The choices we make

I choose to live by choice. I choose what I like doing, who to be close to and who to ignore. I’ve chosen my future long time ago and I stick to my plans because I have the choice to choose. My strength didn’t come from lifting weights. It came from the choices I made…and I know that I would be remembered for most of them. Good memories, I hope. ..But, at the end of the day, what are memories other than choices? We choose to remember good or bad things and we have the power of changing an awfull experience into an amazing memory. 

Craig was a client I used to train three years ago. We spent a whole year training together, Craig and I. Craig was a bad, bad boy! Full of tattoos, head to toes, super tall and powerful. ..atrocious really! Was, because when I met him the accident already changed him. Craig was a motor biker and had a horrible accident a year before we met. He lost completely his short-term memory. His partner was a lady in a wheelchair: he had the body, she had the brain! It’s quite interesting how our brains work. Craig remembered the years when he served in a gang, his first love when he was just a teenager, but couldn’t remember what he eat five minutes before the training. He  couldn’t memorize names either, so the social worker advised me to repeat my name every few minutes. I told mine only once and he never forgot it. He also remembered my kids’ names, and what color roses I like. For Craig, his training sessions were the peak of his weeks and the chats we had in between the sets were proofs that he was still alive and somebody acknowledged his existence. He was so grateful that I used to drive him home after training  because we were able to talk more. I’ve done it really because I knew that he lost his driver license forever, he had to walk everywhere and he used to get lost. I signed a year contract with ACC to train Craig. That’s all. I’ve done my job and I thought that this was it. But no, two years later, I still receive birthdays cards from Craig. Not just that he remembered my name…he hasn’t forgotten my address either. Huge philosophy about the human brain! The subconscious should keep hidden all the bad memories, helping us live in the seventh heaven. This… in a perfect world with perfect people and perfect brains. From a medical point of view, Craig is a guy with no hypothalamus function, with short time complete memory loss, with all sorts of other consequences of an unfortunate accident. A mess? Not really, because Craig’s mind, as twisted as it is, has the ability to block the conscious, allowing his subconscious to take over. He remembers only what he wants to and what has meaning to him! In a perfect world, he would have been a worshiped leader…in this one.... he is just a case! :)