By: Conner Williams Editor in Chief
“Your competition got stronger and faster today … Did you?”
That omnipresent statement was plastered in huge bold letters on the wall of my high school weight room. It served as a constant reminder that there is always someone out there who works harder than I do. I took the statement as a personal challenge to do my best to put in more effort for each workout than I did for the last one.
I like to think that I work hard in most areas of my life. I do well in school, complete work assignments with professionalism and enthusiasm, and exhaust myself in the gym.
Weightlifting has been a passion, hobby, and lifestyle of mine for a while now, and my hard work has allowed me to progress significantly over the years. And while I work hard, I am occasionally reminded that there are others out there that work way harder than me under circumstances that require extreme mental willpower.
Sometimes I use this as motivation to push myself when I see others who are differently abled than I working harder than me, but lately I have felt a little bit differently.
I feel like I owe it to those that tackle the world through a differently abled experience that I do to push my body and mind to their limits in order to achieve my maximum potential. Without attempting to sound vain, people like me –those that are temporarily abled– have it pretty good, and we owe it to those that are less physically blessed to give our best effort in all of our pursuits.
I used to train with a man that was born with dislocated hips, leaving him basically unable to use his legs for everyday functions. In high school, he was told that he would never be able to bench press 400 pounds. A little more than a decade later, he set a world record by pressing 710 pounds at a bodyweight of 259 pounds. But get this: his legs don’t touch the ground. And anyone that has ever performed the bench press before knows how crucial one’s leg drive is for a successful lift. He did not take no for an answer, and he had to approach it in a personalized way unique to him. I used to think that way – that I needed to prove myself to other people and that I had to show the world that I was capable of athletic greatness – but I think I just grew out of it.
I don’t think like that anymore. I’ve stopped worrying about other people and what they look like, and I no longer constantly compare myself to others. I now focus on myself by doing things day in and day out that help me reach my goals for me. I feel like I owe it to others that are differently abled than I. And when I say that others are not as blessed genetically as I am, I am not implying that they do not have amazing skills and qualities about them that make them extraordinary people in their own way; I am talking in a physical sense of being able to achieve fitness goals. Those that are temporarily abled physically have it easier to accomplish athletic feats than those that are differently abled, which is why I aim to give my best effort whenever I can. I still have a long way to go in order to get where I want to be, but I know that each step forward that I take is for me, and for those that are unable to do so.
And this is not to say that people who do things for others or in spite of others are wrong for using that as their motivating factor; I have simply found more happiness by focusing on myself and doing what makes me happy for me, and not for others.
Despite my renewed attitude of doing things for myself, there is one thing that has always stuck in my mind since the day I heard it: the conversation between Chuckie (Ben Affleck) and Will (Matt Damon) in “Good Will Hunting” towards the end of the movie.
“Oh, come on! Why is it always this, I mean, I f—-in’ owe it to myself to do this? What if I don’t want to?” Will said to Chuckie when he was told that he had something none of their others friends had. Will had a gift, a way out of poverty. He was a genius.
“[…] F— you. You don’t owe it to yourself. You owe it to me. ‘Cause tomorrow I’m gonna wake up and I’ll be fifty and I’ll still be doing this s—. And that’s all right, that’s fine. I mean, you’re sitting on a winning lottery ticket and you’re too much of a p—y to cash it in. And that’s b——t ‘cause I’d do anything to have what you got!” Chuckie exclaims to Will.
That line gets to me every time I see the movie. We all have our own inherent gifts and talents, and there are many others out there that would love to possess what someone else has. That is what I mean when I say that I owe it to other people to give it my best every day.
