Originally published in ‘Devotion Magazine’ Issue #2, in October of 2021. Thank you to all involved for presenting it so beautifully.

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My path to strength was not born of a hunger to be physically strong.
I rode BMX bikes all the time, I ran around the city, carried equipment, played outside… I was strong enough to do what I was doing, and early on, that seemed like plenty.

I had several cold glasses of weakness splashed in my face as a kid;
One that sent me back to the shallow end was an unprovoked group beating simply for being different, and being left to fend for myself in a strange city, injured, when it was over.

“Weakness” now had an archetype and a face, and in my mind… it was, me.

“I was lucky it wasn’t worse”, says the unprepared fool, to himself; While there are occasions for hope and luck, they are not when the chips are down in ways involving true risk and potential harm. At 15, and with no perspective on that fact, I was made to learn.

My perspective shifted instantly; Things like training weren’t even remotely near my radar yet, so I stacked the “strength” deck with observational obsession, and weapons. There has not been a day since I was 15 and beaten by those four strangers in the back of a van that I have not had something weaponizable on my person; Much different however, as I learned far later, is the art of knowing what that actually means, and how intensely fallible it truly can be. Again- luck, is not a bankable entity.

My mind had begun to sharpen, by demand not request, and it was frequently put to the test. I was in over my head more often than I care to remember or share as a teenager, often voluntarily and with righteous intentions, but upside-down nonetheless. I learned a lot, and “strengthened” in many unconventional ways, while also developing what I now know to be many significant dysfunctions and insecurities.

My youthful path was crooked but straight, and the next snag I hit took any straws-and-sticks strength I had pieced together and toppled it as if it had never stood at all.

In a nationally publicized case, a 4-year-old girl was kidnapped from her front yard in a suburb of Rochester, and a massive search ensued. I worked at a health food store in the mall at the time, and in the interest of brevity (and also since the story is outlined in detail elsewhere) I will simply say that the man that kidnapped and killed her, worked beside me. Day in, day out, the day before, and the day after he took her.

I had driven him to his home, I had heard his depraved stories, I had marveled at his unnerving idiosyncrasies, I had met his wife and son, I had covered his shifts. And I had… missed it. And when I learned it- after a significant period of time and via the local news- I was broken by it. In some ways, I still am.

Strength and confidence were no longer bolstered with a fistfight, or a bike sprint to avoid the cops, or getting up to ride again after falling down hard; Those things merely felt like reprieves, like the barrier-to-entry for even a moment of clarity or sanity.

My weakness was now a black hole of self-disbelief; I had pursued these paths of integrity, I had chosen to walk against the grain, I had routinely come to the aid of those in jeopardy… But yet, when it really counted, I might as well have had both eyes closed.
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Perspective on my purpose and existence shifted in the year following the circumstances shared above. I have my brother to credit for dissuading me from a path of revenge I was calmly and strategically set on, and once I had reconciled his correctness, I set about correcting myself.

There is often only one way to be sure something you do not want to happen again, does not, and it is doing everything in your human power to forcefully ensure that it does not.

I did not want to be attacked again, without at very least being able to offer suitable response. I did not want any manner of oversight or ignorance or observational failure to prove costly to anyone close to me. I was just a normal kid, but now very much felt like I had a responsibility:

To be strong.

None of it, I took lightly. I ran shows in Rochester, and even when they weren’t, they were safe.

I rode my bike at all hours of the night with all manner of less-observant types for years, and even when they weren’t, they were safe.

I wasn’t particularly tough, I had no other trick up my sleeve, I just simply watched… all the time… and would rather have gone down at any cost than let harm befall, and been left to reconcile.

My strength became my focus and will; Much later, with the addition of intentional physicality, I learned the value of aligning all three. Later yet, I now preach what I practice, and live by what I teach.

I will never be the physically strongest among us, and I will never again be tougher than I have been in the past; Because strength has never been a singular novelty for me- nor, has it ever come easy- I know I will also never be anything less than the person in the room willing to go to any length to preserve the safety of the others in it, and that if one pillar of my strength breaks, I have painstakingly and redundantly build others to fall back on.

I have seen many with simple muscles, fall to those with thicker, harder mettle… And those with “undefeated minds”, but unkept bodies, topple to a strong breeze.

There must be a nearly-dysfunctional level of entwinement in order to ensure that any thread of strength will bind to the others, when holes have begun to appear, and no matter the weather.

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‘Pound the base until it no longer shows wear,
recognize and repeat the hits that landed the hardest,
and tie it all together with the desire and fire to do it all again- Forever.

Foundation – Skill – Will:

Three-headed serpent, all equally valuable, with infinite variables,
and each much less fearsome minus the others.’