Off topic.
I took a picture on my 51st birthday last week. I do it every year - to take stock, and hold it against all the preceding years.
It was supposed to be just for me - reserved for my own camera roll, as usual.
But now I'm sharing it anyway.
The picture on the right is 18 years old - I was 33. An age where I - if the imprinting from Western culture aimed at men was correct - should have been in top form, health and performance.
I wasn't. As you can see.
Bad choices, bad patterns, bad results.
Confusion and lack of understanding and recognition.
The person in the two pictures is naturally the same - but simultaneously two completely different people. When I look at it myself, it's separated by what feels like four lifetimes, and a long journey inward and upward. Set in motion by an identity collapse that nearly sent me to the earth's core 😅
The difference you see on the outside - which is what most naturally notice and pursue (for better or worse) - is a symptom.
Cause and effect.
It's the result of a long chain of inner change in everything from faith, conviction, thoughts, emotions and therefore behaviour and action.
And it's solely about the depth, consciousness and attention to my patterns that the break - discovering I had gone astray - brought about in me.
That is, the meaning I gave it - that life is about following what I found to be true, even though I often didn't like that the universe should be arranged that way. That there were rules, laws and patterns for this place - beyond desire - if I wanted what I wished from life.
It was an inner battle - a fight with myself. To grasp and get hold of the virtues and subdue the vice, as some of my friends express it.
Straighten out those patterns in the personality that consistently stood in the way of me being myself - so that life force everything is ensouled with - could flow freely through. A task that particularly over the last 6-7 years has yielded profit, where I experience no resistance to following patterns that are good by and for myself, BEFORE anything else.
I had lived as a vegetarian for two years in the picture on the right - it was supposed to be healthy. And I should become cleansed and clear in the head, I had been told. Live long and avoid disease. Move moderately. A couple thousand steps a day, maybe run a bit a couple times a week, to get the pulse up. Not far from the prevailing paradigm they're trying to pull down over the Western population these years.
You may judge my direction yourself.
In the picture on the left, I've eaten 4-700 grams of meat from cattle, chicken and pork plus the same amount of unprocessed vegetables, 3 eggs, a bit of cheese, a bit of nuts, protein shake and room for a few strong liquorice each evening for years. That is, a diet I should be deathly ill from, if you're to believe the Climate and Health Authority. Besides that, I've adjusted my training to consistently - and solely - consist of weight training, which I do most days for about an hour year-round. Often as the first thing, before I do anything else.
I'm not smart enough to know exactly how all this with food, diet and training fully connects - and I won't advise anyone. But I will encourage everyone to experiment, discover for themselves what does what to you - instead of listening to a system that doesn't seem to have your best interests at heart.
Take your own life seriously - because you only have one - and the health in the body, which influences everything that will move through you, which colours thoughts and outlook and the quality and surplus of your energy - is a fundamental that none of us escape on this earth.
It all starts within - with love for yourself and for life. The desire to live fully - and stop your bullshit that stands in the way of you grasping it, at the level that suits you.
If the pictures can inspire you - you can use them for what you want (but keep your fingers above the duvet, you cheeky thing!!) 😅😁😆
And then the secondary.
I need new boxer shorts - Krisztina says there are holes in nearly all the ones I have (every man knows those are often the best!)🤷🏼♂️ But okay, she has to look at me - so I'm thinking it's time to buy some that are perhaps a bit smarter.
I HATE tight elastic bands - that comes from how my body used to be, where elastic bands gnawed into the excess kilos - so no suggestions of that sort.
I'm looking for the kind that sit firmly, that feel like an extra set of skin, and simultaneously hold reasonably tight on the only body part that - unfortunately (why the f*** is it like that!??) - can't be trained bigger? 🤓😁
