Tag Archives: strength

Stupid

“You know, you have to be a little stupid.”

It may not sound like much, but let me tell you the who-what-when-where-why of one of the most compelling, impactful, and important things anyone has ever said to me.

INT. GYM/WEIGHT ROOM – AFTERNOON

We’re somewhere in 2008 of the timeline.  I’m at the gym working out with my two good friends Joe and Chris. They’re a lot bigger than me, and to give you a visual of that, picture the standard icon of the strength of your signal on your cell phone.  There’s five bars, and if I’m the middle bar, Joe and Chris are labeled to the right respectively, aptly giving you the best possible signal on your phone for crystal clear conversation.

Many times I wondered why they let me train with them.  Maybe because I made them laugh – not because I told jokes so good that they could be exchanged for pure gold, or wit so sharp it made you say cheddar, no.  They laughed because I couldn’t lift weights for beans, and understandably so, that holds a lot of entertainment value.  Fair enough; I laughed at myself, too.

We’re doing burnout sets, which means we’re flirting with death until we decide it’s okay to come back to life.  More technically, we’re doing one exercise – repeatedly – toward the brink of utter exhaustion at the end of a series of exercises that were performed in a more standard x reps for y sets.  You can imagine it’s only fun if you’re crazy.

Or in this case – stupid.  But, in a good way.  Let me explain.

For the burnout set we’re doing push ups – a classic exercise with the right amount sadism.  Naturally, I burn out first.  I can’t even tell you how many I did (couldn’t have been much), but I can tell you how hard my body flopped to the floor at the end of it.  Have you ever seen someone try to run through a glass door they didn’t see was there?

Harder than that.

Chris, the tallest bar of the cell phone signal icon, actually burns out second.  That leaves Joe as the iron man of the burnout set, and my jaw drops watching him keep at it.  One after another, he pushes himself up, and descends down, then back up, and repeat.  I didn’t lose count, because I wasn’t trying to keep one.  At this point, I was awed and inspired.  Chris, drenched and dripping with his own sweat, turns to me and says these words I’ll never forget, and words I have and will continue to live by:

“You know, you have to be a little stupid, you know?  You have to be stupid to just keep going.  That’s all pain right there, why wouldn’t you just stop, you know what I’m sayin’?  Like, stupid to the point that you can’t even register what pain is.”

Joe is still going – one push up after another.  Grunting, muttering expletives under his heaving breaths.  Just when I think he’s going to burn out, he pushes right back up.  His determination was so heavy it felt like you could gather chunks of it from the air, pack it up in tupperware and save it as a post-workout snack for later.  Joe finally burned out his set, but even after a gutsy display of tenacity I still thought he could have easily kept on going.  I was convinced he felt more tiresome of Chris and I staring at him with jealous eyes.

While it seemed like an insult (albeit a playful one) at first, there is something powerful to be grasped from Chris’s genuinely honest observation about Joe – what we all understand as an innate human reaction of instantly pulling your hand away once you touch a hot stove was something Joe seemingly didn’t have.  In this case I took this not as a lack of intelligence, but rather a strong indication of mental toughness.  Only in the specific manner in which Chris diagramed his view of Joe did I conceive strength in a completely different light:

“Stupid” people won’t know how to quit, even when they’re burnt halfway to hell.
“Stupid” people take on challenges that are already labeled as impossible.
“Stupid” people go toe to toe with adversaries that will beat them to a pulp, and “stupid” people will find a way to get back up.
“Stupid” people avoid using excuses, especially the most valid ones.
“Stupid” people find ways to be vulnerable, in order to stay humble.

Joe is pretty stupid, in fact one of the most stupid guys I’ve ever met.  Chris is no different, and I’m lucky to have met and befriended several other people that can be just as stupid.  I want to be the same, if not even stupider.  In fact, I try to be the most absolutely stupidest person in any given room I walk into.  I want people to say about me, “That guy?  Michael Arce?  That’s one stupid motherf—-r, man.  So stupid he *willingly solves math problems when he’s completely inebriated with alcohol.”

So, Joe and Chris used to call me Mikelovin’.  There’s absolutely no point to me mentioning this at all, I just wanted to say it because I’m still the shorter end of this cell phone signal metaphor, I have zero appeal going for me so far, and we’re already at the end of this story.  I needed appreciate the ego boost.  I’m the one writing it, and I can do so.  Do somethin’.

I’m with stupid.

*true story

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Andrew

I’m trying to work, but I can’t.  I’m angry, confused.  I feel everything and I feel nothing, all at the same time.

Just like that, without explanation or warning, my friend Andrew was gone.  And all I have left is the fortunate ability to remember to keep myself composed.

We came up at the Village Fitness Center together.  When I first met him, he came in as a new member at the gym, and I was with the Service Desk.  He was a skinny kid right before, and as I like to joke, the gamma ray accident turned him into the Hulk that everyone knew and loved.  In reality, he was extremely dedicated and focused at his craft, and the physical feats he reached are proof of this.

Shortly he began an internship and eventually became a certified personal trainer with the VFC Family.  After garnering success, he took his work to other locations within the company – Federal Fitness, Avalon Bay, and Fillmore to name a few.  After several great years with us, he moved to Los Angeles, and found more success in the fitness industry.  The sky was the limit for Andrew, and everyone that knew him believed this with complete certainty.

One of the best memories I have with Andrew was Halloween, had to have been close to six years ago.  We were at a party in the city, and I’m pretty sure that, and this is something that happened way to often than it should during this previous version of myself, I forgot many of the details toward the end of the night.

But I do remember this – I was a cop.  Aviator shades, vest, and two colorful water guns.  There were other cops with me, and we looked really cool. I’m talking about other-side-of-the-pillow cool, trust me.

Not as cool as Andrew, though.  He waltzes in as Akuma from the Street Fighter video games.  He had it down to the details – the attire, the wraps, and of course, the muscles.  The guy was built like a statue, and it was safe to say he stole the show.

Andrew wasn’t much of a drinker then, in fact I don’t think he ever had one up to that time.  Until, this Halloween party.  Maybe he was intimidated by my water guns (that probably shot out a liquid that rhymes with Pequila later in the night), maybe it was my pheromones that eventually changed his mind, or maybe – and this is what I will believe – maybe it’s because he loved me like a brother, and because of this, he was going to have a drink with me.

And yes, I loved him, too.

We go to the bar, and I tell Andrew, “F&#% it man, bring your boys too. I got all of you.”  Side bar, when I drink, everyone drinks.  That’s my own little life rule.

“Four Jameson shots my good dude,” I tell the bartender.  We toast to… something.  Maybe we toasted to being gym rats, or to friendship, or to the Akuma character, or to the fact that the Giants were one more game away from winning their first World Series in the San Francisco era.  We took it like champs, hugged and high-fived like bros, and took more photos at the photo booth in the other room because we were that much full of ourselves.  Andrew then tells me, “That was my first shot in my life.”

I bought Andrew’s very first shot, and I truly take that as a high honor.  They say that you never forget your firsts, and I hope this rings true with Andrew.  Because I will never forget him.

You always think that life gives you chances for another round, but that’s never the case.  This is another reminder that the only chances in life are the ones you take.

As I remember Andrew, I am reminded how unpredictable all of this is, and that anything can be taken away at any given time.  I’m reminded to continue to take those chances every day, no matter how big or small, because just how Andrew easily displayed, greatness is manifested from those with the will to win, not from those who are afraid to fail.

I am reminded to continue to live in the honor for those we’ve all lost in our lives, and pave the way for others after us to adopt the same.  The best thing in this world is what we have between each other.  Not of things made of matter, but things that matter – conversations, moments, laughs, undocumented sights, and unrecorded sounds.

This is the privilege of remembrance, and Andrew – my colleague, my former co-worker, and most of all, my good friend – it has been an amazing privilege to have had you in my life.

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