Equivocating my responsibilities away: a vignette.

[oak]

Vignette: Three Men in Their Early 40s: Tom Brady, Bam, and Me

My Contradictory Thoughts:

Idea 1: Recently Bam Magera was in the news for a video where he struggled with addiction and expressed suicidal ideation. Frankly, he was disheveled and is not a well man.

Meanwhile, quarterback Tom Brady won another Superbowl. He is fit and healthy, with a curvy wife, and business success.

Idea 2: On the other hand, as a sober person I can identify more with Bam. I know what it is like to be bleary-eyed, expressing very real indignation at the world. Meanwhile, the star quarterbacks and models never gave me the time of day. And now he wants to preach at me about nutrition and hydration?

See What I'm Getting At?

I can equivocate myself from any real change and responsibility:

As a sober person, I can (falsely) distance myself from the Bams of the world, people currently where I was fifteen years ago, ostensibly because today I am clean shaven and my teeth look presentable. I can concede Tom Brady is healthy and successful, but it is all photoshop and PR anyway, really.

Payoff: I don't have any responsibility to the drunk still suffering, and I don't have to face my nutrition and exercise faults.

Cognitive dissonance successfully avoided!

... but at what cost?

A Final Thought

I recognize I am being hard on myself about Bam: right this minute I'd gladly sit with any alcoholic trying not to drink. I'd walk them in this cold to the nearest meeting.

Were I to be honest with myself, and you dear MIHH forum friend, I'm okay with the above status quo.

But I can't shake that, for all the PR and photoshop of social media fakery (and there is so much in our society), what Tom Brady represents really resonates with me.

I want to enjoy martial arts for many years. I want a curvy, successful wife. I want to contribute in my professional life.

None of the above, what you just read, really has anything to do with Bam or Tom Brady, both of whom have excellent qualities, and both of whom I wish well.

I just hated jocks growing up.

But the jock is right, and I'm wrong.

At least about nutrition and exercise.

Facing truths is difficult.