Show up

I am looking around this room, at the end of a long workday, speaking out loud to no one, asking why the hell I showed up. My best friend says the key to success is just showing up. There is a lot unsaid in that. Showing up means you are there when no one else is. When others are partying, sleeping, laughing, living, you are stopping, pausing, detouring.

I am a Philly fighter even though I was never a Philly resident. I came up in the Muay Thai ring and on the BJJ mats of a Philly gym. I fought with the intensity of a street fight on a padded floor, because that’s all my training partners knew. It was always about winning and never losing. It was staying alive or staying awake. Being safe or getting mugged. When you fought, you fought to win. You didn’t fight to lose less.

When a Brazilian coach of mine said, “Borra, CLEO LOVES TO FIGHT! HE LOVES TO GO ALL OUT!” I didn’t understand. My perception was that I was warming up, because that’s how we warmed up in Philly. Like my childhood established my grit, that gym established my pressure. I showed up to a gym that didn’t know what my baseline was. I wasn’t there for them. They were just there, like equipment at the gym, something for me to use.

Equipment at the gym is inanimate, but it can still hurt you if you don’t respect it. You don’t abuse it. You revere it. My training partners and my family were never material possessions. They were there to help me grow, like a good sparring partner in Jiu-Jitsu, giving me just enough resistance to get stronger.

I show up after a long day at work because these Thursday posts are the coach sitting with me after a hard session, going over where I can get better. In writing and revisiting, I learn something new. I research the articles published by doctors and subject matter experts because this is “Me-search” more than it is research. These posts are my shadow boxing in the dark. They are me doing Jiu-Jitsu drills in a weightlifting gym. My fingers move on this keyboard the way my hands move when I’m walking my dog and running a sparring match in my head. When I bend down to clean up after him, I position myself the way I would to pass someone’s guard.

Every moment and every movement of my life is an exploration of a childhood foundation. I feel the weight of the concrete being poured over me. So why would I want anyone who isn’t training as much as me to carry the weight I bounce with? It would bury them.

I will spend three times as much as my peers to get a certification, because my dyslexia makes testing that much harder. I embrace that. I will know ten times more than they do, because they approach learning passively. I approach it actively, like I did with my matches and my time on the mats in Philly.

Every punch thrown is a page turned, and every page is life or death. I don’t passively study. I immersively learn. I question, review, ponder, experiment, and explore until I can start creating. My learning handicap is like rolling with a competitive black belt, where even the space created by bone moving under skin has a reason. He feels my shoulders move and eases off, because he knows my head is about to lift and leave me open to four different submissions. I can sense something coming, but he initiated the dilemma. I know I’m in danger, and that is what lets me move differently. That’s what learning feels like. It scares the shit out of me, but I’ve been in this position many times before, and that is the comfort. I’m a black belt too. I’m comfortable in this uncomfortableness.

My parents were the master craftsmen who kept prototypes in storage, seeing only the flaws in them and not the flawlessness, the protection, or the wonder. They built the foundation. I walked into the gym in Philly decades later and became a white belt. I am not thankful it took my parents so long to get me the special education they ultimately did; I am grateful for it.

I went to 21 different schools. I am not thankful for all of the moving. I moved, therefore I am.

I love this dense, patchwork foundation of my life and the consistency of one theme… Read! Like the first word revealed to Prophet Muhammad. Read!

My uncle once told me they can take away your money, your freedom, your possessions, but they can’t ever take away your education.

He was right about that, but he never told me that it was up to me to show up for me when no one else would. I show up, and it’s not because of me. It’s not for me. But ultimately, it is you who I showed up to be with.