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Fat Boxing and crossroads
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“Two Roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.” –Robert Frost
This Fat Boxing journey began for me out of a necessity for profound change. I was walking a tightrope that was fraying at both ends. I had to make a choice; continue with the circus act and risk disaster or give up tightrope walking. I scrambled to the safety of the platform and climbed down the ladder to solid ground. Upon leaving the circus tent, I had another choice to make. Go left? Go right?
I sat down to think.
To go left meant to surrender to an unknown process. Another risk. It meant to give up control and accept that I was mistaken about the most elementary principles of my personal health and happiness. To go left meant to open my mind and understand that those long-held tenets of mine were not working for me.
Going left also meant that I would have tune in to the beat of that “different drummer”. It meant that while I might suffer the ridicule and of a “know-it-all” society, the condescending head patting of the health professionals, I would also gain the opportunity to explore, experiment and discover those things that might work for me.
Going right meant to keep plodding along with methods that were accomplishing nothing except defeat and humiliation. It meant accepting I wasn’t strong enough to fight for my own health. It meant lap band surgery, insulin and continued steroid treatments. It meant a lot of unnecessary drama and trauma to my already morbidly obese body.
Morbidly obese. Webster’s definition of the word morbid is “gruesome”, from the Latin morbidus, the root, “mori”, is to DIE.
I hung a left and never looked back.
Besides, between my experience and study, sensible activity and diet, my friends, both lay and professional, and Mick, the old hickory nut, I am in good hands. I have learned to listen to my body and its beat; to dance to my own drummer and trust the rhythm.
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Conclusion, 1854
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