175 lb. (5 pood) kettlebell.
56. Run the Boston Marathon.
71. Receive an invitation to a State Dinner.

Many of my bucket list items cannot be done at the geriatric end of a life. A great many of them require years and years of sustained effort, sacrifice, determination and guts.

That's why it's on my bucket list.

I can't achieve them as I am now. I would have to change. Personally, I would find it an utter tragedy to leave this world barely changed from how I entered it. The change, the drawing forth of effort, the discovery, the growth of courage... these make the goals matter. It's less important that others recognize me than I recognize myself.

If I found a shortcut, if I cheated on a race and lopped off 100 miles or took some substance to enhance my performance, or if publishers suddenly came to me and wanted to take my blog posts and plaster them everywhere, I'd fall into a deep depression. If that actually happened, I'd prefer death than to take them up on their offer. A shortcut would not achieve my goals. That would destroy any possibility of accomplishing them. The real heart of my goals lies in the belief that what I am right now is not what I want to be. To acquire the fruits without the labor would utterly destroy me for the personal, spiritual labor is what I desired the most. The fruits just acknowledge that I invested.

I'm going to make mistakes. I'm going to suffer heartache. I already know this. I don't mind those pains. A pain I could not withstand is a loved one telling me "Slow down. You're fine just the way you are." Life is too short to just be fine. Life is too short to just settle for enough. From the moment I was born, I began to move closer and closer to death. I want to hand him an autobiography worth reading when I finally meet him. Slow down? Not fast enough.

Today, I made the realization that this investment has to be made every day. Overly simplistic? Glaringly obvious? Yes. I think so. So obvious that I neglected it until this point. Monday night I went to a concert with a friend. I didn't just lose that night to work and grind, I lost the day after as well as my mind recovered from the music and the late night.

One of the things I discovered in changing my life was to increase happiness, do less of the stuff that makes you kinda feel good and do more of what truly satisfies your soul. I watched a lot of TV as a kid and enjoyed a great number of shows. It was pretty good. I'm not settling for pretty good. I'd like to watch Firefly, the Wire and a whole lot of other shows people have told me about. I have Total Recall from Netflix sitting on my table. These things are pretty good. But they're not really good. How many TV shows was last year's Half-Ironman worth? Innumerable. Does not compute.

It's like trading for baseball players. Giving a team 3 or 4 legitimately good players does not equal having 1 extraordinary player on the caliber of an Albert Pujols, Manny Ramirez or A-Rod. The things that are pretty good could never come together and be more than something that's truly great.

The concert was good. I enjoyed spending time with a good friend. But I have begun to realize pretty decent moments will cost me the great life affirming moments if I do not manage my time. There's a good reason I'm fasting gmail, facebook, manga and other social media between 8 and 5 for Lent. I want to demolish my addiction to these time traps. Even determination, the quality and virtue which I've cultivated in myself for years now, cannot grow when distracted. Determination also means focus.

That said, less blogging, more doing.

Living Towards Death

It's been awhile since I've read Heidegger and I've loaned my copy out (I can't even remember to whom I loaned my volume of "Being and Time") so I don't know if the concept of "Being Towards Death" that I'll be writing about today accurately reflects his idea. That doesn't matter. I'm writing about "Living Towards Death" and if it's the same, it's the same. If it's different, it's different.

The idea owes its shape to an exercise by Stephen Covey. Imagine your funeral. Imagine the speakers. One from your family. One of your friends. Someone from a community you participated in, a church, a club, a league. What would they say about you? What will you wish they said about you? What kind of life will you wish you had lived?

But that's the shape of the idea. The root goes down deeper than I can trace. Ever since I was a child I was fascinated with the concept of life as narrative. I didn't want a boring story for a life.

But the dreams I was sold, the values I was given, the life I was told to live derailed my desire. Be safe! Study accounting or finance instead of unstable English! Save money. Buy a house. Get kids. 2 of them. 1 boy and 1 girl because that portends prosperity. Serve the Church! Advance the Kingdom! Here's what it looks like. Do the following activities because that's real Kingdom advancement and not this silly pretend stuff. Live for maximum impact on other people. If you don't want to do that, then you're resisting the Spirit of God.

Or so I thought.

If I close my eyes for a moment and imagine a life where most of my weekends and maybe 1 weekday a week was spent in the confines of a church, my heartbeat raises. I feel the artery in my neck pulsing. My diaphragm tightens. My hands clench and unclench and a wild, desperate anger swells in my gut. This is the frenzy of a cornered animal. I will kill whoever I have to kill to escape. You won't take my life this way. I refuse to go to the grave with this life. This isn't mine! Who took my life and gave me this sorry substitute?

I open my eyes again and my breath still doesn't calm down. The terror is too real. I know my values. I know my heart. They can't be found indoors. They're not found in group settings. I'm socially capable and I do recognize the need for regular social contact. But for me, I'd set my own upper tolerances at about once a week if the group is more than 3 or 4 people and meets regularly. It's not that I'm emotionally unavailable. I wear my heart on my sleeve and have no trouble opening up. The honest truth is that other people get in the way of what I want to do.

If I close my eyes and imagine my perfect death I know what I want to see. I'm old. The almond tree has blossomed but the heartwood remains vital. Back when I was much younger in the faith, I devoured Scripture with an appetite that surprises even me. When I came across Caleb's testimony I thought "Yes! That's what I want!"

"And now behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming." -- Josh. 14:10-11

Some old people impress me to no end. The septa- and sexagenarians that rocketed pass me on the Half-Ironman for starters. And then to maintain a mind with its full faculties and the flowering of experience while possessing a vital body would complete the package. Do you notice how when someone turns a vital age, 16, 21, 25, 30, 33, 35, 40, that the joke is "It's all downhill from here!" I don't believe that for a second. Life is all uphill. That means it's going to demand more and more energy the further I want to go. It's going to make me want to puke my guts out. And life will need more man than I am if I want to be appropriate to the challenge. The challenge of dying with a life free from regret.

Excerpt from this morning's journal

So then, if that’s my goal, let’s get there one day at a time. My intention is intentionality. I want to focus on the do-ing, on the here, on the now. I want to be present for my own life. I refuse to be a spectator operating on animal instinct and impulse carried along by tempestuous moods, always taking the course of least resistance. Such a life would be an abomination of all that I love and value. I love life. I love joy. Joy is not lying in bed, comfy and cozy. One can be happy there. One can be content there but in my most brutally honest opinion I cannot entertain the notion that one may be joyous there. Joy is exuberant, shouting, wild, energetic, frenetic. Joy is dancing, jumping, running, leaping, flying. Joy is active, alive, vibrant. It may in a quieter moment become something else, something still good, but my life is about joy and not comfort. But comfort is easy, warm, low-energy. I can slip into comfort by slipping into pajamas, crawling under sheets, staying in bed just a bit longer. Can’t I slip into the grave that way too? My fear, the one that decided my life course when I was in college, was my fear of waking up 30 or 40 or 50 years old and wondering what happened to my life. I don’t want to miss my own life. I will meet the grave one day. I want to meet it at full throttle, fully knowing where I’m going. If I’m going to meet Death, I want to meet him by not backing down in a game of chicken. I have no intention of rotting away warm and sedated while I still live. 

Goals and Humanity

2009 was a watershed year for me. The volume and quality of experiences that I've accumulated that year were worth several other years of my life: I met a fantastic woman whose presence in my life continues to be a source of unabated joy, I did a triathlon, a race which has been on my heart for half a decade, I did a marathon, I gave a big gift to my parents. But taking a step back, the more important landmark historically speaking will be the fact that I finally did something about my desires besides pine for them from afar and whine when it stayed so distant.

Goals. Tangibly and materially speaking, setting goals has contributed to my general happiness and contentment more than any other immediate action. Setting personal goals says a lot of things. It says "I have a desire and it's a worthwhile pursuit." I've documented my struggles with feeling the freedom to pursue my own dreams in many a previous blog post before so I won't belabor the point.

I've been obsessed with goals for a year now. It still amazes me what effort, resourcefulness and initiative can accomplish. It still confounds me that I was able to I live for years without it. The novelty of initiative and determination hasn't wore off for me yet.

Setting goals taught me to measure progress, to value measurement. Surprisingly, my spiritual life received the greatest windfall from this development. Before I would set goals, wishes really, like "I want to love God more." and leave it at that. Now when I hear my past echoed back to me through the mouths of other Christians, I respond asking "How would you know you're getting there? How would you know when you're there? What steps are you going to take? How often are you going to measure progress? What adjustments do you foresee making?"

Roughly 4 out of 5 people I interrogate in this way respond by stammering or avoiding my gaze, avoiding the subject. I'm deeply thankful for the 1 out of 5 that I meet because nothing encourages me like comrades-in-arms, others who aren't content to take life as it comes living like worms in the soil on a day to day, bite to bite existence. Nothing is more appropriate to humanity than dreaming while awake. The poor do it. The rich do it. The sick, the healthy, the strong, the weak, across nations, across genders, across history... I haven't researched it, but I'm willing to wager on the fact that there has never been a person who fails to dream, to imagine while awake. Even animals dream when they are asleep. Humans can dream in the broad daylight of consciousness and awareness. Goals then, aren't fundamentally human. Goals, setting goals, separates those who are human merely by birth and chance, from those who   want to make the most of their human gifts while alive. Not only do they dream, but they realize that their dreams can come true if they seize upon it with both hands. They are a people alive.

Today is May 31st. At the end of the day, 151 days of a 365 day year will be in the books. How alive have you been for the 41% of the year that has passed?

5 Freshman Lessons (And some bonus rambling)

A quick post to crystallize some thoughts I had upon waking up this morning.

(This is a terrible tattoo. But I didn't find any other images that worked.)

1. You're a triathlete 24/7... sometimes.
   The idea comes from the Training Bible, the phrasing comes from Hajime No Ippo. The bigger the race, the more it will demand from you. People intuitively understand this much. I mean, everyone understands that running a marathon is significantly more taxing than jogging around your block. But most people will not realize until later, and some people never realize, that competing means you have to eat, sleep, read weather reports, plan vacations, plan families, plan work schedules a certain way. If I stay up to watch my favorite youtube videos until midnight, I'm not going to get to the gym in time for my early morning swim. If I do, I'll be depleted and unable to give my best effort. If I'm not giving my best effort, can we call this competition?
   
   However, it works the other way around. The smaller the race or the lighter the competition, the less you have to be a triathlete to finish. I think some people have enough raw physical talent to just get up and start a sprint triathlon and finish one day. Maybe, maybe, there are some who can do that for an Olympic. I cannot for the life of me imagine them doing that for a Half-Ironman. The 56 mile bike and the 13.1 mile run make that seem absurd. But then again, it might be the perspective of someone who finished an Olympic and hasn't finished a half-iron. Yet, as I look back on 2009 and the way I trained, I can say with complete honesty and integrity that I trained more than I ever did and more wisely than I ever did. And upon completing the NYC Triathlon last year, I wonder how little I could have done and still gotten away with it. Olympic-distance may sound impressive, but what if we used the equally true "second shortest" instead? Would I be as proud of myself? My poor effort, poor planning gave me predictably poor results. Near the bottom in swimming, 3rd from last in the bike but... above the middle of the pack in the run? An apropos time to go to my next point.
   
2. Your everyday efforts are also what define your weaknesses.
   Another Hajime No Ippo line that works well in thinking about this past year. Last year, I focused on swimming and running figuring that my impressive leg strength would simply carry me through the bike. And I already told you the results of that method.
   
   But in case you haven't heard from facebook or in person, it also led to some critical injuries. The IT-band issue was so severe that 3 hours of playing football left me unable to walk up a flight of stairs. I had to inch myself up and sit after every step. My everyday efforts didn't include stretching or isolation work for supporting muscles. I only wanted to use my time to develop the prime-movers: hips, knees, a decent amount of core. Everything else would just move through a matter of willpower. If I had to cross the finish line with all my limbs dangling in a grotesque pile, I would.
   
3. What you do today should be in direct relation to your goal.
   Goals, goals, goals, goals... goals I do ad-ore. Most people I've met don't have well-defined goals. Even if they have a well-defined 6-pack they probably don't have well-defined goals. This is about much more than just triathlons, but I'll talk about triathlons specifically.
   
   What did I want to do last year? Actually, this was pretty good. I wanted to finish an Olympic distance triathlon and I wanted to finish a marathon. Done and done. Now it gets worse.
   
   What do I want to do in my lifetime as a triathlete? Finish THE Ironman. Really? Is that REALLY my goal? Then what was that immature garbage about crossing the finish line with my limbs dangling? Upon reflection, I blush with shame at how many times and how many ways I chose to look cool and hard instead of working towards my ultimate goal.
   
   And more importantly, I never asked myself this question: How do you know if you are successful in your career? Last year, I would've answered "If I finish THE Ironman." Really? How might have I answered the corollary? "If that's all you did, would you really be content?" And in all honesty, no. Looking deeper, I want to compete my whole life. I never want to not be training, not be looking at my weaknesses and working to overcome them. I never want to be sedentary. I never want to lose the camaraderie and fellowship of my competitor peers. I would be immensely sorrowful without that part of my life. Weighing a lifetime of the sport versus one moment at the top, I would rather have this be a constant part of my life. The glory is nice, but the experience is better. So if that's my truest goal, then I have to work in a way that gets me closer. I can no longer do dumb things to look brave. Foolish pride has to be discarded.
   
4. Start small. Grow big.
   It's important to set goals that will push you beyond your limits, but it's no use if you don't get there. The best way of getting there is consistent daily effort. Without a doubt, it's consistency over a longer period of time that will be more effective. For triathletes, the rule is "When in doubt, leave it out." If you're a triathlete, you don't lack motivation. In fact, you've probably left a lot of friends behind, a lot of T.V. shows, a lot of drinking and all the smoking, as well as late-night comedies, to train hard. You don't lack motivation. What triathletes need is for someone to tell them to stop and go back to those things every now and then. My injuries, and many of those who've taught me  a lot have come from trying to take too big a step too soon.
   
5. No rest, no progress.
   Working out does not make you strong. It makes you weak. When I have a hard swim or run in the morning, the only thing I can think about the whole day is eating or sleeping. Images of delicious foods dance in my mind, dosas, dumplings, duck, durian... Send me to Singapore already! Strength doesn't come when you work out. Greater strength is the result of your body recovering. So let it recover.
   
   I could talk about the physiology of it, protein synthesis and all that but instead I want you to think for a moment of the trials you face in your life. Hardship breaks us down, disassembles our souls and leaves us feeling naked, vulnerable. We become stronger after we learn those lessons, not when we're being battered on every side by the stones and slings of life. So, rest.
   

And the final most important lesson, the one that encapsulates everything above is... less talking, more doing. Last year, I wanted to let everyone know that I had arrived. It was vain, certainly. I won't deny what can't be denied. But it had one redeeming reason: I wanted to leave myself no room for backing out. I've been a coward most of my life. If I didn't win, I'd have an excuse. I wasn't trying. I wasn't ready. I was just playing around.

I talked big so that I would be utterly devastated if I failed in my goals. 

That no longer serves me. No one's listening. That's good. Now, I can start to really push. I believe it was Moody who was quoted as saying "Character is who you are in the dark." That's true, isn't it? It was Ali who said "The fight is won or lost far away from the witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road; long before I dance under those lights."

For me, this is a huge moment of growing up. A friend was sharing her training philosophy with me. She's a gunner. She never quits. She'll work out 'til she falls apart because DAMNIT, THAT'S JUST THE KIND OF PERSON SHE IS. As I listened, I asked myself "Was that really me?" "God, was I like that not too long ago?" Big talk. Big dreams. No plan. But I'm moving past that now. And the more I train, the more I realize that there's much more time in my day than I thought. The more disciplined I become, the richer my life gets. The more garbage I remove from my life, the more quality remains. If I don't spend time on facebook, I have a ton of time to write. If I don't watch Youtube, I have a lot of time to be with my church people, my girlfriend or make new friends. If I don't start a new manga series... How much joy do the small things of life give me compared to the big things? If I stack up three minor distractions, does it equal the happiness I derive from one major enterprise? 

More and more, I realize that my great struggle is against the element of the middle in my life. Refining my life. Achieving a higher level of integrity and purity. Living in full consciousness and awareness of my time. This is my aim. 

Refining is to remove the dross activities. Checking my e-mail and facebook, doesn't do anything for me. I do it because I have nothing else to do. Given the dreams and goals I have, can it ever be said that I lack for something to do? 

This is what I mean by integrity -- if I say it, it's because I mean it. And if I say it, then I will live it. Compare this to the girl who orders the double cheeseburger with fries, a diet coke and goes to Coldstone afterwards and yet complains about how fat she thinks she is. The words and the actions are in two different worlds. Where is the integrity in that specific part of her? I want to achieve integrity in every area of my life. I want to be that strange person who says something, believes in it fully and acts on it immediately. I'm not there, but I'm getting there.

And to do that, I need to live consciously. I need to be in the present moment. I've given up completely on multi-tasking. It's a distraction and a waste of time. It takes me longer and the quality suffers. Where is the benefit in it? One thing, and one thing only at a time. Give it my full attention and best effort. Be aware in whatever I'm doing. The moment I have in my hands, I'll never have again. So let's make it count.

A Rocking Horse Life

"Life's too short to phone it in."

LINK

Idee fixee. This can be nothing else. Obsession? No. There's a manic tint to that word I don't like. Achieving life is my idee fixee. Specifically, it's in the physical activity that I find myself inspired to write about achieving life. Stillness is not laziness, finding your edge, leaning beyond your edge, these are just three of the lessons that I learned from yoga. Determination, purposefulness, integrity another three from triathlon training. But where is it that I find joy? It's in the learning, growing, leaving that I find joy.

There's a reason that "On To The Next One" is my latest most loved song by Jay-Z. "And niggas don't be mad because it's all about progression/ loiterers should be arrested" And to use a jarringly different source of inspiration, one of my favorite verses in the Bible speaks of moving from glory to glory. Two more disparate muses I could not find, but despite their opposition to one another there's agreement: life can't stay still. Life must move inexorably onward. A person must have goals and must march bravely forward in their achievement. As Ayn Rand said, a circle is the shape most proper for nature. It is not proper for humanity. Humans must live like rays of light, starting at one point and firing off into the distance, focused, directed... directioned.

What I've been writing against is the kind of life that does not move forward. It moves, but the motion is that of a rocking horse. Plenty of action without direction, this is what saddens and angers me. This is what I left behind. I don't hate popular culture, television or things that people do for pleasure. My ire burns towards the use of those things as a distraction from the fact of life, against aimless and mindless consumption, against a life not lived, or a life lived by instinct and impulse.

Call it immaturity, my Christian predilection for crusades, a Messiah complex or a neo-liberal affinity for values imperialism, but I can't stand by and watch others phone it in. I remember living a phoned in life. "It's too hard. I don't want to." It sickens me to consider how often these words left my mouth or festered in my mind. It brings me to my knees to think how very often I'd pine helplessly to watch lives being lived while I wondered at my daily torment. Reader, do you know what I'm talking about?

Are you phoning in your life, not pursuing worthwhile pursuits, out of lack of confidence and courage? Are you going through the motions in your life? Certainly there's movement. You wake up, you go to work, check e-mail, check facebook, wait for someone to talk to you on G-chat, come home, watch T.V., or sometimes you go out, go to sleep, wake up tomorrow ready for another empty day. That's 24 hours of movement. Where is the progress? You might relocate from one neighborhood to a nicer one or from a lower paygrade to a higher one. Is that progress? Is that all you have in your life? Is your heart alive?

Well now, that's not something I can answer for you is it? At any rate, go and watch Lost. It should be coming on right now.

Maturation and Ascension

"That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard..." -- Laertes from Hamlet

"Ender's anger was cold and he could use it. Bonzo's anger was hot and so it used him." -- Ender's Game

Fear is good. Anger is good. These are the specialties of the lizard or reptilian brain. Under its rule, the body is capable of amazing feats of strength, speed, coordination and overall ability. Have you ever experienced the cocktail of emotions in a frenzied game of soccer or football? Think about the singular focus that a player has when making a great catch or tackle or pass while under pressure, the thrill and panic of a triple or a stolen base and so on and so forth. When does a 93 mile an hour baseball look as easy to hit as a balloon? When does a 230 lb. athlete that can run a 40 in 4.5 seconds appear as if he's swimming through margarine? The body is capable of these acts which defy our typical experience. As a consequence of this adrenaline surge the body dilates the eyes, shortens its breath, draws blood away from the skin and ceases salivation. If each of these symptoms persist over the long-term it means blindness, heart attack, hypothermia and rotting gums.

But luckily these symptoms vanish when the reptilian brain abdicates its throne. We are humans. We were not meant to live like chameleons and cobras.

But how often do we do so? How often does a vast tract of humanity do so? Fear. Anger. How many of us live our lives ruled by impulse and physiology? Like Jack Lalanne might ask: do our bodies serve us, or do we serve our bodies? Curious about my line of questioning? Most of my readers have never been in war. I certainly never have. Most of us cannot imagine what it would be like for shells to explode feet away, bullets to whizz inches from our face, to be accompanied by the site of death and gore everyday. That's living in fear and anger! That's not my life!

Or is it?

When was the last time you lied to cover your ass? When was the last time you avoided something because it was difficult? Or didn't do something you thought might be fun to try because it was embarrassing? Or are you living your life in constant anger, looking to get someone back for some slight? Or perhaps it's  not one singular cause of anger, but everything makes you angry. Bad drivers, deli worker messed up your coffee, slow commute and all the mundane thorns of life which draw blood daily.

Fear and anger. Are you living in them?

I'll admit I am. I hope that not too long ago my answer changes to "I was."

How do I know? It's because I see the immaturity in my own actions. I've only realized this recently as a friend was sharing with me about one of her experiences in training. Faced with severe injuries with the near-certainty of worsening it with repeated abuse, my friend decided to just soldier through. "That's just who I am." Then afterwards, my friend refused to rehab properly and instead demanded that the physician simply fix the problem so that my friend would be ready to go in 2 weeks. In fact, that's exactly how I approached the Hawaii marathon.

This time upon hearing those words, all I could think was "Foolish immature brat. Who're you trying to impress?"

You know this kind of person even if you do not know anyone who's an athlete or competitor. This kind of person also shows up in the drama queen archetype, the sort of person who revels in the chaos and bedlam of life -- and the way others run to try and fix the situation. Grodin in this post expresses the issue  better than I have ever seen it done.

"Honey, how was your day?"

"Oh, I was busy, incredibly busy."

"I get that you were busy. But did you do anything important?"

Busy does not equal important. Suffering does not equal significance.

Looking back on my first year as a triathlete I had a ton of energy but so very little wisdom and maturity.  I tried to "train through injury" and only jeopardized my future. And for what? I'm not a minor league ballplayer taking steroids so I can get a cup of coffee in  the bigs. As an endurance athlete, there is absolutely nothing I can do this year that can rival the potential I might achieve within the next 10. Why did I say I would do THE Ironman in 5 years? Was it to show off and brag? How... how depressingly high school. And to be quite honest, did I give it my best effort all the way through?

I made a lot of motion and a lot of noise, but I didn't end up doing very much. It's fear isn't it? And that fear produces the hot-blooded anger and fire, but the biggest flame isn't at all useful as I learned camping. Flames were high, flames were bright, but my friend was looking to make breakfast not poetry. When the fire burned down to glowing embers, I asked my friend why we didn't cook our food yet. Did I need to go get more wood? He looked at me curiously. When the embers smolder, then we can use them. A high bright fire is just show.

If I'm serious about my triathlons and my adventuring, the first biggest step is to discard the childish pride I'm holding on to and to rise above the lizard brain, fearful, angry, flittering about and making a show. No, real strength need not announce itself. The quiet pit bull should be feared, not the chirping chihuahua. 2 months of rehab for my left leg. How I spend this time will be the best measure of my maturity yet.

Let's go.

By What Measure A Slave?

Seek freedom in indulgence and be a captive to your desires.

Seek discipline and find your freedom.

I have no clue who first said this but I got most of it from one of my hiking brothers on facebook.

I feel a certain level of unease in writing this post.

It's because I'm going to use the word "slave" and I don't want to belittle the fact that there are slaves who are raped 10 to 15 times a night for profits that they will never see because they believe that if they do not cooperate, harm will come to their family and loved ones or themselves. There are slaves who grow and cook the food that we eat, build the structures we find shelter under and clean the rooms we stay in. Close to 30 million of them exist today and the black market moving them has usurped illicit arms trading as the 2nd most profitable illegal enterprise. I don't want to make light of that fact.

But at the same time, I want to make clear that I was once enslaved and that we too are all enslaved. But when I speak in this manner, I speak in degrees. To what extent am I a slave? To what degree are you a slave? How slavish is your manner of living?

The Jack Lalanne video above hits as close to my heart as any video I have ever seen. We can be, most of us are, slaves to our body. It tells us when to lie down, get out of bed, eat, have sex (or watch porn) and check e-mail. It tells us when to start running, stop running, panic, and cower. For most people, the rational function of the mind should be looked at as a vestigial organ. We call these your average everyday ordinary human beings who can only do more because of a few exceptional human beings who invented the means to harness the power of fire, the strength of animals, the waters, the winds, the earth and the stars. A few people did those things. A disgusting mass of human-shaped parasites tagged along.

I am, to a degree, one of them. I was, in the past, much more of a parasite. Like I said, I speak in degrees and not absolutes.

I have several phrases that I like to repeat when others ask me what I really want in life.
"I want to see the uppermost limit of human potential. And I want to see it in myself."
"I want to live a life that's worthy of 10,000 lifetimes."
"I want to transform myself."
"I want to find my freedom."

All of them, particularly the last one, grows out of one kernel: the captivity of man to himself. I have been incredibly blessed to read Seth Grodin's blog since last night and this morning I read these words. Lightning stroke thoughts and thunderclap words stormed in my heart. This, I needed to read this. As I began to digest those words I knew that these words were a map to what I wanted to say.

I. Want. To. Rule. My. Life.

Not to merely have drives, but to be driven. What's the difference? There's a sex drive, a hunger drive, an Oedipal drive, a checking-your-email-unnecessarily drive and a why-the-hell-am-I-still-on-Facebook drive. Those are drives. I want to drive my life. Not my impulses but myself. How does a typical person operate? They live as if life was a game of whack-a-mole. Each impulse gets a wack. Each desire is a prompt for action. There's no purpose beyond the whacks in that game. Compare now, if you will, an advanced roleplaying game. Let me use Baldur's Gate 2 because it's one of my favorite games of all time. There's a story. You are given a character who has goals. Why are you doing any particular thing? Not because it's there but because you are working towards a greater goal. Consider the animals and all of nature who only have drives. Ravens, monkeys, dolphins, elephants all of these have displayed startling amounts of intelligence from building simple tools like ravens and monkeys, to the sophisticated language and emotiveness of the monkeys and dolphins to the burial practices of elephants. Each one of them is in no uncertain terms, remarkable. None of them display drive. All of them live circular lives, but the life of a human being should not be a circle.

It should be a line, a ray shooting inexorably forward into the inky ignorance of the world, plumbing the mysteries of the universe, cultivating the universe. Man should be venturing forth in confidence, integrity and intelligence seizing life with both hands. Should the highlight of his week be playing Settlers of f'in Catan? Should it be the oblivion of alcohol, the indolence of television, the cacophony of inane chatter about celebrity gossip, of finding trendy restaurants to say you've eaten at, to lusting over cars, phones, iPods, iPads, and all other nonsense? And when all is said and done, sink back into the ooze as a fatty meal for worms. Is this not an insult to the creator who fashioned Man inside His Mind?

More than asking "What are you doing?" I am asking "Where are you going?" and all too often the sad answer is nowhere. Where else is there to go? This is all life has to offer.

I move onward, the only direction

can't be scared to fail, in search of perfection

--Jay-Z "On To The Next One"

Get a degree. Get a job. Get a wife, a house, a pair of kids, a car, another car, another house. This is your life. This is your life and it's being lived for you by an automatic program.

Why are you so scared? Is it because you see Prometheus' liver being eaten before you?

You know what it demands. Your time, let's start there. The more time that you spend free, the less time you spend on the things that enslaved you. You're not going to spend time eating food you're not hungry for, with the people who don't want to see you rise above them because it reminds them just how inhuman a circular life is. It terrifies them with the question "Could I do that? Just maybe? If I worked a little harder? If I was a little more brave? Trusted in myself a little bit more?" But then the fear of these answers is far too much for them to handle and they tear you down anew. You know who hindered me the most when I was trying to transform myself? It was the people closest to me. How did they do it?

"Stanley, you look so good already, why not hang out with us?"

"Stanley, you're making an idol of these races. It's sinful."

"If you were godly, you wouldn't think about looks. You should exercise after you get married."

"Just be careful. We don't want you to hurt yourself."

"Ugh, I want to die hearing the things you do."

"Oh, triathlons? Yeah, they're no big deal."

Parents. Lovers. Friends. Fellowships. Lay persons. Clergy. Bosses. Students. Teachers. They tore my liver and tomorrow they will do it again. Because I'm too soft, because I truly do love them, I did not banish them. Others have. That was the assholery referenced in the Phoenix Effect series. But I was lucky. I did not need to go that far. I have triumphed over these nay-sayers in the past and will continue to conquer in the future. I do it because I want to live free, above my impulses. A unified man, a free man does not live as the servant of his desires, but his desires, as true, genuine and honest as they always are, serve him. That's what I want.

Livin' on a Prayer: Resilience and Surrender

"We cannot command nature except by obeying her." 
-- Sir Francis Bacon

To be honest, I first encountered that quote, where else, but in Ayn Rand. I found this fairly recently, so my life has not changed much since its discovery but it encapsulated so many of the thoughts that I had been working on up to that point. If we wish to play the game, we must first understand the rules. Or there will be no game. Or the game will play you. Or work with the analogy however you want, but you lose. 

For most of my Christian life, I struggled quite intensely with the theology of prayer. I wanted something to happen and they told me that if I wanted anything, I would have to pray for it. You do not have because you do not ask. So I asked and I sometimes got. I remember the day we prayed for my sister to come to the Lord. It was only 3 hours later that she made a decision. I remember praying for the success of an event close to my heart. I remember watching the train wreck of an event unfold in agonizing slowness with every miscue cascading into an ever greater deluge of awful happenstance. My follow-up prayer for the earth to open up and swallow me alive went similarly unanswered. 

The results bothered me, but they were comfortable in comparison to the explanations I received. You asked, but your heart was wrong. You asked, but God had other plans. You asked, but Satan was working against you. You asked, but... but... but perhaps I had not considered something altogether different. 

"When confronted with an error, science says 'Let me reconsider my hypothesis.' When confronted with an error, religion says 'Let me rephrase that.'"

No, the quote is not meant to state an absolute fact. Douchebag scientists coexist with douchebag pulpit-fillers. Neither has immunity to bouts of unreasonable obstinacy or childish behavior. But I share the quote to highlight a fundamental fact of procedural integrity. The answers given to me, by good friends who had my best interests in mind, quite sincere in their faith, gave me answers that needed little understanding of the situation. To dispense counsel, all they needed was a flow-chart and a 3rd grade reading comprehension. Does that sit right with you? It, by no means, should. Do your troubles not rob you of your sleep for good reason? Isn't it because you have invested so much of yourself, your care and concern in these things? Could you sleep well with an ill child? 

I simultaneously love and hate rehashing this point; by effort and intelligence humanity has achieved so much. I hate it because I wonder if you, the reader, has grown tired of my humanism thumping. I love it because each time I write it, I think anew and more importantly, I wonder anew. Reconsidering your original hypothesis cannot be undervalued. It means you recognize that you were wrong, that you believe the problem can be located and finally, that you haven't given up on it. Can the last one be underestimated? You. Have. Not. Given. Up. 

For countless years I had bought into the notion of Christian surrender. "Oh, God didn't give you what you asked for in prayer? Why are you so sad? It must be that you desired it too much and it was an idol to you. Cheer up! You still have Jesus! Surrender your heart's desires to Jesus and he'll fill them better than you can ever dream." Even now I try to write in a parodic mode. It's no satire. It may very well come as a quote straight out of any number of mouths -- all of which I wish to introduce to my right cross. Christian surrender, the notion that no desire you have felt is worthy of being felt, no thought worthy of rumination, except that it resembles a Thomas Kinkade painting. Like Nietzsche wrote in Twilight of the Idols, it would be quite one thing if the Christians had spiritualized love, had allowed it to transcend the urge and impulse aspect of the physical, but that they did not do. No, the Christians, they are the ones who mutilate the flesh, the defilers of God's temple, those that declare desire, effort and determination as evil. Pleasure and desire is no good, not apart from God, but apart from Christendom. Doubt me? Then consider how those with real musical talent get picked out at a young age to... play church music. What kind of development would they find in a repetition of 4 chords and 10 or 11 catchphrases, with or without capo. Could an athlete develop on a diet of crushed pears and apple juice? That saccharine diet will poison and retard whatever gifting they have, musical or athletic. 

So surrender. Surrender your life to God. 

Is it any wonder that for 2 years now, I have fought tooth and nail to reclaim that which I lost? I surrendered my life? It feels like I surrendered my testes. Like a eunuch, I was nice, placid, giving, powerless. The more that these Christians preached a God of grace who loved, gave and offered the more I realized that they hated, pillaged and suppressed. How could the yokes they make us wear be anything but the accursed millstones in the Gospels? I have learned many things over the past 2 years. If someone sneers at your dreams, strike them in the face. If someone wants to take your strength, give them a knee to the groin. And if someone asks you to walk a mile away from your goals, walk them into oncoming traffic. Pleasure and that individual joyous sensation of uplift is enough justification on its own. 

If you wish to master nature, you must first obey it. If you wish to fulfill your desires, you must work for it. How could any prayer be honest except that it be accompanied by the tears and sweat of the petitioner? How could anyone ask if they don't care enough to have begun work? How can you surrender before you've ever known struggle? How can you say anything is impossible, when quite literally an entire universe of potential and possibilities lays undisclosed before our eyes?

Below is a video that I've also seen, courtesy of Ross, that has encouraged me tremendously. Watch and be encouraged as you make your way towards accomplishing your goals!

20 and 10 books to read in 2010.

In order of when they first came into my head, and who suggested them.

1. "The Prophet" by Khalil Gibran
2. "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle
3. "The 4 Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz
4. "The 6 Pillars of Self Esteem" by Nathaniel Branden
5. "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell
6. "Sex Trafficking" by Siddharth Kara
7. "A Crime So Monstrous" by Benjamin Skinner
8. "Reconciliation Blues" by Ed Gilbreath
9. finish "Twilight of the Idols" by Friedritch Nietzsche
10. finish "the Anti-Christ" by Friedritch Nietzsche
11. "The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats" by some Irish guy
12. "The Essential John Keats" by some English guy
13. "The Book of Five Rings" by Musashi Miyamoto
14. "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy
15. "God is the Gospel" by John Piper (Peter recommended)
16. "The Problem of Pain" by Vinoth Ramachandra (Jonathan Walton recommended)
17. "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie (ELMo recommended)
18. "Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare
19. "The Holy Spirit" by John Owen (Jung inspired)
20. "The Alphabet versus the Goddess" by Leonard Shlain (Jamieson recommended)
21. "Still Life with Woodpecker" by Tom Robbins (Sterling recommended)
22. "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" by Quentin Blake (Shanella recommended)
23. "Half the Sky" by Nicholas Kristoff
24. "In Search of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust (Jess inspired)
25. "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub" by Stanislaw Lem (Myong Yee recommended)
26. "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer (Kendra recommended)
27. "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini (Kat recommended)
28. "The Silmarillion" by J.R.R. Tolkien
29. "Dreams of my Father" by Barack H. Obama (Rebecca recommended)
30. "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami

Here we go!

Goals for 2010

Liz and I had an amazing run at accomplishing our goals in 2009. By my accounts, I completed to satisfaction 70% of my goals. Considering that I had been putting up big zeroes before then, the maths tells me that I have improved by infinity percent, which is a good thing.

Infinity percent? I can do better. Let's see what 2010 has in store. These are my goals (in no particular order).

1-   Review [redacted] and write a 6 page status report each week. (312 p. by year's end)

2-   Create a journaling binder for Hebrews, Job, Amos and Colossians. 

3-   Complete a 70.3 and run a sub 4 marathon. (Double current triathlon distance, cut 3 hours off marathon time)

4-   Save [redacted] each month.

5-   20 and 10 in 2010. Read 30 books, write 30 book reviews this year. (2.5 a month)

6-   Write 1,040 pages. (20/ week) 

7-   Spend 10 minutes at the end of each day meditating on the days events. (Total: ~ 61 hours)

8-   Get my damn master's already.

9-   Decide about [redacted]. 

10- Visit 2 more countries. (Staten Island and New Jersey do not count as foreign countries.)

11- Spend 3 hours a week in prayer. The 10 minutes of meditation a day does not count towards this mark. (Total: 156 hrs.)

12- Drop to 200 lbs. (Clydesdale) by NYC Triathlon in July and maintain thru midnight 12/31. (6 months to lose 25 lbs.)

Let's DO THIS!