TJT AND WHISPER READ THIS BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.
- From: Professor X <suebokaian@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:27:57 -0700 (PDT)
Well I have noticed the massive accumulation of posts from you two
guys. Indeed, i saw the thread that Whisper posted on 359 days or
something last year. So I thought i'd paste something here that is
inspirational to me. If you read it you will understand why I have
posted it. It's off a site called t-nation.com (shugarts hammer.) You
guys sound like you need inspiration.
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I Hear Dead People
I held the dead guy in my hands and said, "So this is it?"
It was the summer of 1999 and I was working in a graveyard in Texas.
At the time, I was actually a high school teacher, but I always tried
to get a physical job during the summer break to balance out my
regular job, which consisted mostly of sitting behind a desk for ten
months out of the year. Also, since teachers sometimes make less money
than the custodians that clean the schools, I needed the extra dough.
It was an odd job to say the least. I usually told people I worked
summers doing landscaping, but that was only partially true. At least
once a week, I also had to play pallbearer. See, when you die at age
90, you don't have many friends and family members around to carry
your casket anymore. After three summers of this, I'd probably carried
more caskets than a Kennedy.
After a graveside service was over, I'd go help the guy whose job it
was to dig the hole and set up the tent. The last part of the job
involved lowering the casket into the concrete vault. (Unlike what you
see on TV, you don't do this until all the family leaves.) My job was
to jump down in the hole with grandma's body and wrestle off the chain
used to lower the massive concrete lid.
One time my favorite cap blew into the hole and slipped down between
the vault and the coffin. I had to lay facedown on the casket to
retrieve it. Talk about coming to terms with your own mortality. As it
turned out, that lesson was just beginning.
The day I held the dead guy was like any other summer day in West
Texas. It was over a hundred degrees and the wind was blowing what was
left of the topsoil around in a orange-red haze. I was manning the big
Snapper weed whacker when the FedEx truck pulled up. I signed for the
package, expecting it to be parts for our dilapidated Ford tractor.
Inside was a Glad freezer bag full of speckled gray powder and a note.
It read:
"Bury in plot 223B."
That's when I realized I was holding what the funeral industry calls
cremains, the cremated remains of a corpse.
I wasn't all that shocked. I mean, I'd been around dead people for so
long that the act of passing by a body on display at the funeral home
got to be routine. What got me was the finality, the cold note from
the anonymous family member, and the lack of ceremony.
This was a human being I was holding in my hands, a person who'd been
walking on this earth just a week before. His life had come down to
this -- a few ashes in a plastic leftover bag.
For some reason, the worst part was the FedEx box, which still had the
price of delivery on it. It costs about $10 to mail a cremated human
body.
I grabbed a shovel and headed out to find the plot. Two co-workers
went with me, a friend of mine who's now a doctor and the old man
who'd been working at the cemetery for years. We found the plot, dug a
hole, and then debated whether we should toss in the bag, the whole
box, or just pour him out. In the end, we tossed in the bag.
The old man commented on how disrespectful the whole process was and
wondered why the family didn't bother to put him in a nice urn.
"Shouldn't we at least say something?" he asked as I covered the hole
back up.
I did say something. I said, "I quit."
I don't believe in fate and I don't believe in "signs from above."
However, I do believe in accidental lessons. A person only has to be
on the lookout to find them occurring in everyday life. That afternoon
at Rose Hill Cemetery, I'd been taught a lesson. It's a lesson we all
know, but often try to forget.
The lesson is this: We're all actors on the big screen, playing the
role of friend, father, husband, brother, employer and employee. We
may play bit parts as extras or we may get the lead role. It doesn't
matter. The movie always ends the same way: a close-up of a hole in
the ground. Fade to black.
About that same time, a fellow by the name of TC had been nice enough
to publish an article of mine. By the end of that summer, he'd
accepted a few more. School started back and I began my seventh year
of educating the youth of America. I liked teaching. Still, teaching
wasn't exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
I finished the school year and I kept sending in articles. My duties
grew and by the end of the year I'd been offered a full time job as
assistant editor of T-Nation. The other teachers and a few friends
were astounded when I took it.
"You're going to quit the stable job you went to college for and work
for a muscle magazine? Isn't that a little, you know, risky?"
I thought of the Glad freezer bag full of ashes and said, "You bet it
is."
Now, I admit that switching jobs isn't a really big deal. It's not
like I sold my worldly possessions, moved to Tibet, and sought
spiritual enlightenment or anything. But to me it was a big deal. I
was getting off the merry-go-round that all the normal people ride and
heading over to the big scary roller coaster. I was doing three things
I always loved: lifting weights, helping people out, and writing. And
I was getting paid for it.
I think there's a very big difference between stability and
stagnation, although most people don't see it. Weight training, in
many ways, is a physical manifestation of this idea. We go to the gym
to battle against "normal," to fight the good fight and stave off
death, to make sure our movie is a double feature and that we look
damn good up there on the screen in the time that we have.
But for some, it goes beyond stagnation; it turns into atrophy. Look
closely at those around you. The average person's life reads like a
tasteless recipe:
Step One: Go to work at a job you don't really like.
Step Two: Come home and watch several hours of TV.
Step Three: Go to bed.
Step Four: Wake up and do it all again.
Step Five: Repeat until death.
Step Six: Place leftovers in a Glad freezer bag.
I think about these things when I see people spending hours of their
lives at meaningless hobbies instead of pursuing their dreams. As
corny as it sounds, I think most people give up their dreams a few
years out of high school and replace them with trivial diversions --
watching TV, playing video games, collecting Beanie Babies.
You hear them say, "I thought about opening up my own business at one
time." "I should have tried out for that team." "I almost got my
college degree." When they're 80, will they think, "So this is it?"
What a petty epitaph to a human life.
It's like some people are on a remarkable quest to be average. They
strive for nothing more than mediocrity. They sit in front of the boob
tube and wait to die. They're not really happy living their lives
vicariously through reality TV shows and sitcom characters, but
they're content, and that's much, much worse.
They're people, but they're also sheep. They're sheeple. That's not a
sin. Being satisfied with that role is a sin. I found myself playing
this role once. You may be playing that role now. But as the Chinese
say, the important thing is to be able to sacrifice at any moment what
we are, for what we could become.
Happiness has been summed up by many as struggling, enduring and
accomplishing in a field that you truly love. Maslow called it self-
actualization, the state of achieving everything you're capable of. It
sounds simple, but how many people are really doing this?
Are you truly happy with your job or are you just going through the
motions like a newbie at the gym who puts no effort into his training?
Being a real man goes beyond looking big, after all. It's about being
in control and living your life the way you want to live it. Besides,
isn't it decidedly un-Testosterone-ish to be a sheep? I'd rather be
the wolf.
As most T-Nation readers already know, you have to be strong to
separate yourself from the crowd. If you're an avid reader of this
site, then you've already taken the first step in removing yourself
from the common flock. I sincerely believe that taking control of your
body through diet and training is empowering. Sheep can't do this.
Sheeple won't.
The flock is powerful, though. The crowd will do its best to draw you
back in. ("Isn't that a little, you know, risky? ") You may have to go
it alone for a while. You may have to lose some friends. But that's
okay in the end. You probably don't want to hang out with people
who've given up on their lives anyway. They're uninteresting. They're
boring. They're, in many ways, already dead.
Dead people speak to us. You only have to listen.
.
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