People think your 'balls' are from what you experienced in life
I used to think so too... now I completely disagree. It's mostly physical.
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We are ingrained to think “If it doesn’t kill us, it makes us stronger.”
I know I began life thinking like this and never really challenged it.
But now I ‘mostly’ disagree with it.
It is not, in my view, our life experience that gives us the strength and guts we have.
Rather it is mostly physical.
And today i’m going to explain why I view it this way.
I started life as a nerdy kid who got picked on
When I was young I went to a suburban high school in the town of Floral Park on the border of Queens and Long Island.
I was chubby, a bit awkward, a smart ‘nerd’, and half-Japanese in a school that was mostly white.
For most of my days in elementary school I got picked on. Kids would sometimes put ‘kick me’ signs on my back, wait for me after school to tease me or try to fight me, etc
My mom would even have to stick up for me sometimes and tattled to the principal once… which definitely did not add to my popularity.
In those days I looked at school as an unpleasant experience that just needed to be persevered.
I collected life experiences to make myself strong
When I graduated high school and started college I vowed to take on a different image.
And it was a lot easier that I went to a college where most of the kids were the nerds in their respective high school. So that made it a lot easier. lol
Plus I’d gotten skinnier and a fair bit better looking. This carried through my 20’s and 30’s… and enabled me to live a pretty colorful life.
I moved from the US to Japan when I was 23 and was the only non-Japanese person in the office of a strategy consulting firm.
The job put me in Malaysia for long periods of time and so it was strange to be living in a Muslim country during the tragic events of September 11, 2001.
I then spent a couple months living in Shanghai, did an MBA in Barcelona, had an exchange in 2004 where I lived in Paris.
In the summer of 2005 I backpacked for 3 months by myself from Spain to China completely over land via buses and trains.
During which numerous colorful events happened like a taxi driver that tried to jump me in Bucharest (and I had to escape Romania on a bus while being chased by the taxi mafia), a guy that tried to rob me in China (which ended up in a street fight), etc.
And then I found myself in the backwards country of Myanmar where I ran out of cash because there were no working ATM’s. And so I had to beg for food and some spare cash from fellow backpackers while making an illegal overland bus trip from Mandalay to Rangoon to meet with a friend that came to give me cash.
After the trip I lived in London to work as a consultant for a little over a year in 2005-6.
Before moving to Moscow and then Kiev from 2006 to 2014 where all kinds of colorful things happen. Because that is a crazy region after all. hahaha
Then I finally ended up in Vietnam in 2014 with a wife and a kid where my entry into the world of dental biomechanics took place.
I thought I was strong
The reason I mentioned all of the above was to make the point that I did a decent job of collecting ‘life experiences’.
By the time I was 37 i’d lived in something like 12 countries and travelled to about 90.
I’d had friends from tons of countries. Hell i’d had girlfriends from many countries. lol
I’d proven my resourcefullness time and again. Getting jumped, getting in some fights, dealing with corrupt Russian police, and even a mini-oligarch that seemed like he wanted to kill my friend for awhile. lol
I’d come a long way from the nerdy kid i’d grown up as.
I’d become street smart. I felt like a survivor that you could throw into any corner of the world and i’d somehow figure out a way to survive.
At least that is how I thought of myself.
Then what happened to me starting in 2014 changed my mind
When a TMJ dentist in Saigon considerably flattened my back teeth while ‘fixing my contacts’ in early 2014 my entire perception of myself changed.
I became a hermit, I couldn’t retain information, I felt very very weak as a person.
I’d lost all ability to be resourceful and my wife, who’d never lived outside of Ukraine, had to step up and fend for us both to some extent. As if she’d been the globetrotter the past 20 years and not me.
And she did. For awhile I just crawled back into my cave and felt like the same kid I was back in elementary school.
The one that would try to duck out of a side door of the school to avoid getting picked on.
I realized all that life experience didn’t mean jack when you are on the wrong side of these biomechanics and your neurology goes to hell.
Now I think our courage is mainly just physical
After having spent over a decade going up and down like a yoyo with these biomechanics I realize how I think it ‘actually’ works.
And for me it is kind of a 80-20 rule.
Your courage and even your ‘character’ in life is probably 80% neurology and only 20% your experience and everything else.
If you lose your neurology it doesn’t matter how strong you are. It doesn’t matter if you fought wars in Afghanistan, Iraq or wherever.
You will still become a relatively weak person. Your ‘balls’ will shrivel up as if you were the kid that had spent his entire adult life living in his parents’ basement.
Trust me…. I know.
I was dreaming of being able to just live in my mother’s basement back in 2014 so that I would no longer have to work a job or face the world.
Closing thoughts
I no longer believe in the phrase “If it doesn’t kill us, it makes us stronger.”
I just don’t think it’s how it really works given what i’ve gone through.
Rather I think the correct phrase is more something like… “Conquer your biomechanics, and you will conquer everything else.”
You will be a strong person.
You will be resourceful.
You will be eloquent when needed.
And all of that will come natural to you.
Even if you never left your hometown and you lived with your parents your entire life.
And that’s just the reality of how I think our body works.
if you have the biomechanical means the opportunities to gain experience are also ubiquitous
You’re fast becoming one of my favourite writers