Friday, November 16, 2007

Misery Loves Company

Why is it the when someone is about to achieve something that people thought was impossible to achieve we need to knock them down and make it twice has hard for them to attain that goal? Why is it that when someone is miserable we are happy and when they are happy and successful we need to find something that could potentially bring them down?

It’s the old adage “Misery Loves Company”. When we see some one who is achieving something we wish we could do we tend to demean them or down play the feat. Take for instance Barry Bonds. He is the single season home run leader and now the all time home run leader. Did you know he is also the record holder for the most walks plus at one point he stole the most bases in one season? In a few short years A-Rod will be approaching some records especially the home run record. I will guarantee you that we will find something wrong with him and what he is about to accomplish. (Maybe we will blame his nose hairs for being to long and it gave him an advantage in some way).

My son even gets grief from his friends. “Oh, you’re just fast because of your father.” No it is because he tries and practices and doesn’t quit. We want to be around successful people but when they achieve that level of accomplishment we are the first to shoot them down. Here is why I think we do it, we are jealous and wish we could accomplish that same feat.

If we as a nation uplifted each other and held ourselves and our friends and neighbors to a higher standard we could be so much further in this society. On 911 New York could have pointed the blame on so many things. Did they? No! New York said that they had a job to do and that everyone needed to come together to get it done. In the end it was done. I was there when it happened and I remembered looking at the debris that was all over the place. The defaced American Express building and the buildings around where the twin towers once stood and I said to myself, “ Boy it is going to be a miracle if we could get this cleaned up in my lifetime” Well two short years later you would never be able to tell of the devastation that accord. New York band together, held each others hands and because of that did not lose a beat.

New Orleans on the other hand, after the devastation of the floods began to look for excuses and point blame on why this happened. They looked for handouts (aid) and expected people to help them in their unprepared state. They began to point blame instead of coming together and lifting each other up. To this day their land is not completely fixed and they are still pointing blame.

We do this in our fitness lives. We see someone who you believe looks better then you and we automatically say that they are on some illegal drug. Forget about the hard work they may have gone thru to get to where they are today. We see women who are in there 40’s and 50’s that look 20 years younger and we say that they had some sort of surgery. How about looking for and praising that person for being the way they are? No, that won’t work. Why, because inwardly we are jealous of that person for being better, doing better or looking better then we could ever be.

So keep it up America and one day we will look back and see all the success we could have had but didn’t because of our attitude towards our brothers and sisters.