The Chronicles of “B”

My dad, God rest his soul, was the original Hard Core Mutha and he schooled me well in the ways of the Hard Core.  He never whined even when life fed him a shit sandwich and he found he had an incurable disease that would eventually kill him at a very young age.  He was a very hard man who would rather smash someones head that have any kind of civil discussion.  That was for pussies!  Pardon my French please.  I never heard him say I’m sorry….for anything and the only time I saw him cry was when his mother died.   

My dad and I never really got along very well.  The only time I remember him saying I love you is when he was near death.  Not only didn’t he say it but he didn’t often show it….not in the conventional sense anyway.  To be completely honest his way of showing love was to give you a vicious beating if you dared to break any rules.  To his way of thinking this made you a man and taught you that life is hard and you had better toe the line or you would never make it in life.

Through all the beatings and all the crap that he heaped upon my family when we were growing up I still loved and respected him….I just didn’t want to be him when I got older and became a dad.

When my dad found out he was dying he give me one piece of advise that I never will forget and I try to live by it.  He said, "Son never ever go to bed angry and thank God everyday for the blessings he has bestowed upon you," and "Never look back always look forward."  "The past is the past and you can’t go back and change your mistakes all you can do is learn from them and try to make better decisions in the future." 

I’ve tried to take those words to heart and I have done my best to live up to them.  I have failed in the past when it comes to not going to bed angry. Which I guess could be one reason I’m on wife numero 5. But, since my current wife and I have been married I have honored those words and in 8 years of marriage we have seldom spent a night apart and we have always settled any differences before we turn out the lights. 

Now as for never looking back this is a lesson I have learned well.  Remember the old saying, "Those who live in the past are doomed to repeat it."  Who ever it was that said that was right as rain as was old dad.  You can’t relive the past but you can sure make a brighter future if you just quit whining…forever whining….about your past mistakes. 

Since I have been a member of this site I have seen many, many people come and go.  Oh they were so fired up when they first started and were bound and determine that they were not going to let past failures derail them.  But as time would go by they would start blogging about how hard it was to stay the course and how they had tried so many times before and never made it.  And the sad thing is that no matter how much support and words of encouragement they received they just could not break that cycle of failure because they continued to live in the past rather than create a new and better future.  They would last 3 maybe 4 months and then "POOF" they were gone….never to be heard from again.  That is till they show up on another fitness site and start the cycle all over again.  They were doomed from the start because they could never stop looking back.

Now old dad gave me other bits of wisdom from time to time….like never shit where you eat….never piss nor spit into the wind….make sure your horse is completely inside the barn before you close the door, and make sure you remove the zombies entire head or he could still kick your ass.  All very good advice but no where as wise as Never look back.

If you ever expect to succeed at anything in life you should heed my fathers advice.  This may be his only legacy but it’s a good one.

Till next time friends…Lift Long and Prosper!!

"B"         

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.