A word on perspective
So as a lot of you know, one of my endeavors outside of the gym is my involvement in professional wrestling. Last night I was blessed with the opportunity to visit one of our die hard fans in hospital, while he fights back and recovers from yet another unbelievably huge and life altering surgery. This 12 year old boy has been coming to our shows with his grandmother, every single week, for well over a year (driving over an hour each way), and I know that coming and watching us perform every Saturday night is truly the highlight of his week. This young man is wheelchair bound, potentially forever, after spending most of his life so far fighting and struggling through just about the shittiest hand that life can deal out. I wont go into detail here, but trust me. As a father, his story resonates deeply with me, and I am so proud that Cass and I were able to spend some time with this kid yesterday and hopefully distract him from the pain and the struggles by just talking about wrestling. It’s hard to describe in words how truly inspiring this young man is. But it got me thinking…
The amount of times I’ve felt ‘sore’, the number of people that I’ve heard say ‘that hurts’ when things get a little uncomfortable. I don’t know about you guys, but seeing this kid in a hospital bed, with a smile on his face and not a word of complaint ever, really made me feel like a bit of a fraud. You see, I reckon I struggle on a daily basis, after nearly 30 years of accumulating wear and tear on my body from a lifetime of training. But there are so many cases like this of children who would absolutely love to experience some sore knees walking down the stairs, because it means they were out of their wheelchair. While I bitch about how my shoulder plays up on certain pressing movements, some little girl is housebound because of the tubes and tanks that she is tethered to just to be able to live.
Now I’m not trying to say that your injuries aren’t real and you need to toughen up etc etc. This isn’t some preachy thing where I’m a big bearded man screaming at people to train through to the depths of hell because you don’t have real problems and you’re being a f#*king pussy. Its really not. What I’m trying to express is that we really need to appreciate what we have. Yeah we might have some aches and pains, and yeah I get that problems are relative to the individual and sometimes life is tough. I’ve done my fair share too. But I wake up every morning, with a body that mostly works, and I have the FREEDOM to choose whether I train or not each day. I have the FREEDOM to train around my injuries. I have the FREEDOM to decide whether I’m going to cry ‘poor me’ or if I’m just going to get my work done.
What I was reminded of last night was that not everyone has that freedom. Take advantage of yours.
Yours in Strength,
Dan