Life’s Too Short (To Live It Like a Junk Rep)
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, diapers to diapers…
With the arrival of Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent in just a few weeks, that’s a statement you’ll hear, again and again. The last part is mine but it’s true nonetheless.
While it represents the beginning and the end of our mortal existence, it leaves out the most important part… what goes on in between. But I think that’s the whole point. We get one chance at living each moment of our lives and we should make the most of every second because once they tick away, as “Verbal” Kint said about Keyser Soze, “And, like that, poof, (it’s) gone.”
The second your beautiful mother gave birth to the miracle that you are, a clock started counting down the number of minutes you have left in this world. Life – despite its travails – is too short not to give it your everything.
Borrowing from the Bard of Avon, “When we have shuffled off this mortal coil” we don’t get a do-over for a single one of them.
That doesn’t mean you should have so much going on you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off or, as the old man used to say, “Busier than a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest.” Much of our busyness would be termed a “junk rep” in the fitness world. It means doing a whole lot as if doing more produces better results. In the gym it creates nothing but fatigue without strength or muscle gains and out in the real world it sucks the life out of living.
Life has a quality that quantity alone will never overcome. It’s the single most beautiful gift we’ve ever been given. It should be lived to its fullest and, as we’ve always told you, not a single second of it should be wasted.
Many years ago, I heard a sermon where the priest spoke of what a sacred privilege it was to spend the final moments of someone’s time on earth with them and, on many occasions, hear their last words.
He couldn’t recall a single instance where anyone on their deathbed lamented the fact they hadn’t worked more.
I don’t think that means you blow off your job in search of pleasure or only do the things you feel like doing. There’s nothing wrong with working, working hard or pursuing your calling. It’s a reference to the beauty of the entirety of life, the awesomeness that’s inside each of us and the ability we all have to choose what’s important. The best part is we can choose to make every second of life important and to treat each of them that way. The instant we choose to do something, it becomes important.
If we make the decision to half-ass something then everything is subject to half-assing. It depends solely on how we feel at the time or whatever else happens to be competing for our attention.
When we decide to do the opposite – treat everything as if it’s important – nothing gets half-assed and everything, even if we only spend a few seconds on it, is done as if the time spent doing it is valuable… because it is. We’re never getting it back. We’ll know we made the best of it, no matter what it was, and it will extend to everything we do and everyone we encounter during our time here.
As my Grandmaster always told us, “Practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.”
If it’s something we normally speak about in these pages – diet, exercise and health – then as soon as you made the decision to do something about it, you made it important. Treat it with the respect it deserves. You can go to the gym and put forth serious effort even if it’s a 10-minute workout. You made it worthy by scheduling one of the limited moments you have to go and do it. You can still go to a restaurant, have a great time, enjoy good food, even splurge, and still be serious about your vision of a healthy life.
None of those things are mutually exclusive.
Recently, we said, “You owe it to yourself and your Maker to give life your best shot.” We all have an obligation to do our best and to become the best “us” we can be. Our time on this earth is limited. We should live it so we look back and know that every single rep we did, no matter what we were doing, was the best one we had in us at the time. The best one at a given moment might be to put down the work, go home and hang out with mama and the kids or it might be to smile at someone when we just don’t feel like smiling.
Hopefully, we all have the better part of a century here and, setting aside 20 years or so to grow up and get ready to live it; it means we have around three-quarters of that century left to experience this wonderful mystery called life. It will be filled with countless memorable events – good and bad – and an awful lot of tedium as well. We can still give our best to each of the things we do throughout the day. They may be the most menial and boring tasks we can imagine but putting forth a caring and dedicated effort to each of them makes the bigger events that much better. It also makes life, in general, much more meaningful.
If it’s truly the small things, done over time, that add up to something big, then putting forth our best effort in each of them adds up to a life well lived. If you care enough about the smallest things, the big ones will take care of themselves. That’s not to say that mowing the lawn or doing laundry is a task requiring perfection of effort, it just means that if you do a good job with everything you do, you’ll amplify the meaning of life.
I think there’s a mental calm that comes over you when you pay attention to doing a good job at anything and everything you undertake in life. There’s a peace that comes from starting your day with the bed neatly made or from packing your kids the best lunch you can make them. It might be nothing more than the old PB&J but make it the most important thing you do because one day you’ll wish you could do it for them again.
The seven months I spent in constant pain and facing multiple surgeries were an eye opener. Ordinary things like sitting in a chair, sleeping on my side or back or bending down to pick something up were out of the question. I could walk (limp, really) for exercise, and I did my best, but that was about it. It’s not so much that I missed being able to go to the gym (which I actually did), it’s that the pain was so bad; the things I always took for granted were either uncomfortable or excruciatingly painful.
This isn’t a “woe is me” tale. I’m forever thankful for what happened because the flavor of life became bolder when I realized that every single thing about it is, in some way, important and worth living to the fullest.
There’s nothing that will make you realize the beauty of being able to do the small things than getting out of bed in the morning knowing you’re going to have to remain standing until you go to bed some sixteen hours later. When every moment of the day – including the hours you spend fitfully sleeping – are colored by pain, the world takes on a new dimension. I realized just how far things had gone when I told a nurse my only dream was being able to sit down in a chair and watch a game without intense pain or to pick up something on the floor without first hobbling over to grab my picker-upper.
Through it all, I knew in my heart of hearts, just how fortunate and blessed I am, and I’m thankful for that. It can always be worse but you can always be grateful no matter what.
It’s a choice.
Despite having to start over from scratch, there’s no chance I’m going to complain about having to squat during a workout and I celebrate bending down to pick up the sock I dropped while doing laundry.
“Made in America was people who showed up to work every day, worked hard, got better at what they did and took pride in what they built and the fact they worked hard doing it.
There was simply nothing better.”
That meant every bit of life. Every second, minute, hour, day, week, month and year. And every little thing that’s done during that time.
When you care about the tiniest things, you’ll care about everything else, including your fellow man, and your place in the world. You’ll make a difference and you’ll make life better for everyone. You don’t have to depart this tiny speck in the universe as someone who’s famous or wealthy to have made a lasting impact on it. The Apostle Paul, along with imploring us to be content no matter the situation, told us to “Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord and not people.”
We do incredibly important things like being a parent, a wife or husband or a friend during our time here. But being everyone’s fellow man is of the utmost importance. You don’t have to know, or even like someone, to give them your best and to treat them respectfully and with kindness and love. Like you, they’re God’s children, too. It will make both of you feel better and you’ll make the world a better place.
Maya Angelou challenges us “to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. The effect you have on others’ lives is the highest expression of your own.”
You may only have ten minutes for a workout or to call a friend and check in on them or help your kid with their homework. But ten minutes has value and, when lived fully, the value of those ten minutes multiplies. Think of the last person you lost and ask yourself if you’d take just ten more minutes with them.
Or would you say that’s not enough time?
We’ve all received a phone call with horrible news. Maybe you left work one day and it was the last time you saw one of your coworkers. And we all have someone we’d desperately like to talk to just one more time.
While we might not look forward to it now, one day we’ll wish we could move well enough to go out and push a lawnmower around. We can be grateful for this life no matter what’s going on. I’m grateful to be able to sit in this chair and write to you knowing I can stand up and walk into the other room without feeling like I’m going to pass out when I get up. And don’t get me started on just how awesome it is to put on socks and tie my shoes.
Despite what the news and all the “geniuses” on social media tell you, the world is a truly beautiful place and you’re right at the center of it because you’re God’s magical creation. Live it to the fullest, enjoy every single thing about it and every single moment in it – no matter how tough some of them are – because we’ll all lay there one day wishing there was more of it to come.
No matter what it is, do everything you do as if it’s the last thing you’ll do on this earth because it just might be. No matter where you are, walk in and smile at the people you see because it might make someone’s day. Treat a total stranger as if they’re the most important person you’ve seen because it might be just what they need to keep shuffling along in this tough old world.
What you do with each and every action can be a reflection of just how awesome you are. Astonish the world with it.
It might be just what you need.
Years ago, Muhammad Ali told us, “Live every day as if it’s your last because one day you’ll be right.”
Go call your mom…
Regards,
Henry
75% of Americans are overweight or obese. 80% of diets fail people within a year. Isn’t it time to try something different?
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