Monday, February 24, 2014

Ultimate Triumph

I was recently asked about the title of my blog.

The phrase comes from a speech that Teddy Roosevelt once made.  See what you think...

“I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these, wins the splendid ultimate triumph.”

How do those words strike you?  Exciting, shivery wonder... or dreary, difficult drudgery?

When I first read them, they made me want to go charging up a hill at high speed and break into an Italian aria at the top!  A mission! A purpose! A victory!

Maybe that’s because I know a little bit about Teddy Roosevelt, so I understand the heart that expressed itself in those words.

Did you know that he was a sickly child with severe asthma who suffered near-fatal attacks over and over in his childhood?  He was a fragile little creature not expected to reach adulthood. 

But he had a curious mind and a great love of nature and a tenacity that drove him beyond his illness.  He read voraciously and became a student of life.  He put himself on a regimen of exercise to build his strength, and after having been bullied by some older boys, took up boxing lessons.

Roosevelt became a naturalist, an author, a soldier, an Amazon explorer, a larger-than-life, ebullient optimist.  He had adventures enough for half a dozen movies.  I’ll let this picture tell the story... he’s riding a bull moose (not known to be one of nature’s pussycats) across a river.  Umm.  File that under “D” for Danger.


The “strenuous life” was all there was for Teddy.  If he hadn’t taken that attitude, he would have been dead before his 18th birthday.  Instead he had a glorious adventure of a life.  It was full of setbacks and heartbreaks as well, but it was a resplendent life.

When we limp along in ill health, we’re missing the wondrous exuberance of a full life.  This culture is not looking out for our health!  If we don’t take personal charge of what we eat and what we do with our bodies, we will be that sickly child that gets beat up by life.

And it’s hard work.  That’s the bottom line, and the real reason for my blog.  Weight Watchers, bless its corporate heart, tries very hard to make weight loss pleasant and palatable for the greatest number of people.  But we can sometimes be lulled into thinking that it is therefore going to be easy.

It’s not.  And as long as we expect it to be and hope for it to be, we’ll flounder; maybe lose 5 pounds, relax, fall back into old habits, resentfully surrender again, lose that same 5 pounds... you know the drill.

It’s hard work.  It’s “toil and effort, labor and strife”.  It’s even “bitter toil” sometimes. 

And it is so worth it.  With all my heart, I wish for all of us that “splendid, ultimate triumph”... our health, the gift of being fully alive.

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