About... Time

How do I begin? I'm not quite sure. Honesty would probably be a good place. Unfortunately, honesty is not something I have wanted to face for at least a decade now. For whatever reason, it is easy to blind ourselves to what we see in the mirror - easy because we just avoid looking in the mirror.

So - honesty... Here's honest: I'm 36 years old (37 this year), I have spent the better part of 15 years weighing up above the 300 lb mark. At my heaviest I was 370 lbs. I am currently 319. I can eat an entire large combination pizza and still have room for a dozen doughnuts. There is nothing I would rather do than sit in front of the TV and watch science fiction/fantasy shows all day long.

I used to have hobbies. I used to like astronomy. Me and my friends would go to the top of the Nebo Loop (in Utah County - if you've never been, go! It's beautiful!) around midnight in the middle of summer and wait for Jupiter and Saturn to rise over the eastern horizon. It was thrilling to look at the planets, see the surface of the moon in close detail. One time we saw one of Jupiter's larger moons pass right in front of the planet! It threw a shadow on the planet and everything! It was spectacular.

I used to play bagpipes. I don't much anymore and what I've learned will take some effort to re-learn. Quite frankly, I don't like calling attention to myself... bagpipes are a BAD way to blend into the background.

I liked to write. I quit. Writing makes you search yourself and there is nothing about me I have wanted to 'find' in a long time.

Thankfully, late last year, I was diagnosed with Diabetes. I know what you're thinking - odd thing to be thankful for. I wasn't at first. At first, I wished I could just quickly die and get it over with. I felt broken, like I had trashed my 'body-machine' (as my oldest daughter calls it) beyond all repair.

It was at this point in time (around the beginning of this year) that I had an epiphany - I had been dying for the last decade-and-a-half. Maybe it was time to start living again. They say that the true definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Eating, sleeping, sitting and dying wasn't working anymore. It was time to get up.

And so I have. It has been a lot of work with just as much failure as success to get me down the fifty pounds I am right now. But it has been an important fifty pounds. I'm starting to feel alive again. I'm starting to... I don't know how to describe it... wake up? I feel better, I sleep better, I'm more productive at work. I'm definitely a better father and husband than I was before.

With my own personal 'awakening', I'm discovering slowly and surely that there is an undiscovered ecology amongst us. Obesity is an epidemic. It is stealing our lives and loved ones and the environment we live in is allowing (even fostering) this subtle destruction.

Advertisers and marketing companies tell us to, 'Obey your thirst', or 'Just do it'. They've asked us, 'Where's the beef', and, 'Do you want that supersized?'.

It's just been recently that I have actually started to pay attention to the programing and I don't know if I like what I am hearing. For too long I allowed my thoughts and actions to be engineered by my environment and perhaps, a little something in my genetic 'soup' made me more susceptible to it. Regardless of nature, regardless of nurture, I allowed it to happen. And just as easily, I am putting a stop to it. For my kids, for my wife, for my mom and dad and brothers and sisters.

This post is for those of us who are a part of this 'Undiscovered Ecology'. I invite you to reply to what I write and start your own blogs. Invite me to be a member as I am inviting you to subscribe here.

For the first time in human history the generation coming next will not have as long of a life expectancy as their predecessors. If ever there was an undiscovered ecology, surely it is them. Surely it is us.

Let's wake up - let's do it together and help others to do so as well. I know I'll need the help. It would be much appreciated.