My Two Cents: Self-Evident
Grunting?
"I didn't hear you grunting or groaning." That is what Rob, both a friend and personal trainer, said to me when he saw me last week at the gym. I shared with him the workout that I had just rigorously taken myself through.
"But, I didn't hear you," he said.
I had just completed an exhausting boxing regiment of jumping rope and punching the heavy bag.
"What are you, the silent warrior?" he added.
I thought for a second. Am I -- the silent warrior?
Then I asked myself an interesting question which I had never thought of asking myself before:
If you're not heard or seen does that mean it doesn't count?
I enjoy the sport of boxing because it taxes your physical conditioning and makes demands of your mental focus. It's a discipline which requires constant movement and precision in execution. And, I've embraced both aspects of it equally.
I was at the gym that morning with the sole intention of tackling a specific set of objectives - an intense and challenging series of boxing exercises, designed to leave an athlete spent, if not exhausted.
So here I am standing drenched in sweat, alone, trying to catch my breath, reevaluating whether I have been effective, because of what Rob said; based on the sounds that I didn't make and the fact that nobody saw.
Do I need to have been heard? Because I didn't have a witness, does what I did still count? Am I legit if I never shout out loud about what I have done?
I mean,
Does it change the fact that you've thrown multiple jabs, landed multiple hooks if no one can say that they saw?
Should I have grunted loudly between breaths? Do I need to go back and do it again?
Rob laughed when he saw that I fell for his joke.
But seriously, how often in your life, at play or at work, do you stop to question yourself and doubt yourself because you didn't make a noise so,
nobody saw?
That's my two cents (for whatever it's worth),
Auguste Roc
auguste@danaroc.com
