Do More

So much today is predicated upon our need for efficiency. Most of what I spent my life in pursuit of was an exhausting search for conserved energy through efficiency. I say this in the starkest terms, this isn’t poetic or metaphorical. When I weighed 500+ pounds, every movement was first judged through an efficiency calculator in my brain. Every, single, one.

I’m hot, and would be much cooler with the removal of a top layer or sweater, but at what cost of exerted energy? And would the discomfort based upon that exertion be more or less valuable to me than the discomfort I felt without it? These calculations were a constant. I would drive around tirelessly in search of the absolute closest parking spot, look for paths that avoided stairs so long as they didn’t add so much distance so as to be a wash in my ultimate goal, conserving energy.

Today I still have to push myself through these mental gymnastics, albeit with a new paradigm. Today I am looking for every way possible to exert as much energy into the world as I possibly can, while retaining just enough energy to replicate my actions tomorrow, and tomorrow’s tomorrow, and all the tomorrow’s from here on. 

At less than half my former size, a simple thing like walking up a few stairs, rushing to catch a plane, or even intentionally finding the furthest possible parking spot, won’t come close to incapacitating me like it once did. My life is not a constant tug of war between exhausted and fatigued, I am not covered in an omnipresent layer of sweat as my body tries to cool its overburdened system. But that mental circuitry that I built up in my formidable years persists, and I must keep that in focus if I am to defeat it, day in, day out, forever. Do more.