If All You Can Do is Crawl - Start Crawling

I know this guy, a product of the mid-1940s – a Baby Boomer.  Decades of swinging hammers, lifting beams, and building things with his hands made him tough as nails + rugged.  He epitomizes do-it-yourself, having drilled his own well and buried his deceased horses with his 1970s John Deere.  I once cut a tree with the man, and he tore his bicep while tossing logs that we were hauling for firewood.  Most people would head straight to the hospital.  Not this dude.  He kept on working.

This thing has a 2-Cylinder Engine

I have had many conversations with him. He believes there’s a right and wrong way to do things – and he’s seen enough to know the difference. He is set in his ways, and his responses to things are mostly predictable.  In one of our conversations, I said, “You can’t win em all.”    His response was, “Of course you can.”  He was right.  Just ask the ’72 Dolphins, Floyd Mayweather, and Rocky Marciano.  You can lose them all, too.  Check in with the 2017 Cleveland Browns. 

Even people who don’t like Tom Brady must genuflect to the Brady story.  If they are too soon in making the type of movie about the GOAT – like the one where Will Smith played Mohammad Ali, it’s likely that there will have to be a sequel. Because from what I can see – that homie is not done yet.  Face the facts on this – when the most famous, wealthy, competitor on planet earth made those cosmetic adjustments to his packaging, you gotta know more is coming.  No matter what he had changed in his face – his spirit and soul are just a more mature and refined version of a champion.  There’s more to come from Tommy Terrific.       

I’ll have what he’s having

The suck it up buttercup blue collared Boomers are often characterized as those who push through pain.  Whether it is because the Greatest Generation raised them – Tom Brokaw’s terminology for those seizing the world back from Hitler – or because they lived in a world far more physical than it was technical, there is much to be learned from them.  Boomers succeeded more through grit than they did through luck.  Pain was temporary.  Pride was forever.  Their old school values were often deeply rooted in faith and expectations.  Not just in the higher power, but in themselves, and those surrounding them. 

But here’s the thing about pain – not every ache is softened by a couple of ibuprofens. Nor can it be swung at with a hammer or hauled away like a load of firewood.

It’s no secret that many of the strongest, toughest people-the ones who could build homes with their hands, or storm Normandy on D-Day, sometimes met an enemy they couldn’t out-muscle.  Mickey Mantle out-muscled baseballs.  His liver outmuscled him.    Know that, like Brady tightening his laces for another comeback, or Marciano getting back up off the mat, there’s a version of fighting back that doesn’t happen in front of a roaring crowd.

A broken leg and crutches can be seen.  A fractured spirit cannot.  The pain we can't see – the battles fought in silence, in the mirror, or the early morning hours – is going to take a different kind of grit.

Big Pharma is flooding the market with pills for anxiety, depression, and most recently, weight loss.  I want to say they are fighting addiction, but since they created the problem, their work on this isn’t so noble.  That’s kind of like Norton Anti-Virus having another division that makes the computer viruses.   

Grit + Pills doesn’t equal salvation from the agony our families and friends cannot see.  Even the biggest and the toughest of the Boomers had unspeakable anxiety, fear, and pain.  More likely than not, they didn’t talk about it like we are willing to talk about it today.  And generationally speaking, many Gen Xers learned the liquid coping mechanism from their mommy or daddy Boomer.  What the Boomers bottled up, many of us inherited.

Their silence became our struggle.

Drinking is a cheap, fast Superman for darkness — the kind that finds you at red lights or keeps you wide awake at 3 a.m. Then, far too many people learn that it’s no Superman at all. 

A Lot of Horsepower for a Little Bit of Beer?

Millions upon millions woke up dehydrated with their heads pounding today.  Terrible, life-changing decisions were made in your neighborhood just last night.  And while alcohol weakens the bonds upon which real love and connection are built, the strength of our coping mechanism is represented by a team of eight Clydesdales that tow the kegs to market. Eight Clydesdales can tow nine pickup trucks.  Eight of them pulling a wooden wagon full of beer is kind of overkill. 

My generation and I don’t have a Hitler to fight.  And none of us common folk will go undefeated… nor should we lose them all either.  The battle I see people fighting these days is sneaky, subtle, and hard to pick up.  Quiet ones. 

Getting to this point has not been easy.  It’s been hard on every level.  Really, really hard.  I saw a quote on someone’s Faebook Page – by Rumi.  No idea who Rumi is or was.  But the quote is, “If all you can do is crawl, start crawling.”  I’m sure Tom Brady, Rocky Marciano, and one tough old dude would agree.