No Limits

My boy from work and I were walking through City Hall Park when he realized he needed to stop by New York Sports Club. He lost his wallet a couple of weeks ago along with his NYSC card. After we were done with the errand, we took a walk along ground zero. As we walked along construction workers frantically trying to rebuild what was once symbolic of one of the greatest economies in the world, I felt a pain in my arm. I was sore as hell from the workout I had the previous day, so I began massaging my arm and complaining.

“Dang, I really killed myself at the gym yesterday.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Some dude was spotting me, so I decided to take advantage and do as much as I could. I overworked myself. I love that shit.”

“No I mean, why would you do that? Like, what’s the point? When I go to the gym, I never overwork myself because I know I can only get so big. So it’s pointless to overexert myself.”

“That’s bullshit. Fine, maybe based on your body type, you can only get so big. But why would you use that as a reason to curb your workout?”

“What’s the point of overexerting yourself?”

“To see what you’re capable of! To see what your limits are, because once you’ve reached your limit you’ll realize, there is no limit. The human body is capable of so much man, I mean, the human body is amazing and God made it that way for a reason. I’m not a fan of David Blaine, but he’s got the right idea. The guy tests the limits of the human body and proves every day that we’re capable of so much more than we think. We’re built for greatness man. Do you remember telling me about how you feel like you’re not motivated at work at all?”

“Yeah.”

“Well it’s the same thing. I mean fine, we’re doing something we don’t like, but that’s no excuse to do it half assed. No matter what we’re doing, if we’re doing it, we should strive for greatness. We should overexert ourselves. We should test our limits.”

A long time ago, my dad sat me down and had a talk with me. It came out of nowhere and during a time when I had grown distant to my father, so I was taken aback. I was even more shocked at what he said. This lecture took place a little bit after I dropped out of high school, and I had been hanging out with a very wrong crowd. My father, the devout Catholic, the perpetual pacifist, looked me in the eyes and said:

“Whatever you do in life, do it the best you can. If you’re going to be a business man, be the best business man. If you’re going to be a gangster, be the best gangster you can be.”

I sat there with my entirely black wardrobe, my orange hair, a butterfly knife in my back pocket and a pack of cigarettes protruding from my front pocket as he said a couple more things that only reiterated his belief that I should go to extremes in whatever road I chose. So here was my religious father, telling me to be a hard hitter. I picked my jaw up off of the floor and walked away with a shattered image of exactly who my father really was. But I get you dad. I know what you mean. The passionate person knows no limits.

So I'm still a bit sore from the gym, but manage to make it to the bar later on and end up drinking like 8 beers and 2 jack and cokes. Well at least that’s all I can remember. I stumble outside to go home and she asks me:

“B, why do you drink so much? What’s the point?”

And I slur back:

“I lunnow man. I gless is to zee wet I’m capabababble of…”

-B