Epiphany

Difficult day yesterday, but I had an epiphany near the end.

Work was tough--one particular administrative nightmare that hurts my heart keeps popping up. And I'm still grappling with a sore/ticklish throat I got at the start of the week.

I did have fun when I took two colleagues to do a bag workout in the gym downstairs from work--we called it the Jersey City Fight Club.

But I was concerned that I would be too tired from bag training in the afternoon to do well in martial arts class that night. Well, I made it through the class okay. I even did a little bit of pivoting on my left leg, the first time I've done it since ACL surgery on my knee, and it felt fine.

Toward the end, when we were doing our second round of push-ups (we always do 55 in the beginning of class, and another variable amount at the end), I was starting to slow down and I saw my buddy Larry, from The Family That Fights Together, still cranking them out. Larry's a little younger than me, in his late 40s, but solidly in middle age.

In some other classes, I think I've seen someone doing better than me in push-ups and have said to myself, "I can't do as many as so-and-so, I suck." This time I tried to be gentler on myself, and worked at thinking: "I'm doing fine. And isn't it cool that Larry can do so many push-ups."