Real Strength

This is my dad.

I talk all the time about feats of strength, guys lifting insane amounts of weight or jumping over things or twisting in odd ways.

When talking to my friend Joyce today, she talked about her dad was recently in the hospital.

Then I reflected back on my dad and his health troubles. Rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, a heart attack and associated heart disease. Yes this is one human being we're talking about

The arthritis is probably the most crippling- his wrists, shoulders, knees, and damn near every point in between aches on a daily basis, and he didn't even get to pump iron to get there. I recall when I was a teenager, his hip joints really started to deteriorate, to the point where he had to use a cane. Being young (see:stupid) I felt a little embarrassed that my dad was hobbling around and relied on a cane for mobility. In retrospect I feel shameful for acting that way.

And the hospital trips: right hip replacement, left hip replacement, then the heart attack, then the damn near diabetes induced unconscious delirium, then the broken femur from a fall and the replacing of the attached hip (#3.)

The real crazy thing is that I've never heard my dad complain about anything. It used to take him 5 or 6 minutes to get in and out of the car. When he broke his femur (the biggest bone in your body mind you,) he spent about an hour and a half trying to "walk it off" before my mom made him go to the hospital.

I talk about grueling sets of squats that make me want to puke while my quads sear with pain, the intense burn I feel in my chest as I grind away at another session of flat bench. The reality of the situation is that at any moment I can walk away and leave the iron behind for a life of comfort and ease (see: mediocrity.)

But my dad can't. Yet he faces each day with the heart and intensity of a champion.

That's Real Strength.