This life changes in a moment.
One day, you’re 28 (or 32, or 40) and on top of the world. The next day, you’re diagnosed with Stage 4 liver cancer and you’ve got a year (or less) to live.
One day, you’re busy chauferring your kids and talking to your mom on the phone. The next day, Mom’s incoherent and incapacitated from a stroke, and there are decisions to be made.
One day, you’re working on your butterfly pull-ups and thinking about your next competition. The next day … well, there is no next day. You never made it home from the gym. You never saw that truck turning left in front of you. And you’ve left a couple of kids to figure out this crazy, confusing life without you.
As important as we think our time is in the gym, it isn’t. As important as we think the issues of programming or whiteboard times or membership fees are, well, they’re not such a big deal. As important as we think the CrossFit Games are … well, they don’t mean shit.
This life — this, right here — is important. What you do with it. How you act in it. How much kindness you give. How deep you dig inside of yourself to love, to live, to survive, to persist in the face of sadness that should rightly break you in two and leave you unable to walk, let alone run or work out, because your heart has been crushed into tiny pieces and lays shattered on the floor. You are not one piece anymore. You are shattered.
But … you get up again. You must. Not only for yourself, but for everyone in your life. They deserve your best. You must give it to them.
So, your time in the gym is important, in a way that you may not quite grasp. Do your workout today. Go hard, go heavy, go fast. But hug those you love, and keep your priorities in line. Because this life changes in a moment.
(Image courtesy of Nicole Bedard Photography.)
