Historical Records: “None of It Matters”

First thing’s first, everyone else’s story isn’t your story. It doesn’t matter how  many people your age, with your job, from your town, with your education and lifestyle walk a particular life path, don’t forget that you are walking your own.

An ex-teammate of mine from the San Diego Padres, Matt Clark, just yesterday proved this point as well as anyone could. Since our first year together in 2008, he’s played for four different ball clubs without ever making a Major League debut. He spent last year playing in Japan, which in English translates into “the end of your Big League dreams.” Lots of professional players leave America to play in Japan, but none of them come back. Surely, they don’t come back to make a Major League debut. It’s a death sentence and Clarky went there with no other option but to ride out his last days displaying his expertise with a bat in his hand.

Last night Clarky met up with his new team, the Milwaukee Brewers, at Wrigley Field after making the impossible five year journey through the minor leagues, which included another year in Japan with no light at the end of the tunnel. If we were in Las Vegas, there wouldn’t even be odds to bet on his path to the Major Leagues. For everyone else, playing in Japan set his future in stone. He didn’t have a future. For Matt Clark, he decided to write a different page in his history book.

If you think that this is too far removed for you, let me ask you this. Do successful designers and new fathers with no training background suddenly find themselves back squatting 235lbs? Your classmate Caleb McClain did. Are you supposed to put a hundred pounds on your front squat in your fifties? Your classmate Andrew Jayne did. Surely, a local two hundred and fifty pound gang members with ten gun shot wounds and jail time to his name doesn’t subscribe to a life of clean eating mentorship and fitness coaching. But, wait… Cesar Silva does.

You are not stuck. And lastly, everyday that you continue down the same path isn’t another day that writes your history in stone, it’s just another day you’ve chosen one route over another. Got a different reality in mind?

Make it!

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach