A year and a half ago, I could do 0 pull ups.
Zero.
I wasn’t fat, nor was I pudgy.
I was light, I was light as a feather, and yet I couldn’t pull myself up for the life of me.
A year and a half ago, I couldn’t jog for 400 metres without gasping for air.
I was young, I was virile, and yet I had the stamina of the average 70 year old.
A year and a half ago, I hated my life. I hated the weakness that pervaded every crevice of my being. I hated how clumsy and uncoordinated my movements were. I hated the fact that I was addicted to video games. I hated the fact that my brain moved so slowly and so sluggishly. I hated looking at myself in the mirror because I knew I was looking at a loser.
You might chide me for being excessively overbearing and harsh towards my past self.
Perhaps I was, perhaps I still am.
Then again, that was the reason why I wasn’t content with being merely a mass of skin and bones, to dwell in the land of sedentry and subpar health til kingdom come. But you should know, the rabbit hole goes deeper than physical fitness.
I genuinely, candidly, and sincerely did not want to go on living a life like this, to be nothing but a face in the crowd, a water droplet in a sea that stretches to the limits the eyes can see, a nameless individual who entered and left the world without anything to show for it. I wanted to be of some impact to the world, I wanted to become something worthwhile to justify my own existence, I wanted to become a force of nature.
In the midst of thought, it occured to me that the reason I descended to such a meagre existence, was simply because of my past actions, it was a result of a culmination of many misinformed decisions.
With such an epiphany, I realised that if it were my actions that led me to this predicament of mine, then it is entirely possible for my actions to lead me out of the very same predicament.
And so, I surveyed my life, and asked myself how could I improve myself in the very limited capacity that my current self could muster.
I started working out with calisthenics, I went on morning runs, I started meditating, I tore myself with great difficulty from my addictions, and I stumbled and hobbled and crawled my way out of the self imposed hellhole I lived in.
I can now do 17 pull ups at one go.
And I am happy to say, that I can run 400m without gasping for my breath at the end of it.
There weren’t any fireworks.
There weren’t any confetti.
One day, I merely woke up to such a reality.
You might not be able to witness any tangible progress in the here and now, but the time will past, and we will get there.
Allow me to posit an analogy.
When you crawl out of a cave, and stumble towards the opening, your eyes might be momentarily blinded by the brightness of the sun. For a brief moment, yours eyes might not be able to appreciate the view. You might even doubt the very existence of such a view.
But trust me when I say, that the view exists.
And its beautiful. It truly is beautiful.