Five years ago, I was in a waiting room at a car dealership
A morbidly obese couple in their 60s was sitting across from me in their electric carts. They were both eating McDonald’s breakfast and the husband was urgently licking the syrup off of his styrofoam plate. His insatiable hunger was palpable.
“How are they still alive?” I thought.
I realized, “Some people have not once experienced the feeling of being healthy.”
They tumble out of their mother’s womb and are immediately given soda and candy. It’s terrible parenting.
And the thing is — I almost forgot what good health feels like too.
A death triggered my change
I was the captain of my high school swim team 20 years ago. But just last year, I found out my co-captain had died.
He was 37.
He left behind a wife and two young daughters.
It shook me. I hadn’t seen him in recent years but knew he’d gained a ton of weight. Apparently, his drinking habit had gotten out of control. He was downing more than a bottle of vodka each day.
His liver failed, and then his kidneys failed. He spent two months in the hospital, fighting for his life. He had more than 50 blood transfusions over that period (you begin to bleed from the inside with organ failure).
Finally, his body rejected one of the transfusions and he passed.
I looked at some of his recent pictures on FB from before he’d been hospitalized. He looked miserable. You could tell. His body was failing on the inside and he had no idea.
He was an unrecognizable version of the 6'4 adonis I’d swam against so many times.
Death checks you. You see it happening closer and closer. Friends. Family. You realize that you need to get miles out of this vessel.