Fitness is a broad term.
Maybe when I say “fitness”, it might be just the physical state of our being that you may think of. But there is a lot more to fitness than the mere physical state of our being.
In today’s society, the challenges are multi-pronged. We have the challenge of keeping ourselves fit at both mental and physical levels. Life is fraught with problems, challenges, difficult situations etc. No matter what you call them but they are one and the same.
I was living a life that I was not so proud of just 4 years ago. I was feeling so defeated by the ways my life was. I was feeling mental as well as physical stress. I had hit the rock bottom of my life and I had no idea how I should take it forward.
And in that state of life, I found a love of running and fitness. Someone has rightly said that a single decision may change the whole course of your life.
Witnessing the rock bottom:
I was too stressed in those days. We as a family was facing the trauma of a deep loss. My mother had lost her husband and I had lost my father. It was all so unexpected. I was working in a place that was too far from the residence of my parents. And my mother had become lonely after dad.
I had started to live in fear of losing my mom too. So, I would make all efforts to be with her as much as I could. So, I would catch the first train over the weekend to travel to be with her. I would travel through the night and reach home by 10 am and leave back from the workplace by evening 6 O’clock. And I would travel back in train for yet another night to reach the workplace. and this went on for almost a year.
On one such trip, I had the experience that was set to change the whole course of my life. I wasn’t feeling OK. Still, I managed to reach home. While coming back I was feeling not so alright. So before boarding the train, I took some medicines. But I was still facing the fever and severe body ache.
Adding fuel to the fire was traveling without reservation. The medicines lasted for the night. I was still away from my destination when my condition started to worsen than normal. So, I got down at the station to seek medical help but before I could do so, I felt like I will fall down and faint. I started to feel the fever and within a few seconds, everything around me turned dark pitch, and before I knew I had passed out.
The Realisation
This had never happened to me. Ever in my life.
I had to take the car looking for medical help while I managed to travel back to the workplace after I gained consciousness back.
Had I left this world on that fateful day, I would have been survived by my wife and two little kids. My wife who has stood by me like a pillar all through my painful years and given me the support had not bothered to stop me. She knew that I loved my family, my mom and she had no choice but to listen up!
had it been not for her, I might have struggled between my mom and my family. That fateful day I felt for my children and my wife. I wondered, “Who would have supported the family?”.
This event led me to realize that no matter what trauma I was facing in life, I needed to be strong and stable. Your life might have been screwed up but shedding tears won’t make it alright. My daddy was gone who would have cared in my absence. My mother was already in trauma and too weak to face another. Who would have cared for my loved ones?
That day I realized that I would have to change my philosophy of life.
The beginning of the realisation
My philosophy of living an easy and comfortable life had received the bolt a few years before the incident I described above. I was made to turn into tough in a matter of minutes.
What would you imagine for those moments when have suffered the most devastating and painful thing in the world. Of course not what I did!
My dad lay silent on the hospital bed. His nose was stuffed with cotton. And I was preparing myself mentally to break the tragedy to my mom. And I see that the ned with my dad wrapped in is taken to a separate room and locked inside.
Nobody really cares about you. or your pain. It is yours and you have to deal with it. I was told that I will have to pay up the hospital charges before I can take the body. I had the choice: pay off and then attend the affairs or break into tears and make the situation all the worse.
With daddy gone, I had now nobody to take care of my family. I had only a few minutes to get hold of the situation before it became worse. I took my cousin along and visited the nearest ATM to withdraw cash.
The Lessons
That day I learned a lot of lessons about life that are going to stay with me for life. And one of them was: Become tough and strong to survive because pain and suffering are inevitable parts of life.
It takes time to comprehend the lessons but the process had started.
A new beginning
When you have to construct a new building, you need to bring down the old one. And the old life that I was living in which I expected a life of ease and comfort was brought down. The writing on the wall was not soo clear but I knew that I was faced with 2 options:
Turn bitter, blame life, problems, people, and the luck and suffer life in which I would be mentally dead before my body died.
Or turn me into a better human being, relearn, rewire, reinvent and reincarnate and transform my life using the experiences as the springboard for a relaunch with love, hope, and imagination.
Nothing transformative occurs in your life without a solid storyline backing it. I had my clarity. I had started to ask the most potent question: Why I am alive?
To suffer is inevitable.
YES! BUT….
I CHOOSE WHAT I WANT TO SUFFER
And since then every excuse, every reason falling flat against my will to REINVENT my life.
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