Friday, July 25, 2008

Be the Best You Can Be and then Better

If you are Canadian or American, you will remember either the Canada Fitness Test, Jump Rope for the Heart or the President's Physical Fitness and Sports Challenge and their doomed test day for those under the age of 13, a day that Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson and Prime Ministers Trudeau and Mulroney have made some past youth feel become infamous. Way back in elementary school, days in which the body fat percentage was always under 7, I got the Award of Excellence and that sweet Prime Minister's Certificate that comes with it for being tops in the class in all of its seven events, being the under 7.7 second 50 m dash, under 11:21 minute 2.4 km endurance run, under 11.4 second 10 m shuttle run, over 200 cm standing long jump, over 39 push ups and flexed arm hang, over 59 sit ups and speed curl ups along with chin up or hand grip. Now, even if you could not get the Big Red Patch and its accompanying signed parchment by the PM and his Minister of State's Youth, Fitness and Amateur Sport, you still had a shot at the Gold, Silver or Bronze patches, but I want to speak with those who only got the pin for Participaction or participant badge in the States for a moment.

What had been done to you, lots of you from those who have since contacted me, was indeed wrong. No government, group or collective should force a dreaded activity or service upon an individual when they do not want that activity or service, especially when involvement within eventually will bring about involved without later on in their lifetime, something that is so negative to anyone who participated, that any form of physical activity makes them sick. You were quite wronged back then, however do not expect a formal apology and settled monetary compensation for the stress, trauma and torture you suffered through during your horrendous ordeal. Instead, just get even, by using that ghastly experience to motivate you into become a better person, through body, mind and soul, then once you have become the best you can be, work even harder to better that personal best mark you have set for yourself!

Instead of making the dire past test day a pesty tax on the head and heart, unless you are that 60 year old Swede in the public service announcements who loves to beat up 30 year old Canadians, such as one of which will live life in infamy for you, bring up that pent up fear deep inside, make it truly a best personal friend, then you can overcome it by actually bettering it once and for all. Finding, gaining and maintaining your peak mark in physical fitness, without the assistance of any kind of performance enhancing substances, then maximize past the plateau you may be stuck at, to where you will find your own big sky of prime time performance, a kind of performance that keeps notching up, just as you get there. Today is the day to seize the power of change, the war against the overweight, obese and fat lifestyle our world has become starts right here and right now, but it begins through ourselves individually, not by the hand of the ruling collective, the only question left is, are you ready to rumble, rock and roll too?