From a McDonald's eating, cigarette smoking, heroin junkie to an uptight CrossFitter
I used to eat exclusively fast food or candy from Plaid Pantry. I smoked menthols and lamented that cigarette smokers were an unfairly oppressed minority. I shot up heroin and slept 16 hours a day. None of those things bothered me much because I knew I would die young. I would never suffer the consequences of that lifestyle. Dying young was the goal. So have as much fleeting fun as possible in the meantime. Over time, my quest for “fun” became cyclical desperation, but that change happened gradually. It began as a hedonistic approach to life, the only response I saw to our meaningless existence on Earth.
Then my mom died, Justin died, and I was sentenced to 5 years in prison for his overdose death.
What really matters in life?
Now I shop at New Seasons and do CrossFit. I wake up early every day because there is life to be lived! I have became the type of person I used to ridicule. I am wound-up, can’t be still, can’t relax, and I worry excessively about my sugar intake. The fleeting internal reward of “fun” seems to pale in comparison the more profound elements of life that provide satisfaction. I do CrossFit because it makes me feel alive and healthy. When I don’t go for a day even though I could have, I get a feeling of guilt so heavy it affects my mental health. Because I’m hard on myself. Because I’m nothing like the person I used to be. Because all actions have consequences, you will face them, and you cannot predict them. Everything is interconnected, nothing occurs in a vacuum, and two bad decisions in between a hundred good decisions is still two bad decisions with unpredictable consequences.
When everything is taken from you and you’re alone with nothing but your thoughts, you reflect on the life you’ve lived. I didn’t regret not having more fun. Fun is superficial. I regretted not creating more meaning with my life. I understood that living a life with a purpose is the purpose to life. In prison, you can have brief moments of fun. But your meaning and purpose have been pulled out from under you. You can never feel satisfied from the inside-out, unless you find a way to restore that purpose from behind the walls.
Today I do not need to intake satisfaction from exterior sources. I have a pump that makes it within my body. Academics, CrossFit, healthy living, and community all fuel my inner pump. They don’t give me fleeting or superficial moments of satisfaction, they create self-perpetuating satisfaction within me. I don’t need to constantly intake chemicals or party to feel happy—those things are so short-acting, they wear off faster than you can consume them. I’ve discovered the secret to constantly self-replenishing internal contentment. And I don’t have to consume or intake anything to activate it. I just have to live healthy and do my best every day.
Life is short, life is precious. Do your best.
Find a way to fill yourself from the inside-out or you’ll spend your whole life trying and failing to fill yourself from the outside-in.