Shame and Transformation

Shame shook me awake and began my metamorphosis. I was ashamed that it took me 20 years to find the courage to ask a girl out (especially when I had friends lose their virginity at 13 or 14). I was ashamed that I was dumped the very next day with the worst of phrases, "Let's just be friends." I couldn't handle the embarassment, the frigid waters of reality drowning me. I remember clutching my chest and hyperventilating because the thought made it hard to breathe at times. I remember randomly assaulting concrete walls in stairwells because the rage suddenly came upon me.

Shame sent me down this road. I'm grateful. I'm not looking back. I've said that many times. I'm writing today because I've never written about how shame can stop a transformation in process or even abort one in the womb.

It's something I've seen in the eyes of so many people who have come to me and asked for help as they're getting started.

"I want to lose weight, but my fat jiggles when I do anything."
"I'm so slow at running. I get tired so quickly."
"My friends have seen me fail so many times. I don't want to keep embarassing myself."

There's no diet or exercise that will solve these problems. These issues must be tackled first. Insanity or P90X, kettlebells, ICT, HIIT, swimming, running, bodybuilding, Crossfit, ghetto fitness, Planet Fitness, anything more honest than the Shakerweight will get them fit and looking good sooner or later. The plan that they choose means little in the long run. The commitment and dedication to their goal means everything in the short and long run. I've seen videos of people doing amazing things with poor planning. I've never seen anyone do anything amazing and admirable without first having something extraordinary in their spirit first.

There's this story I keep telling - please bear with me if you've read many of my blog entries - but I keep telling it because of how crucial a role it played in my transformation. When I was early in my transformation, at a chunky 260, two brothers wanted to test out my running and challenged me to a race. 33rd St. by the NYU medical center down to the Williamsburg bridge and back up. They were athletic. Lithe, basketball playing types and I was still fat. The morning of the race, I tried to convince them to do a weightlifting test. I knew I could win there at least.

As we started, the two brothers took off and quickly left me in the dust. I couldn't see them at all two minutes into the race. This was going to be humiliating. Even more humiliating, wrinkly grandfathers and grandmothers were passing me by. Runners usually mark a target up ahead and use that person as a goalpost to pull themselves further. I lost all my targets. Each one I picked out pulled further and further away. I felt my legs drag.

But twenty minutes into the race, I found both of the brothers. Dry-heaving and panting on a park bench, they had burnt each other out. They had completely discounted the fat kid in basketball shorts. I wonder what they might've said had they the breath to speak back then. I ended up winning the race by a half hour margin.

That contest carved in me a powerful lesson that day. It's a lesson that has continued driving deeper and deeper into my soul. Other people's embarassment might hurt but that pain pales in comparison to the pain of giving up. The choices we make once enable us to make it more easily the next time. Giving up becomes a habit of giving up, a lifestyle of surrender, a deep-seated belief in the inevitability of despair and failure. Honestly, it might be better to die than to hold that belief truly.

But just as giving up becomes a habit, a lifestyle, a worldview, so does perseverance. Hush the critics in your life and press on despite their nay-saying. Win or fail, you've done it once. Do it again. And again. And again. As many times as it takes for you to develop a worldview, a belief that your opinion and your estimation of your life matters more than the screams of the haters, the vampires, the ones you indict with your courage and passion.

But the key is to start. Nothing will ever happen, nothing will ever change if you don't start.

Sitting

I hate sitting.

The arc of my life's transformation takes me further and further away from sitting. In my younger years, I read a lot until I found video games. Then I planted myself before a computer and read a lot. The reading has blessed my life a great deal while the sitting has been an unmitigated curse.

Studying the psoas muscle, particularly my own issues with the psoas muscle, has led me to think along these terms.

The hips produce the force for running, fighting, dancing, leaping, loving, living. Plant yourself in a chair and your tell your hips this position is natural. Your pelvis tilts back, the spine comes forward and the head lowers, falling further from the sky. Sitting degrades your hips. Compromised hips, hips that can't run, fight, dance, leap or love properly, ruin the spine. Without a spine, it becomes nearly impossible to stand tall. Who can respect, much less love, a man who's forgotten how to stand tall? What woman is love-able when she doesn't believe she's worthy of love?

So stop sitting.

Repair your hips.

Cure your unnatural addiction to television reality game shows and comedy dramas with life. Breathe it in deeply, the purer, rarefied air of living worlds.

I was teaching a friend good running form this past Sunday, showing him how to finish his stride with his feet coming up towards the buttocks. "Doesn't that use more energy?" he asked. "It's running. It uses energy. Dragging your feet is the act of someone uncommitted to the reality that they're running. They don't want to use energy, don't want to open up to the possibility that running may be enjoyable. These people believe that running must be awful and are determined to be right about their belief no matter the cost. Lift your feet."

Move. In any direction. Open your hips. When you run, stride with commitment to each step. Yes, I am running, so let me run beautifully! God, free me from plodding and power-walking and all such half-hearted efforts! When you fight, let your hips explode with their full fury and force. Don't just throw arm punches, afraid to get hit or hit others. Throw a true punch, snap a true kick. When you dance, let your hips come to the party. Don't just awkwardly shimmy your shoulders on the side of the dance floor like you're afraid someone will see you trying to have a good time. In all that you do in life, do it with your most powerful driver, your hips. Don't go to the grave never having brought your body's engine to redline.

Unlearn sitting. Unlearn all the practices of life that destroy your core, your strength, your integrity. In that vacuum, rediscover possibility. It will start slow. For many years, I struggled to do a single pull-up. It took what felt like forever before I could run 5 miles without stopping to walk some part of it. Even in my 2nd year of running, I still took breaks in the shorter races to catch my breath. Keep fighting. Keep striving. The habits you've acquired over the course of decades will not dissolve in a few well-meant weeks. Before you can build a new life you must clear the rubble of your current one, and to do that, you most certainly must get up off your ass.

Anthem

Kanye's "All of the Lights" has been my personal anthem this year.

I listened to it when I first began going out with my girlfriend. Accept or reject me, I want her to accept or reject the real me. I wanted to end the posturing, the pretension. I wanted to end a lifetime of thinking that who I was, was not acceptable for reality.

I listen to this song when I write. Accept me or reject me, I want to give you the real me. I want to overcome the years of literary criticism I've studied, coroners who cannot handle the text without murdering it. I want to redeem the years of hiding my love for works that others sneered at, belittled, demeaned as unworthy of serious analysis.

As I was walking to my girlfriend's apartment last night, I thought about my ex-girlfriend whose letters I still open and read now and again. Her words echo in my chest, "Stanley Lee, go and conquer the world." I think about the woman I pursued before her. Could it be that she could not be with a man she believed in but could not believe in himself? Could we have been different, had I been different? And I think about the first woman I gave my heart to, the one who compelled me to take my first step forward, to brave the unknowns of the universe. How ignorant might I still be if I hadn't ever had my heart broken?

All of them have been lights along my path, the joys and the sorrows lighting my way to a deeper knowledge of self and my creator God. I cannot begin to express the volume of gratitude I owe to all of them. I am not a star. I am a constellation of all I've seen.

I think about my brother-in-arms best friend and the example he sets for me in his honesty and purity of heart. I think about my sister-in-arms best friend whose spirit and discipline always pushes me. I think about my mentors and the hopes that they had for me, the potential they saw in me. To deny their belief would be to call them fools and who would admit to having a fool for a mentor? How else can I honor their belief in my potential than to drag it into reality?

I think about my girlfriend the radiant soul whose words resonate with me like no one else I've ever met. Her life frees me to live my own. Her light grants me the courage to live more truly. I think about the support she gives me, the wind in my sails, the strength of my right arm, the driving force in my legs.

And beyond even her, I think about the God under whose sovereignty I shelter. I think about how for so many of these lights in my life, I would not have met them were it not for a chance occurrence, a decision I could not understand at the time, or an impulse I didn't expect. I think about his ordering of my life and I cannot but feel small, a fisherman safe in the tsunami, a feather nestled in the hurricane.

I won't hide these lights any longer. They're the ones who've brought me here. I'll do my part and carry them with me everywhere I go.

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.

The Dialectical

Never put my words in a vacuum. They would die as surely as an oak tree in a vacuum.

My thoughts, my heart, my passions grow out of 1983 New York City seed, nurtured by Asian-American values and enervated by Western Evangelical Christianity.

I am not Martin Luther. I am not John Calvin, John Frame, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards. I am a Johnny Appleseed scattering hard work and determination everywhere I go. My theological viewpoints are a reaction and a movement away from many, many things I learned as a Christian. Some things remain the same: the high view of Scripture, the 5 points, the 5 solas. Some things are very different. You've been reading them 3 to 4 times a week on this blog.

Why do I write so much about hard work, determination, effort, guts, intuition, intelligence and intensity? Why do I so highly prize these things and never write about humility, meekness and gentleness? It's not because I think they're useless -- they're not -- it's because I think we've lost some things and I want to return things to their proper balance. I think of the many prayer meetings that I've sat on. Why is it that people who pray and then live by the principles of hard work and determination get what they pray for and the people who pray and then expect things to magically happen rarely get it? It can't be coincidence that the latter group says "I guess it wasn't God's will." more often. I go where people don't want to go. I name the things people don't want to name. I ascribe responsibility when everyone wants to cover up.

I have no doubt that I go too far in my writing. I find it maddeningly difficult to be fair and equitable when I have a keyboard or piece of paper in front of me. To be honest, there are a great number of things that I'm grateful for, a number of things I acquired through no personal merit. I was born healthy. I grew up with a Renaiisance man father who gifted me with his mind and curiosity, and even more than that, his presence. His philosophy is to never stop learning or growing. No coincidence I hold these values in my heart higher than so many others. My mother gifted me with charisma and showmanship. How could I have merited these things before I was born? So yes, I want to acknowledge that God blesses and God takes away, or in some cases, has never given at all.

But where do we go from there? I get sick to my stomach when I look at people squandering their gifts trying to entertain themselves. I get impossibly angry when people claim they have no gift to give. Have any of them considered seizing a gift with their own two hands? English is the second language I learned. I'm contemplating picking up a fourth. I used to be 120 lbs. heavier. Now I have my eyes locked on a half Ironman. I used to suck at math. Now I can factor quadratics and do derivatives in my head. I was afraid to speak up, to write, to ask girls out, to try and wear fashionable clothes. Life really used to suck. But I changed. And I did it because goddamnit, I wanted it and no one was going to stop me from getting it.

I'm reacting against a lazy mysticism by being an aggressive activist. By venturing out into the unknown, I'm making a statement about xenophobia, clannishness and ignorance. I talk about the wonderful ability we have to control many of our actions, to restrain our appetites to a large degree and to set a direction for our lives in direct opposition to the whining and caterwauling of so many who style themselves New Puritans and ape the Apostle "I do the things I don't want to and don't do the things I do!" For many of these people, I see a distinct lack of effort and an extremely narrow methodology. Without a willingness to experiment, can they really say they're trying their best? Sometimes it seems like they're hoping to fail so that everything can stay the same.

Let's use a common example. Struggling with pornography? What's their answer? More prayer! More accountability! More books! If this isn't the answer, even more! Or else pathologize it. They simply have a disease. Because we've tried  all the things that "experts" have said and they didn't work, they must simply be sick.

Shut. Your. Lazy. Mouth.

If you tried everything the experts told you and nothing worked, then try something else. How badly do you want your goal? A nation-wide study of athletes were asked this question "If you were able to take a pill that gave you an gold medal at the Olympics but would kill you in 5 years, would you take it?" The answer was overwhelmingly, OVERWHELMINGLY, yes. It's more than steroids. Do you see all those ridiculous necklaces that baseball players sometimes wear? It's because they believe that the aura of the titanium will make them better players. Wade Boggs ate chicken before every game because he was convinced it made him the great player he was. Jorge Posada and Vladimir Guerrero pee on their hands because they think it makes their skin better than gloves. Many of these things have no scientific basis and are borderline witchcraft --in fact Ozzie Guillen engages in Santeria rituals involving animal sacrifice-- in the slim hope of improving. How desperately do you want it? If you only want it enough to look like you're trying, how can you pray with a clean conscience? Oh God, grant me purity, but only enough so that I don't have to do anything difficult!

Reaction. In reality, there's little I disagree with on a factual basis with the people I level polemics against. They won't say that nothing changes. I won't say that everything can change. The expression and practice is what I'm interested in. I love God but how many more songs are going to use sky, rain, mountain, sea, forest imagery mixed with a hodge-podge of awesome, majestic, mighty, worship tossed in? I'm sick of it! But I have to realize, it's only sickening to me because I've been overwhelmed by it. I certainly supported them when it seemed daring and radical to use instruments like drums and guitars in worship, but that era is long since past. Once the revolutionary becomes the norm, it's time for a new revolution.

This is the Japanese kaizen philosophy, the dialectical view of history, the Jay-Z view of progress.

Brave, new minds of the world, revolt!

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.

Do You Want To Live Forever?

21 reps of bench press.

21 reps of deadlift.

21 pull-ups.

21 curls.

Meet Valeria. I can't stop thinking about her. The Right Reverend Gym Jones introduced me to a world I had never seen before. Here I met Fran and was immediately intimidated. Some people would think that she's a bit easier than Valeria. 21x15x9 of thrusters and pull-ups but quite honestly, I can't do 21  pull-ups consecutively. Valeria seems more my speed because I can break up the reps into sets.

What is it about a challenge that excites a man? And here I use 'man' as a substitute for 'human' simply for the aesthetic effect of the word. Women love challenges too. Ask any capable woman and ask them what kind of man turns them off and the vast majority will say that a limp, damp, tepid man who tries too hard to please her and clings too tightly, this kind of man downright disgusts women. And vice versa. A desperate person who believes that being more and more available and showing more and more interest is the key to being liked have got it terribly wrong. Men and women of a certain capacity desire challenge.

Has anyone considered what it must be like for a person universally considered to be beautiful? Take any celebrity, I'll choose Angelina Jolie for the purpose of this mental exercise because I always imagined her as Rand's Dagny Taggart. Think what you might of her, if you don't consider her beautiful choose anyone you wish. Think of all the attributes that you admire about them from skin, hair, proportions (bust/waist/hips for that hourglass figure or shoulders/chest/waist for that intimidating V) and then think about how unusual it is to find that in this world.

And then think about it from their shoes. How boring it must be. Oh sure, the attention and flattery and people falling all over themselves must be fun... until what, High School? College? How those people must long for someone that treats them as more than physical beauty, for someone who won't be intimidated. Whether they acknowledge other's opinions of them or not, they are certainly everyday-ordinary to themselves. When they look in a mirror, the flaws glare at them the same way it does for the rest of us. They too know what they can be doing better.

So out loud or within, I laugh when people, some who genuinely love and care for me, tell me that I'm strong enough or fast enough or anything enough. How can they say that anything I have is enough? They don't live in my life and their words alone tell me that they don't know, can't know how unbearable it is to stare at my own weakness. What is more worth? Is it worth your life? Well, it all depends on how you esteem your life, doesn't it? Do you aim to live long and thin, a nebulous cloud of gray mediocrity and soggy stances on everything? Or would you trade longevity for intensity? That's a personal decision everyone has to make.

Fortunately, it's a false dilemma for me as the very activities that intensify life also extend it. Not a candle flickering brightly before extinguishing, but the training deepens and brightens life like the hundred million nuclear explosions at the heart of a star. But these reactions are called chain reactions for a reason. Breaking even one link breaks the entire chain. Intensity ceases to be intensity if the resolution and determination, the commitment disappears. For a moment this past winter, that chain shattered. Am I repairing it or building a new one? Who really freaking cares? The reaction will continue pursuing my own transcendence, continue to rise above the here and now. The man of tomorrow must live in the today.

Hesitation

Hesitation. The word startled me from my sleep.

Hesitation. It's only a pause-- a moment of unknowing. But I d did not dream of a momentary hesitation, the indecision born out of a lack of knowledge. but I dreamed about the terrible chronic kind of hesitation, a lifelong non-decision spawned of cowardice.

Most describe me as a nice person. Yet some find me unnerving. They will notice the politeness and the general helpfulness yet come away with a sense of coldness and hostility. You probably don't believe me. The impression you probably hold is that I'm large, articulate and gregarious. I can talk at length (and far too often, I actually do talk at length) on an assortment of topics with informed and thought-out opinions. But others will find nothing but one-word answers and curt replies. I like to sit and stand large and comfortable with an air of openness in the space I occupy. They'll find that I am stiff, rigid and closed to them -- standing as if I have nothing to offer them.

But my dream caused me to realize that the commonality in all the people who find me prickly and cold is that they are deeply entrenched in a lifetime posture of hesitation and indecision, a stuttering life, a fence-sitting life. They often bother myself and others with meaningless matters, no doubt caused by a life so deprived of real and imminent threats that they need others to hear the great tragedy of how they ordered a regular coke instead of diet for lunch. They envy the world above them, the people who do, the men and women of action who are always too busy for them, thinking that it is some great divine edict that has caused their life to be this quagmire of reality T.V. and work. Oh, it's occasionally punctuated by a friend who's actually living their life and the ensuing celebration, but for the most part, their own feelings towards life is that 80 years is not too short of a life, but too long of a time to slowly die.

I speak of only what I know. Do I seem to especially hate this category of people. Yes, I certainly do. They remind me too much of where I was a few years ago. The hate I feel for them, and do not try to reinterpret that word, it is an actual hatred, is nothing more than the left-over self-hatred I used to reconstruct my life.

The longer you've known me, the more you've read me, the more you would realize that this thought more than any other, occupies my mind. I often talk about the physical dimension of the transformation -- from a 320 lb. walrus to a 205 lb. athlete, from weakness to strength. But as I've ruminated on the issue, grinding it with stony words, I've realized that my discussion of the physical masked the true heart of the issue -- the internal struggle of the soul.

I'm for the most part satisfied with my progress in transforming my body. I'm nowhere near satisfied with   the state of my soul. I'd like to say I have a noble, theologically verified reason why. I don't. I'm dissatisfied because if my soul were to be improved, my life would be to. And happiness is the one reason that can't be pushed back. The reason I wish to be happy? Because of an absolute value system. Happiness is always better than misery.

I don't want to change for anyone's glory or anyone's salvation. My desire for change stems from my hate of cowardice, of the coward I used to be. Men who've recently left prison usually have no desire to return. I'm much the same way. I hate those four walls of indecision and excuse-making, of risk-adverse living. I promised myself that there would be no going back once I started down that road. I would change my life or end my life. There was no other option.

To achieve life is success, to fail to achieve life would mean death.

Is that obvious? It's not. Most people would phrase it as Life = Success, Death = Failure. That's not how I phrased. I would succeed and find life as a result or I would not find it and terminate my own existence.  Achieving life is not avoiding death, but what a great squirming mass of bloated humanity find themselves in the quest to postpone death! What a seething, pathetic horde of naughts begin to seek end-of-life care at a young age, to seek relief from this terrible plague known as life, to distract them from the overwhelming burden of being alive!

I never want to go back to that prison, that chiasmic life of always waiting for myself.

Walking The Earth

I like to travel.

Every year from when I was 5 to when I was 21, I went somewhere with my parents. The Bahamas for my 13th birthday, Disney for my 8th, Tennessee because we got a deal, Maine because we had the time, and Washington D.C. because the cherry blossoms are beautiful. We've been to China twice, Costa Rica, Toronto, Hawaii.

On my own, I've been to Virginia, Chicago, St. Louis, Canada, Taiwan and Peru off the top of my head. And now I find myself browsing through the Gap Adventures and Lonely Planet websites. I've got the travel bug again. I imagine myself walking through Cambodia eating the fried spiders that they sell on the street for a buck. I'd like to walk through Aokigahara and feel the eery chills creep up my spine as I catch a glimpse of a skull or a femur poking through the bushes. Or maybe swimming in a New Zealand fjord. The Ganges. The Nile. I already did the Hudson. The bazaars in Cairo. The forests of Romania. The ruins of Carthage. The camino de Santiago. The streets of Merrekesh. The trees of New England.

Over a year ago, I created a list of a 100 things I wanted to do before I die -- a bucket list. From my estimates, about a third were travel related. I've accomplished a few of them. I've seen the sunset over the Pacific ocean. It was beautiful. More so because I had a beautiful girl by my side as I saw it.

I wrote a private blog elsewhere about how it was a sin to be bored. I stand by that. Boredom is a testament that the world God made isn't sufficiently good. It's worse than bad, it's just plain mediocre. And I think that's the reason I like to travel.

As many unorthodox things I've eaten, most types of offal across 3 cultures and live shrimp being the headliners, giant fried spiders are still incredibly alien for me. And yet, they're a part of everyday life for others. I want to see life from their eyes. I know I won't -- that's the limitation of being a tourist, but I'd like to at least taste it. The world is endlessly interesting, rich and full. How can someone be bored in this world?

And more than that, I like making friends.

I think back to my Andean adventure last year, truly an unforgettable experience, and I have this simultaneous sensation of babbling in the failed attempt to express the grandeur of lofty, snow-capped mountains, the noisy tranquility of the cloud-forests and the remarkable beauty a cloud has when it gently rolls over the mountain you're standing on. Yet, as I babble, I feel that I'm not even speaking at all. Somehow, despite the contradiction, I feel as if I'm sitting in a knowing and reverent silence, honoring the majesty I've had the privilege to witness. But more than just the things I saw (and thinking ahead to the things I wish to see), I think about the friends I made on the trip. Yeah, I was friendly with many of the people that I met on the trip, but I feel really privileged to have been able to talk to and communicate, in Spanish, with the guides and porters that came with us on our pampered, Western tramp through history.

As privileged as I felt to be able to witness the accomplishments of the ancient Incans, I feel equally privileged to have been tapped to deliver a speech to the staff that had served us so well throughout the trip. As I stood there fumbling over my words, cursing the fact that my r's always roll even when they're not supposed to, I realized that the greatest thing about traveling was the new insight you gained about yourself. No, it was more than just insight. It was the fact, that every new location demands a reinvention of the self. The greater the distance, the further from familiarity, the more reinvention that is acquired, the more it will demand of you as a member of the human species.

And so I travel. And I become reborn with each stamp of the passport.

If this is rebirth, then should I seek to end the samsara cycle like a Buddhist? The journey trope always began at the doorstep and ended in front of the church door in Medieval European literature -- a symbol of death and finality. But I suppose that implied question is for another time.