My dad lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident when he was 21. He never let it slow him down. He hunted and fished with the best of them. He once climbed a 12′ chain link fence with a Y of barbed wire at the top to sneak into a farm pond that he was convinced had some good fish in it. When he would encounter stories like this on TV, he would say, “Another poor cripple story.” There’s some inspiring wisdom in that take, about how to deal with your own situation, if you really think about it. In my own health “journey,” I have come to admire his resolve and stoicism.
Tag: Stoicism
My New Guru
Seeing as my old guru turned out to be a con artist, I’ve been looking for new ones. This is Rodney Norman. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of this message lately.
On a more serious note, there’s a lot stoicism in his videos, and I’m finding this is resonating with a lot of the stuff I’m absorbing these days. There’s also a Zen angle here, which is ironic, since I was getting pretty deep into Zen in college before veering hard back to Christianity. I had hundreds of pages of notes and observations I was thinking about turning into a book about the similarities and overlap when I abandoned the effort to focus on my life after school.
When my health troubles started 4.5 years ago, I told my wife that I wasn’t “that guy.” I’m not the guy who pumps his chest and declares he’s going to beat the odds and be a shining example of positivity and calmness in the face of betrayal, confusion, and pain. And I’m still not. But 4.5 years later, I’m learning some techniques to play that guy in my head, at least.