Something to Believe In

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Iowa, I had three best friends.  One girl and two guys.  We were kind of a rag tag bunch who somehow became the four muskateers.  We had many adventures in partying as most big ten students have.  There would be the games of pool at The Que, football games with bodas filled with hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps or parties at our respective apartments where we would be poor enough to not afford red solo cups, rather the cheap six ounce non colored cups that were free with the keg of Milwaukee's Best.  Yes, those were the days.  Regardless of what our adventure involved it always seemed to end the same way.  The four of us arm in arm at the wee hours of the morning singing Poison's,"Something to Believe in".  In recent years, I would receive, and send, a screen shot of this playing on my current mom mobile as I shuttle kids from place to place and chuckle about the good old days.

Why this?  Why this song?  Well, first of all, Poison was cool.  Leading the way among all time great hair bands of the late 80's and early 90's.  Second of all, we were kids.  Long past Santa, and a long way from the adult cynicism we all experience when we fall short of where it was we dreamed we would be.  At that time, we were kids who were quick to see ourselves as rock stars with kickin' explosives behind us and screaming fans, or Olympic athletes shedding a tear on the gold medal podium or even CEO of a Fortune 500 company.  Yes, we were young with our whole lives ahead and just knew we were going to make it big. 

I suppose that is a pretty common notion for most 20 year olds, but what happens when we are adults?  What happens when the magic has worn away, and the world has been less than kind at times? My experience is, we seem to think there is little reason to think something amazing can happen for us.   Our proverbial ship has sailed with multiple perceived failures as we reached for our dreams in our younger days.  We have become complacent in our own lives and submit to the mundane and accept our own mediocrity as our destiny.  No, it may not be the pyrotechnic show behind us, or a gold medal, or ringing the bell on the stock exchange, but we convince ourselves it is ok.  For me, in order to get healthy and break out of the four decade prison of obesity, it came down to one simple thing:  asking myself what if it wasn't?  What if quiet resignation to dreams put away on shelf decades prior was not ok?  What if our faith could be restored?

This brings me to tattoo number two, a few posts back was #1.  When I was new on my fitness journey, two and a half years ago, I joined Orangetheory.  I routinely had a trainer I loved to say no to.  I would tell him,"NO.  I can't do burpees."  or "NO.  I can't do tricep pushups."  No, No, No....  I was always saying no. I mean realistically, I was 85 pounds heavier.  I figured he was delirious from the glow of the orange lights when he asked me to do some of the stuff he did.  When I would say NO, he had the same answer over and over and over,"You can.  You just don't know you can.  NOW DO IT!"  I suppose it was his military background that scared me enough to try with him there, or the fact he was putting a heavier dumbbell in my hand and I was afraid of looking like an idiot if I dropped it.  Regardless, I was shocked. He was right.  Every single time he was right. My first real burpee, my first power pull up, my first long distance row... the list is endless  He would have a front row seat to all of it.   What followed every first, was my trainer laughing at me and toss a "told ya" over his shoulder as he walked away.  Somehow, he always knew I could do something even before me.  Over time, I began to realize that the key to breaking through walls of mediocrity came yes, from hard work, but more importantly the belief in our own abilities.  The belief that we can succeed.  For me, that had to start with someone else giving me a not so gentle push forward long before I felt I was confident in what might be possible for myself.  A  person sent into my life to touch off a journey that even now has no clear destination.

Before this, there was really one major person who believed in me even on my worst days.  It was my mom.  She died suddenly June 30.  By this time, I had lost my weight.  Run 3 Spartan Races and gotten busy motivating others to believe too.  So, as I traveled alone to Florida to say goodbye, I found myself in a tattoo shop for this.  I realized the key to success was the simple belief it was possible.  Not a mythical figure like Santa, not the Tooth Fairy and certainly not the extremely high maintenance Elf on the Shelf.  Side note....my Elf sadly is no longer in existence, but that is a story for another day. 

So, in memorial to what my mom tried so hard to instill in me, that took me 45 years to truly grasp, on my right rib cage stands this.  I may not be able to call her to remind me, but all I have to do is look down and I will know just about anything is possible if I just believe.  I am grateful for all of  the people who have entered my journey at just the right time in just the right moment, and helped me move ever so slightly forward.  Sometimes, by inches and sometimes by miles, proving their existence was certainly no accident, but that discussion will involve the reveal of the third and final tattoo....

As to my three best friends, we are for the most part still in touch.  One of whom, began believing he could about two years ago too and now we run races together and love taking other people to discover their own potential.  Now, admittedly, each race tends to end similar to our evenings so many years ago.  This year in Chicago, we would find ourselves in a dive bar, late at night with one of the other four Muskateers, a couple of celebratory drinks in, pulling a little Poison up on the jukebox grateful for the chance to believe in ourselves to create a life well outside the mundane we had fallen into when we failed to become rock stars.  So in 2018, as we make new goals, we have to firmly believe in the notion that the best is truly  yet to come.