When I turned 27, I began to compare myself to famous men who have died during their year that I was currently living. It started at the age of 27. For some reason, many young stars burned out and exploded before they could reach 28.
I would walk in the forest of shadows of lives past and find one to inspire me to live a rich, fulfilling, challenging life. Each year, I compared, took measure, held up my life in comparison to theirs. Last year, it began to become more serious. Thirty-two is the year of the Dragon. The year of Bruce Lee. Stated as one of the most "Badass of the 20th Century," (Badass, Ben Thompson) the bar was set high and I could see how far I was below the bar. I could see the shadow of his life envelop both my body and my shadow. I shivered to think that we had nearly spent the same amount of time in the world and he accomplished so much.
I watched Spike's special on Bruce Lee, "I am Bruce Lee" and was inspired, or rather disgusted, by my lack of enthusiasm for life. My life was nice, quiet, peaceful, relatively stress free, but it missed that sense of adventure, manliness, epic-ness that Bruce Lee seemed to live on a daily basis as an undercurrent to his entire being. For crying out loud, he had muscled wings under his arms pits. All I have is hair and soft skin. I don't even think I have those muscles.
To remedy the situation and to try to gain some ground on the Dragon, I started to take practical steps towards regaining some of what I had never had, but Bruce had left for me. I signed up for the Colorado Tough Mudder, I began crossfit and watched, listened, learned everything I could about Bruce Lee.
The Tough Mudder came, I conquered it (but nearly did not). The training did not prepare me for the metal aspect of what the obstacle course is. The hills (read: mountain, because it was in Colorado at a ski resort), the elevation, electrocution, snow, water, mud and walls taught me that I am tougher, stronger, deeper, grittier than I could have imagined. It gave me a sense of just what I could do, what I could accomplish, what I could affect. I was actually like water.
My Bruce Lee Year ended. I had learned a lot. I had tested myself physically more than almost every other year of my life. Now I was looking forward to the next year, the next challenge, the next person that I would judge myself against in order to challenge myself by their standard, by their legacy.
Thirty-three is an interesting year as far as the smattering of people whom passed during their third year after the big "three oh." There are a couple of choices to choose from, but I picked a person that would set the bar as high as I could: Jesus of Nazareth.
How can I compare myself to Jesus? Physically what could I do? What about spiritually? What about relationally? These questions have been in my head and in my heart since February. What I want to find out was: who was Jesus. Who was he to himself, to his family, to his friends, to his government, to his boss, to his homeless guy on the street near his house? And then how can I gain inspiration from that to change my life.
Easy? No. Good? Yes! I think this year will be a fantastic adventure. A challenge to not only find out who Jesus was, but how would he act in the overall situations of my life. Would he walk out on his job to find a group of men to invest in and then go out and change to world by introducing the darkness to the light and watch as God invades peoples' circumstances? That is what he did, but how do I compare my life, my circumstances, my journey to his?
This will be fun.
This will be hard.
This will be good because he is worthy. Worthy of emulation and so much more.
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