It’s safe to say that I’m a little bit different.
I won’t sleep without a cover because I need protection in case I get stabbed. I sometimes vomit if I get too excited. I don’t wash my car because I don’t want to worry about it getting dirty again. I don’t read instructions because I cannot process written information. I don’t follow directions because I hate being told what to do.I will always pass up clothes that have been dry-cleaned so that it doesn’t have to be cleaned again. I don’t floss my teeth because I don’t and I bathe in my swimming pool because I do.
I like different and I like different people. When I joined Olive Branch CrossFit, four years ago, I came in search of something different. I wasn’t not looking for people who were like me, I was on a quest to find a life that was completely dissimilar to the one I had been living previously. “Different” is exactly what I found.
I found folks who checked records and folks who changed oil. I found people who sold cars and people who sold drugs. I found people who cut hair and folks who cut steel. I found people who were supposed to find the truth and those in charge of finding the problem. I found those on a journey to teach and those on a quest to learn. I found people who took things apart and people in charge of putting them back together. I found different people who do different things with different interests and different opinions with different outlooks and different careers with different goals and different ways of achieving them who liked to dress in different clothes and do different things at different times of the day.
At our gym we are different. We are different shapes, sizes, makes, models, and years. We have lightweight, 4-cylinders with low gears who move quickly; we have V-8s on heavy frames who can work fast, hard, quickly and for long periods of time; we have diesels who can work and move heavy weight but at the sacrifice of speed but with the benefit of endurance; and we have those of us who are just trying to hold it together- one revolution to the next- with survival being the only goal. Each of us is different and each of us necessary. A meaningful cog in the gears of a larger, more powerful machine
Today, my classmates allowed me to play my music. They gave me the opportunity to go deep into my head and enjoy my Widespread Panic. It’s not what they wanted to hear but they let me have my day. They let me be different because they are different to. It made me feel free, it made me feel alive, and it made me feel grateful.
It’s nice to be in a place where everyone is encouraged to be their own own kind of different in a place where we are all pushing in the same direction.
If I’m not searching for different, I can expect much of the same.
Peace, Love, and all things Beef related,
Beefcake