ARMAGGEDON- End of the World
So… The other day I came across an interesting conversation about death. But you’d never have known, because during the whole conversation, both parties were laughing. So I go to this gym not too far from where I live. I picked it because the price was good. It’s not the BEST atmosphere, though- it’s not one of those new fancy gyms with all the bells and whistles. It’s one of those gyms that all the locals attend and it’s been there so long that people just accept it the way it is. Some of the equipment works, and some of it doesn’t. There was even a time while I was running on a treadmill, and all of the treadmills just cut off at once. SUCH an enjoyable experience. Anyway, this particular day I went to the gym just because I had to knock out a 4600y swim. (I’m not really sure- I do a lot of long swims and they’re all starting to run together at this point… That Ultra life.) I walked into the locker room and saw two older gentlemen speaking. I walked into a part of the locker room with 2 little lockers where you can do your own thing away from everyone else, but I couldn’t help but hear part of their conversation. One of the guys was talking about one of his pills and how he’s on all these pills that he can’t mix wrong because they could have a bad reaction. The guy said he was on all of these pills because he had a heart attack and died. The other guy said, “Yeah, I died too. I was dead for 30 seconds!” This prompted an elaborate conversation about death. It was crazy because they wore it/spoke of it like a badge of honor. One of the guys even said, “And I didn’t see no damn light at the end of the tunnel, either!” I kind of just laughed even though I tried to hold it back. I was trying not to listen to someone else’s conversation but couldn’t help it because it was so interesting. The guy who had died for 30 seconds started telling a story, so even though I try not to listen to other’s conversations, this day I was obviously deeply being nosy. He said they had to pull out the defibrillator pads to resuscitate him because he had died. He said when it happened, he did the fastest sit-up he’d ever done in his life. They shocked him and he just sat right up- he came back to life. He said that they also put a pill under his tongue as they drove him to the hospital that helped wake him up. He didn’t know what the pill was called, but then a third guy (who didn’t have no damn drawers on) decided to butt in. “That was nitroglycerin!” This got me to thinking a few things:
1. Why is the guy with no doggone drawers on getting in this conversation?
2. Why is the guy getting in this conversation with no doggone drawers on?
3. Why am I still listening to this conversation?
It also got me thinking- has everyone in this gym had a heart attack? It made me think about training and about life. I wondered- why do people wait until the last minute to make a change in their life? In can be with anything- in a relationship, with paying bills, or just taking a rest day from training. It blows my mind that people would rather go through so much pain when we have a general idea of what another outcome could be. Like with not taking a rest day, it could be an injury or illness. Or with your health, like these 3, it could be sickness or even death. Luckily, these 3 came back from the beyond. But it got me wondering how many other things in life we wait until the last minute to change. We set all these things up (like Go Fund Me accounts, etc.) to get things we don’t have in our lives or to help others with cancer or things of that nature. These days, information is so vast that we know that these diseases or other things are out there, but we don’t get involved in them unless someone we know and/or love is affected by it. We need to quit getting stuck in our own little bubbles and not worrying about things unless we’ve personally been affected by them. No one life is more valuable than another, so if we can put the effort in once WE’RE affected by something, why can’t we put the effort in for someone else? And maybe we can even prevent the bad thing from happening to us or someone we love. Life is too short to be greedy or selfish or to only think about the things that in hindsight don’t really mean anything anyway. Life is beautiful, so we need to appreciate it.