I have always been mostly an intellectual guy, an academic guy, a cerebral guy. Always in decent physical shape (backpacking, rock climbing, fitful efforts at physical training) but basically a dad-bod guy. Not an athlete by any definition.
So why do I now aim at being a beast? This conjures up images of steroid-inflated men, one-dimensional, not deep in intellect or spirit.
Which I am now convinced could not possibly be more wrong. My own ego and prejudice turned against my own enlightenment.
This enlightenment started with seeing a few Joe Rogan and David Goggins clips on YouTube. Those men know something. They know some truths. And they gained that knowledge through disciplined, hard physical effort.
I want what they have.
I’m a bit sheepish, even now, to proclaim my objective. Somehow it contains (for me) equal parts attraction and revulsion. It is attractive to see someone in beast mode. I want to have that power, focus, determination, discipline. Not really as a tool to get something, but for the feeling itself.
Right now when I set a decision to run a four mile loop and I run it, I don’t give two fucks for calorie burn or building strength or building endurance or any of the physical payoffs from running. What I get is the deep emotional satisfaction of “I did what I set out to do, and what I set out to do was big and important.”
That feeling. It will not, I suspect, change of my run is 10 miles or 40 miles. The feeling will be the same, because the accomplishment will be the same: satisfaction (which doesn’t begin to describe the feeling) of setting and accomplishing something you don’t think you can do.
Now, four miles is easily achieved. But four miles day after day after day after day after day? That is the mountain I climb. And every day that I run I get the happiness of stacking another day on the pile. The four mile distance itself is not the point.
I believe I can do four miles daily. No excuses, no bullshit, just do it. My mantra as I run, which is where I want to go next, is “10k, every day”.
Yes there will be injuries. Externals don’t count. Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics: externals are not in my control.
Back to seeing myself as a beast.
Where I went off the rails was with the revulsion. The instinctive response (“That’s not for me”) to seeing someone in beast mode was an internal doubt that I could achieve such a state.
I doubted that I could be a beast. So it was easier to ridicule the man showing beast mode drive and determination. I can’t do what he can do, so he is stupid.
That’s why I want to be a beast: it directly challenges my previous surrender prior to engagement. My view of other men was wrong, and my view of myself was wrong.