Triathlons and Life

So Amy Winehouse is dead.

She was the soundtrack to the events that sent me into the triathlon world. With the interview coming up tomorrow, I couldn't help but take a blog entry to meditate on how the rest of my life intertwines with triathlons.


"It's only after we've lost everything, that we're free to do anything." 

Around the time that Amy Winehouse crooned in the background, I watched Fight Club over half a decade after everyone else did. Tyler Durden, my prophet, his words, sparks falling on dry tinder. I lost everything. I knew nothing.

"I don't know. You're just too Christian for me."

I lost my perspective on life. I had nothing on my resume except teaching at a church day camp.

"You have to answer this question! If you died right now, how would you feel about your life?"
"I don't know. I wouldn't feel anything good about my life." 

That was my answer too. I looked at my whole life. I didn't have anything I cared about in all of my life. I had a job I felt nothing towards. It fed me and kept a roof over my head. Was that sufficient for life? I had friends but what did we do except go out to restaurants and eat? I had a church I spent most of my free time at but what was that to me? Why was I even doing this? And take my church activities away from me and what was left of my life? Nothing much. And if those activities were taken away, would I really miss them so much?

People misunderstand what I mean by transformation. They think I mean the 120 lbs. I've lost. I mean the life I began. I turned off my auto-pilot switch. I stopped caring about what other people thought should matter to me. I became obsessed with my own death. Not in a macabre goth way. I feared death before - not because of heaven or hell - but because I lived a life that other people wrote out for me. How shameful would it be to arrive on the day of judgement with a life lived by committee?


"Mom told me to find a stable job. Dad told me to find a quiet woman. Church told me I needed to volunteer more. Work said they needed more hours. So there's my life!"

"First, you have to know, not fear, know, that some day you're going to die." 

I became obsessed about death because I knew what kind of death I wanted. I wanted to be surrounded by chubby, red-faced grandkids. I wanted my kids to gather around me grateful for the spirit that I had passed onto them. I have no intention of leaving grand material possessions behind. I'd like to give most of that away before I go. But everyone I meet at anytime, I want to give them a piece of me, the realest piece. I want to lay on my death bed and look back on a long life, grateful for the amazing ride I had. I want to do something incredible. I want to meet kindred spirits. I want to scream defiance against the impossible. I'd like to live a life I thought was amazing.

Is that too much to ask?

We overestimate what we can do in one year. Look at the New Years Resolutions people make when they're "determined" to change their lives. I want to learn a language, read a bunch of books, go skydiving/bungee jumping, etc. Most people end up accomplishing exactly none of those goals. Most forget them by February. I couldn't forget my goals because those goals were all I had.

We grossly underestimate what we can do in five years. Look at where you are now. Look at where you were five years ago. How much did you learn? How much have you changed? And for most people, this happens passively without application or dedication. What might happen if you put the full force of your life behind your drive to accomplish your goals? I was around 25 at the time. I came up with a "WILL DO BEFORE 30 LIST." Completing an Ironman race was up at the top of the list.

So I wrote out a 5-year plan. If I was to make the Ironman by age 30, I needed to see at least some of the steps in between. So I registered for the NYC Triathlon. Halloween 2008, while everyone dressed up and drank, I was at my computer frantically clicking away on the Firefox 'refresh' button. I'm glad I did. The race sold out in 20 minutes.

I chose an Olympic because a sprint just didn't look challenging. A quarter mile swim, 10 mile bike, and 5k? I could fall out of bed and roll 5k before I woke up at that point. I wanted to push myself to the very limit. The thrill of finishing NYC in 2009 was diminished by the fact that my body felt so good. I wasn't sore that day or the day after. Did I take it too easy? I always trained with the goal of over-preparation in mind, but I should have at least some sign that I was pushed.

Next year, I'll get that chance. Ironman. NYC. 2012. A great challenge in the world's greatest city, filled with the world's greatest fans. 2.4 Hudson river miles. 112 Palisade Parkway miles and 26.2 miles ending in Riverside Park. It's my dream come true. It's a chance for me to knock off one of my Before-I-Turn-30 Goals, a year early.

Triathlons are amazing. I'm built for powerlifting. It took me a month to bring my max bench press from 200 to 375 lbs. It took me two months to go from 300 to 450. But I don't regret leaving that behind for triathlons. The first triathlon, I ever did, NYC back in 2009, changed my mind. As I rocketed down the West Side Highway the clouds broke and the sun painted the course with brilliant light. I don't know what happened at that moment. I've seen sunrises and sunsets, magnificent declarations of God's goodness in his creation, but I began to cry. I rarely found God in church. I knew doctrines. I studied a whole hell of a lot. I found a bunch of friends but my soul still rang hollow. At that moment, alone on the West Side Highway, I met God and I felt an overwhelming confirmation that this race course was where I should be at that moment. I could've been in church leading the congregation in prayer that July Sunday but I believe that what happened to me that day did more to help me make much of Christ than ten thousand sanctuary-sequestered Sundays.

I stopped letting other people write my life for me. I'm the one that has to wake up in the morning and look myself in the mirror. When I die, I have to be the one to give an accounting of my life, all the wrong I've done, all the good I've done, before God. I am the one that will lay on my death bed one day, looking back on my own life. I don't know where or when, but I want to look back with satisfaction on my life.

I'm glad Kid Cudi dropped his weed habit. He's the soundtrack to my life right now. And right now, I love where my life is heading.

The Phoenix Effect: Joyous Wisdom

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom..." -- Psalm 111:10

"To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom." -- Bertrand Russell

Without death, there is no resurrection. If I did not die first, I could not be reborn.

Have you ever noticed how dieters always, and I do mean always, gain back the weight that they lose? Because they saw their activity as a diet -- in  the contemporary, common sense of the word, a temporary shift in eating habits, they failed to address the underlying issue, which is a poor understanding or willingness to eat the foods that they should be eating. To lose over 100 lbs. I needed to destroy my current belief system so that another could grow in its place. At one time, I believed that there was nothing wrong with eating Chinese take-out so long as I got the brown rice instead of white, or that eating Popeye's was OK if I only did it once a day. Walking away from those beliefs permanently led to lasting change. I will never go back.

But my own personal transformation was about so, so much more than the body. What use are a broad back and washboard abs if one still lives as a coward? And a coward I was, trapped in a prison of my own construction. Shackled by safety and enclosed by duty, I lived in hatred of my own life. I could not continue this way. I would end this way of life or I would end this life, this you all know already.

But I could not stop running into the problem of my faith. How should a Christian, one who professes allegiance to the God found in Scripture, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God whose Son was incarnated as the root of Jesse and the descendant of David, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, how should one such follower live?

I had two views. On the one hand, I held the view of humility so often practiced in Christendom. Modesty, mincing meekness-- these qualities evoked a visceral loathing.  Pride, should that not be the right of the capable? Should the strong be ashamed of their strength? Throughout Scripture, as I run through its vastness in my mind's eye, I see only lowness praised. Praise for putting others above yourself, for humility, for meekness -- kenosis, the emptying of the self. Exacerbated by Christian teaching -- are you following your will or God's will? You have a plan but God has a better one. Abdicate rule over your life, let God make the decisions for you. How can you, being finite and fallible, ever hope to make better choices for yourself than God whose weakness is greater than your strength? Mortals should not rise above their station. Recognize the unfathomable chasm that separates you from the divine and tremble in fear!

But on the other hand, Abraham and Jacob both wrestled with God. Moses as well. And were these men not highly regarded? What did this mean? "Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him." Is this truly an invitation to know?

But I can't help remembering Bertrand Russell who once said that the Gospels never praise intelligence. The Beatitudes prize the poor in spirit, mourners, the meek but not those with ability. Not the strength of the laborer, the mind of the inventor, the will of the one who works diligently at perfecting his craft, these are never praised. These people are the ones whose work can alleviate much in the world. A farmer who breeds a new grain that resists drought and hardship can prevent hunger for a nation, but this work is never acknowledged. In the millennia that have passed since the closing of the canon, men have covered the globe, touched the heavens and the abyss, glimpsed the beginning of the universe, conceived of its end, and yoked the atom to do our bidding. And the majority of that progress has come in the period where men stopped waiting for miracles to appear causelessly and worked to make them occur at will. This cannot be argued as anything but the result of liberating humanity from superstition.

Yet, despite all this I do not buy the line that men have killed God. It would take either a poor definition of God or an exaggerated view of what it is exactly that humanity has accomplished in light of what it is possible to accomplish. To relegate God to a psychic security blanket useful for old world grandmothers is an absurd premise. Not psychology nor biology, not physics, chemistry or astrophysics, none of the disciplines have anything that can deny the existence of God or make the possibility of his existence an inherently untenable position. Spit in the face of those who say otherwise.


In my heart, in my honest heart, I would like to believe that God loves the brave, that he rewards those who have both contempt for the opinion of the herd who seek safety in numbers and the big, brass balls to bet their lives on their beliefs. I would like to believe that Abraham, Jacob, Moses, the centurion praised by Jesus, that these people were diving onto the Toruk, the biggest, meanest predator of the sky who could only be surprised from above.

Sapere Aude! Dare to know! Dare to discover! Dare to ask the question that makes you a heretic! Buck convention, risk your neck and everything that goes with it to know! Sin boldly! Like Martin Luther said, go and sin boldly knowing that God's grace reaches further than your sin can stretch. Beliefs should they not match reality? And if they do, then will they not withstand our interrogation? And if they do not, should we not discard them? It does not matter if the world terrifies us afterwards. If God does not exist then he never did and thousands have lived and found joy and died happy without him. Can you open your mouth to say that? If He does, then do you understand just what that means? It means your life must change and change irrevocably. Live your life with that certain knowledge, but do not believe simply because it is more comfortable to believe -- because it is easier to believe. God help you, do not believe simply because, in your estimation, it requires less of you.

I have had only 1 or 2 discussions with atheists where they did not claim, directly or indirectly, that my belief in God was because of how it made me feel. It often makes me feel very angry and very violent. I often feel that because of my belief in God, people like Benny Hinn should be punched in the neck and Creflo Dollar should be kicked in the teeth -- preferably with my fist and my boot. My belief in God makes me depressed that there are Bible-belt preachers who believe that God created football, fried chicken and free-market principles in that order, and that these who I must call brother also put together the picture of Jesus holding a baby raptor un-ironically. My relationship with God does not provide me with the warm fuzzies that they think it does. Believing in God or not believing in God, it would be absurd to say that either one makes anything... easier. It does not even make going to church easier. What other burden could it possibly alleviate, if we apply our rational mind to the question?

So in the aufhebung, the sublation or synthesis of the two quotes that I began this entry with comes to a head in the decision of the Jews who translated the Hebrew Testament into the Septuagint. They consciously made a decision to use the word 'phobos' or 'terror,' in lieu of the word for 'awe.' If we understood it with a larger emphasis on the awe perhaps they would not seem so diametrically opposed. Volcanoes inspire awe and terror as few other phenomena can. If we overcome the terror of being destroyed by molten rock we can, through their expellate, divine secrets hidden at the core of the earth. The discovery that volcanic soil is perhaps the most fertile soil in all the earth. Should that not engender more awe? But would that awe have been possible without conquering a fear of volcanoes?

Dare to know.

The Phoenix Effect: Holyland

There's nothing left. 

This is the pure space we've prepared.

You and I.

It's our Holyland.

This isn't the first post I've tried to write about Holyland. It's an amazing manga -- far more mature than Naruto, Bleach and so on. The realism is astounding. Mori shows his work and research into not only fighting styles but their applications on the street. But more than anything else, the way that the protagonist, Kamashiro Yuu develops grabs at me like nothing else.

I love Naruto, both the manga and the character. But in the end, it never ceases to be a cartoon. He is too pure, too focused and determined on Sasuke, with such a small basis for it that the veil of comic-hood remains intact. It never ceases to be Magical Ninja Kids: the serial. But Holyland is entirely different. No magic. No concessions to the Rule of Cool. It's bare-knuckled reality broken down into frames and read from right to left.

But I don't think everyone would feel that way about the manga. It's the 272nd most popular series on OneManga.com It falls behind Yu-Gi-Oh a comic written about a children's card game created specifically for a TV show that doesn't make sense, Black Lagoon, a series that is unmatched in its attempt, and failure, to look legitimately cool (the whole thing reads like an unintentional parody of Tarantino), and many other works that have less heart and investment. I'm not surprised, nor particularly outraged.

I never believed that Holyland was the kind of work that would appeal to a large group of people. Knowing what I do about writing and life, I believe that Yuu exists as an outlet for Mori. He was created so that Mori could share his own life, tell his story to the world.

And I believe I've found a kindred spirit in him, and thus, in Yuu. His story revolves around a desperate attempt to find refuge in martial arts to escape his daily torment. But the refuge wasn't so much the violence that it provided but the stability it provided. If he worked, he would improve. The physical violence, I feel, is ancillary to the story. The true movement lies in the internal development and realization of the characters.

Why is this so important to me? See image below. And remember, reading is from right to left.

I only dabble in self-defense. For me, it's triathlons. For me, it's about never giving up. It's about leaving behind a life of cowardice and excuse-making. For me, I think this is right now, my true religion and faith. The Good News for me is that anyone can become stronger with nothing more than diligence. My deliverance is in seeing my race times drop and drop and drop.

Idolatry. I don't deny it. I have two gods. My strength and then, God. It's not always clear cut who rules my life. My family is so small. I know one other person in my life who has come to transformation by hatred as well. I latch onto Holyland because even if they are so far, I believe that Mori understands me more than almost anyone else could. And perhaps more than anything else, I wonder about what choices exist out there for me aside from hatred and fear.

The Phoenix Effect: The Aesthetics of Living

A few days ago I used this picture in a post. I don't have some magical formula to my pictures. I simply run an interesting phrase through google image search to see what comes up. The phrase that came to mind was "courageous vision" and it resulted in the above picture.

I think it's a beautiful image. The user's Flickr account, Ganga Sunshine, displayed a lot of similar work with explosions of colors and... and techniques and methods whose names are beyond me. But with the above picture, I felt that it fit my idea beautifully. A delirious, joyful, dance under an open sky, flight without wings, a sensate soaring through the azure -- that describes a beautiful life doesn't it?

Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rand ... three of my favorite philosophers wrote on the aesthetics of living. Kierkegaard characterized it as a life devoted to sensate gratification -- an escape from boredom and responsibility. Progressing from the aesthetic, one moves to the ethical realm of social debt and then on to the final phase: the religious, wherein a person acquires faith, the highest form of human existence.

Nietzsche, from what I remember of my existentialism class (it has been quite some time since I last delved into his work) did work on understanding pain. The problem with pain, is not that it hurts, but that we misunderstand its significance. Upon encountering pain, the typical reaction is to try to ignore, suppress, minimize, avoid, forget. Rarely does anyone have the thought of mastering the pain.

And Rand, the philosopher with whom I have had the greatest struggle, it was she who taught me that the purpose of morality is not to teach us to obey and suffer but to enjoy ourselves and live. This is true morality.

And so when I consider my life I feel compelled to answer the question: is this life that you are living an aesthetic life, a beautiful life? Up until this point I had always thought that I was because I had ended what was an ugly life. A life of cowardice, craving security, comfort, terrified of risk, I lived this way and my hatred and loathing continues to run deep. But as Rand continues to remind me, avoiding death is not the same as achieving life. Not being that particular ugly did not mean I had then achieved beauty.

Is my anger beautiful? Or rather, the anger I seek to fill myself with -- is that beautiful? For a while now, I've been afraid to face the reality that it just might not be. The anger leaves me simple-minded, short-sighted and desperate. Anger, the mindless rage at my own inadequacy by its very description excludes the higher faculties which have been given to us as humans. No, the beautiful life that I keep coming back to in my mind is a sort of quiet confidence assured of its inevitable triumph. It moves unhurried, taking each step with foresight, intelligence in the way of a conquering king's procession.

Anger is inefficient, this kind of pride and confidence that I envision understands how to budget its strength and resources. But how is this life achieved? Anger came over me as if I was a Homeric hero, clay in the hands of the happy, idiot gods. When has it ever been that confidence and unshakable assurance came over mighty Diomedes or clever Odysseus? No, it would be fallacious to think of it in the same vein as emotions. What I'm searching for is not an affect of the spirit, what we would today call emotion, but it is alithea, the a-lethe, the un-forgotten truth of life, the eureka lightning bolt realization.

And how is that achieved? Alithea is never formulaic but it is always beautiful. When it seizes upon a person the world becomes suffused with a glowing sublimity. Alithea is always at first the world of walking trees but a while after the mud has been applied to the eyes, one sees but never the same. So long as one lives, one will find alithea. But that does not help me so much. I wish to uncover the truth of my own life-- how shall I live?

The Phoenix Effect: A Reflection

"When you've nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire."

By the time I read this article, I had already drastically transformed my body. But I am greatly indebted to the article because it gave me a framework to discuss what I had already done. I didn't think of it at the time, but I had already finished living out most of those truths.

Real transformation involves laser-like focus, near obsession with diet and training, and a total disregard for what other people may think. (In many ways, you have to remove certain people from your field of influence in order to change, but that's another article.) Rather than a blurry, lackadaisical decision to make changes, the beginning of a successful transformation involves an emotional outburst, usually anger.

Remember, the phoenix dies in fire and is reborn in fire. Self-directed anger is your fuel in this process. You must get mad, combust, and feed the fire until you break the old habits and rebuild new ones relevant to your physical goals.

This is often the difference between those who succeed and those who don't. The unsuccessful person has a weak moment in his diet, makes an excuse, and gives in to the craving. The successful person gets mad at himself, stokes the fire, and stays strong. Examples:

The failure: "I really want that candy bar. And hey, I deserve it anyway. Didn't miss a workout all week. Plus, chocolate has antioxidants, right?"

The phoenix: "I can't believe I'm even thinking of ruining my diet. I'm stronger than this, goddammit! This is bullshit, and I will not be this weak! I won't put myself in the same category as those front-butted fucks who ride electric scooters around Wal-Mart!"

The same thing can occur in the gym. The failure — the person who hasn't begun properly and hasn't set himself on fire — will find plenty of reasons to avoid the tough exercises and rationalize laziness.

The phoenix — the angry person who has burned away all his previous excuses — will get mad at himself for slacking. He'll remind himself that he must earn his post-workout drink, and if he needs to, he'll slap himself across the face until he feels like getting into the squat rack.

Think I'm kidding? This is how truly successful people push themselves. They're not hand-holders; they're ass-kickers... even if it's their own ass that needs kicking. They drive themselves, and usually not with positive affirmations. It's not:

"You can succeed because you're a winner at heart!"

It's more like:

"Don't be a fat fucking weak-willed pussy!"

To bastardize Gordon Gekko's infamous greed speech from the movie Wall Street:

"The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that anger — for lack of a better word — is good. Anger is right. Anger works. Anger clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit."

Feel it. Feed it. Channel it. Use it.

That part of the article spoke to me like few other texts have. To change, to truly change, you need anger. I would go so far as to say, hatred. If I didn't hate the person I was, how could I kill the person I was? How could I put to death the part of me that loved fast food, loved to eat 2 lunches and 2 dinners? How could I crucify the excuse making scum if I did not loathe him? 


Oddly enough, I think I only hated that self because I loved life. I refused to die, to accept the reality as the final statement of my life. I swore to myself that if I did not change, I would end my life. Someone who cannot master his own life, the body and it's impulses, it's thoughts and decisions, then that person should have their life stripped from them. More important than the physical life is the capacity to live life.   I could not accept slavery to take-out, fast food, indolence and cowardice as my fate.

But having broken these chains, have I received a curse in return? I adopted a war-time mentality during my transformational period. Ask me to come out to Wendy's and you would receive a death threat in return. But what about now? Is this my own post-traumatic stress disorder? I'm not 320 lbs. I'm 210. I've done triathlons and a marathon. What is there left to hate? And if there's so little left for me to hate, then how am I going to live? I look at my life and I feel as if I've gone into neutral at the bottom of a hill. I've made it some distance but lack the power to go further. Honestly, it scares me. Hatred and anger have been my strength for so long. Where will I find strength if not here?