A year ago I lay down on the bench and put up 250 and felt my old strength return, sat up on the bench and pumped my fist.
I saw flashes of moments from the past and for a moment I was certain I saw my old buddy, running alongside of me.
We were as young and nimble as we ever were and the stories of the present were yet to have been written. What I knew was as true as ever.
Some of that physical strength has left me because I haven’t had a gym to go to and the challenge of being almost middle aged is the muscle mass recedes at a faster pace than ever before.
But physical strength is the last to leave and given my DNA and self knowledge I know I can get back and exceed what I have lost.
It is not a question of can but of will as in will I dedicate myself to doing so.
I am still lifting daily but the equipment is different and in some ways so is my motivation.
One of the guys asked a question about this particular time and how we are to manage it to which I responded Isn’t this what we trained for.
It wasn’t snarky, insouciant or silly.
I was serious and still am.
Somewhere between the beginning and the the middle of the discussion they asked me what I would do if I could sit down with a few people and ask them questions knowing I would get an honest answer.
“I’d ask them to answer questions that were very specific and then I’d live with the answer.”
“So you would just accept it and go about your business?”
“It depends on the question. Living with it doesn’t mean that I don’t have a reason or obligation to try to change their mind. Could be a G-d and Abraham question where I am told that a city will be destroyed and have to negotiate.
Can’t say and don’t know without inputting parameters.”
“You make me crazy when you start making adjustments like this.”
“Brother, you posed this as the ability to ask anyone in history to answer a question. It could be as basic as as asking a crush if they would sleep with you to as complicated as asking a mass murderer like Hitler to explain why they would try to commit genocide.
If I have the power to ask such questions of people who may or may not be alive than I have the power to do many other things and given that we haven’t established the guide lines there is a lot of room for interpretation and discussion.”
I got five minutes of complaining and cursing but he acknowledged I was correct.
I am not a good rule follower but I am not someone who automatically ignores them either. Col0r me somewhere in between.
