WALK THE WALK! DESIGN YOUR OWN DESTINY!

Walk the Walk
Design your own destiny.

By James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© August 2006

Note: This is to appear in a national journal, HEALTH & FITNESS EXCELLENCE in the near future. It is provided here for your enjoyment.

If you are concerned about designing your own destiny, my message is for you—and for anyone whose head is turned with every new fad and stimulant. Personally I’ve never listened to such nonsense. I grew up when it was popular to smoke cigarettes, yet I did not smoke; to get smashed when you turned 21, yet I did not drink; and to burn the candle at both ends yet I did not engage in dissipation.

We are confronted daily with new ways to destroy ourselves—aided by the idea that school should be fun, not stressful; that work should be fun, not energy sapping; that life should be fun, not full of pain. Yet we experience no maturity without embracing these obstacles. “Health is so necessary to all the duties and pleasures of life that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly,” wrote Samuel Johnson.

You don’t have to be a body builder to have a healthy body; nor be a celebrated athlete to have all your working parts responsive to your call. You do need courage to make suitable choices. It is not good fortune but discipline that carries you to fulfillment.

What is killing the mind, heart, and body is our lifestyle choices. There would be little diabetes if people didn’t have their bodies full of fatty tissue. There would be little lung cancer if people didn’t smoke. There would be less kidney or liver failure if people didn’t consume excessive amounts of alcohol. There would be far less colon cancer if people had more roughage in their diets. There would be little or no brain damage if people didn’t abuse recreational drugs. There would be little or no venereal disease if people practiced continence outside of marriage.

Safe sex is an oxymoron. Many people today have a sense of immortality and are restless to seek relief of their raging hormones.

THE WALK STARTS EARLY

At my advanced age, I maintain the same body weight of high school of 190 pounds on a six-four frame. I’ve never been a smoker or drinker, mainly because I came from an Irish clan and could see what it had done to my relatives.

When I was in the US Navy on a ship in the Mediterranean, my white-hat shipmates would hit the beach and get smashed, while I would go on an educational tour. I was called a “culture vulture” for my hunger to learn about Europe.

While on the ship, I often lifted weights on the fantail, did my duty in the hospital division, read, typed “The Sojourn of a Sailor,” a collection of European impressions, and stayed fit on Navy chow, the best in the world.

As a boy, we were poor but we ate well. My dad had a saying, whatever he ate we ate, and he liked to eat lean meat, fish, poultry, eggs, butter, vegetables, fresh fruit, and cereals. My mother canned preserves of tomatoes, apples, grapes and currents grown in our garden. My dad liked whole milk with the cream on the top, fresh asparagus from the garden, and fresh baked bread with every meal.

An excellent diet doesn’t always insure good health, as he died three days after turning 50 of multiple myeloma, the same disease that took the life of Sam Walton of Wal-Mart. His death changed my life. Henceforth life was to be taken seriously, but not myself.

I wasn’t going to worry about what people thought of my choices. Dying young, always pushing the Sisyphus rock up the hill only to be buried by it, again and again, made a deep impression on me. I decided to live my life as if it could end at any moment.

Life is a series of choices, but it is easy to make wise choices when you have resolve. You are not driven by what others deem important but what you feel is self-affirming. I planned to be neither a prisoner of my appetites nor ignorant of the damage they could cause. The key word was vigilance.

Some might say I have had an easy life because I have enjoyed my own company, have not been intimidated by being alone, have never needed to belong, nor have I felt a sense of loss when not included. For this disposition, I have also enjoyed a life free of major illness, which has allowed me to function at a very active level to this day. I have lived and worked worldwide; have been a student, chemist, salesman, executive, consultant, professor, author, lecturer, entrepreneur, book publisher, poet, researcher, psychologist, journalist, and a voracious reader all my life.

People say they never find time to read. That is because reading gets short shrift when it comes to setting priorities. I always have a book with me wherever I go, and read three to five books a week and have for more than fifty years. My reading is as eclectic as are my professions. My interests are as diverse as mythology and mathematics, philosophy and poetry, mystery novels and metaphysics.

Participating in athletics is a socialization process. Were it not for this, I would have been even more reclusive. I played organized baseball, basketball, football, and track from grammar school through high school. Sports taught me about following rules, respecting boundaries, accepting penalties, also the thrill of winning and the agony of losing.

Athletic discipline appealed to me more than the competition. I still love the feel of some kind of ball in my hands. To this day my heart sings when I see a stunning athletic performance. I know it takes high athletic intelligence to be outstanding.

I have trouble understanding how well honed athletes can contaminate their systems with recreational drugs, nicotine or alcohol, or sully their reputations by gambling or becoming promiscuous. It seems they’re attracted to the Sisyphus dilemma.

I was a good high school student-athlete, but elected to take an academic scholarship that paid only tuition whereas an athletic scholarship was a full-ride. I don’t regret the choice, working my way through school, or never skipping classes. It was, after all, my money and I wanted to get the most for it.

A dedicated student, I graduated Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa; never joined a social fraternity, but was on the varsity fencing team. I was also a member of Phi Eta Sigma, freshman scholastic honorary, Omicron Delta Kappa, leadership honorary, and won the Freshman Athletic Trophy for having the highest GPA.

What has this to do with health or performance? I share my history and the benefits I have derived over seven decades living in a certain way. They have blessed me with good health and have allowed me to remain still actively involved in writing books, publishing articles, giving speeches, playing tennis, walking, and reading the same as I did as a youth.

It has been a health and human performance regiment that has worked for me, and variations of it could work for you, whether you are just turning 30, or 80, and also for you who have been led to believe that life is as it will be the rest of your journey. Not so. Not if you have the gumption to make choices.

I published my first book when I was 37, my second at 57. Seven books and hundreds of articles have followed. I was 39 when I went back to school for six years, year around, to earn my master’s and doctor’s degrees, while supporting a family of four children consulting on the side.

Health and human performance don’t stop with a degree or commencement address. Commencement means to begin, and it is never too late! There is no job that pays you too much that you can’t quit it and start over. If the job makes you depressed and angry, it is probably killing you. It is the wrong job in the wrong place with the wrong people, and it might even be the wrong profession. Forget how much time and money you have invested. Learning transfers.

I was 35 making the equivalent of $250,000 (2006 dollars) a year, paying no taxes, because I was living in South Africa's apartheid, and was miserable when I decided to dropout. Life made no sense to me. My boss said, “How can you do this when we have done so much for you?” I said, “If I wasn’t doing my job, you would fire me. The company isn’t meeting my needs. I am firing the company.”

It was that simple. If I had stayed I would be long dead. I was living a lie in South Africa. That society and its system of separate development of the races made no sense to me, nor did company practices in collusion with it.

Choice is a powerful tool—one that is often contaminated by rationalization and justification. Friends thought I had lost my mind, when I knew that I had actually found it. My boss said that I would never again know such power or affluence and he was right.

Martin Heidegger said, “The day we are born, we are old enough to die.” Imagine what a profound invitation that is to live fully every day, not to worry what others think or do, but pay attention to the drummer of your own heart. HFE

Dr. James R. Fisher Jr. is author of several books. Visit: www.fisherofideas.com.