Dear ,
An important part of my workday at the gym is listening to people do the pre-workout grumble. By people I mean me, my fellow teachers and even my boss, not to mention everyone walking into class. We all grumble. Grumbling is a natural response to strapping on the Velcro Easy Strides, getting in the car, driving to the club one more friggin day and getting that workout behind you. We all do it. I bet even Richard Simmons grumbles. A big part of leading a healthy lifestyle is realizing that we don't always FEEL LIKE IT and even if we grumble as we get ourselves started, we still need to do it. Like Dr Phil says, you don't have to like it, you just have to do it. Besides, grumblitis recedes by the time you get into your heart-rate zone.
But this also means that a big part of my day is spent trying to motivate and inspire people, as well as my boss, my fellow teachers and myself.
Some days it only takes a new playlist on my ipod to inspire me. Other days I may require the chiseled Latino nightclub DJ slash Kickboxing instructor's class for inspiration. But on those days when my grumbling turns into catastrophizing, I rely on a deeper, more intrinsic inspiration. My inspiration is a real person. It's a person I've known since before I was born and was, in fact, born with.
My inspiration is my Twin Sister. And before you start surmising that Twin Sister is some buff gym bunny with biceps like guns, let me tell you that Twin Sister has not ran, or walked, for that matter, in over thirty years. I'll spare you the gory details but our whole family suffered a shocking change when, as high school sophomores, we caught a ride home from school one afternoon with a newly-licensed friend who thought it was fun to fly down our country roads at 60 mph in our twisty, hilly hometown road. After going airborne and rolling the car eight times, myself and stupid driver were unhurt. Twin Sister's back was broken and her spinal cord was severed. Let me just say Twin Sister had to do a whole lifetime of growing up all before the age of sixteen.
This story so far might not be inspiring. Tragedies happen all the time. And sometimes these stories just turn out plain sad. But what Twin Sister has taught me is that it's how you respond to tragedies that can inspire. Inspiration is what comes by watching, over these years, and now these decades how Twin Sister has not just survived, she has thrived. She went on to Ohio State University and then on to Graduate school, met and married a hunky, body-builder bouncer slash engineer who is right up there with the Latino nightclub DJ slash Kickboxing instructor. Twin Sister gave birth to my beautiful niece and nephew, who are now sixteen and eighteen years old. Twin Sister works in the ER of a hospital and swims to keep fit and plays family mediator when Mom tries to get me, the vegetarian, to eat the chicken casserole because she still thinks chicken doesn't count as meat.
Twin Sister has shown me that strong doesn't always means you can lift more and that good health comes in all different shapes and sizes, not just size 2. She's taught me that patience, and by patience, I mean needing ten minutes to get into the car (which I jump in and out of twenty times a day) and sometimes waiting at the foot of the stadium while everyone else scrambles up the bleachers at her son's football games- that kind of patience truly is a virtue.
Every day, every single day, I am inspired and humbled by what she has done with her life in the face of her devastating injury and that she keeps going, amazingly, in spite of the redirection her life took so many years ago.
So the next time you find yourself grumbling about how you don't want to exercise, take a moment to imagine my inspirational Twin Sister. If she can get out of bed and create this amazing life, home and family then I think the rest of us can use the image of her as an inspiration to work a bit harder to get whatever it is we'd like in life, even if it makes us grumble as we get started.
This Monday is our birthday,so Happy Birthday, Twin Sister. Thanks for the inspiration. And from everyone else, for my birthday, you can all drop and gimme twenty push-ups.
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