Post by Spaced Out Jay on Mar 19, 2017 1:00:55 GMT
MEANING.
We were all born into the world as confused and vulnerable little carbon based lifeforms. Our futures were uncertain and the concept of our lives having ‘meaning’ is distant and obscure. Born as small children, we were almost protected from the fact that we would eventually spend the remainder of our lifetimes attempting to find meaning.
Some of us would turn towards money and success as our meaning. Some would turn towards faith. Some wouldn’t find meaning until the bitter end. Some plain never would.
To tell JJ Young’s story, the history needs to be skipped, for the most part, because it’s not that important. The takeaway here is that he’s on a search for meaning.
This meaning he couldn’t find in high school or college sports. The same meaning he couldn’t find in the military. Then, when he came home to find both of his parents had passed on, he took a significant step backwards in finding this meaning. So far back, that he questioned his very existence.
His first night home, hours after the remembrance for his parents, JJ found himself grappling with emotions he felt needed to be suppressed. Grief, sorrow, denial, and anger all seemed to mix together at once and he couldn’t seem to sort it out inside his head.
With a dark Philadelphia night over his head, JJ had one last conversation with his folks.
He was convinced that he had days, months, even years to change his relationship with his parents. He knew the day would come when he’d stop taking them for granted. He remembered back to the days when they encouraged him to be a better person and he didn’t want to hear it. He ran from them and he knew it.
He thought he could do better on his own and felt foolish for trying to find answers out in the sandbox that was the Middle East. Yes, foolish and alone. All he wanted to do was get out of the United States, but as soon as he was in the thick of it, all he wanted to do was get back home.
JJ didn’t know what to do.
The night’s sky didn’t give him any answers. He felt that question cropping up in his mind and he couldn’t ignore it. He didn’t know why he was still tied to the earth. Nor did he know what he would be remembered for. He convinced himself that no one would care if he died. Told himself that no one would shed a tear.
JJ wouldn’t shed a tear, so why would anyone else?
He thought about how his mom used to tell him how special he was and he hated the fact that he “sprung some Tyler Durden shit” on her by retorting that he wasn’t special.
JJ realized that he was special to her and that should have been good enough.
He asked the night sky why being special to his mom wasn’t good enough.
There wouldn’t be any answers for JJ that night.
JJ would immerse himself in routine. He made sure his sisters got out the door for school in the morning with lunches. He went and got himself a job. There would be no free rides. The insurance money would be enough to pay off debt and pay off the family home, but very little more.
Soon he found himself caught up in the world of time clocks and check stubs and he really lost track of what little meaning he thought he had found in his life. Life behind a counter was a lot different than it was behind a barricade. Things changed when you were dodging your boss instead of bullets. The respect he was given in the Army was non existent in mainstream society. That fact set in really quickly.
None of it felt right.
What little meaning he had left, he saw in the eyes of his sisters as he gazed across the dinner table at them. Neither of them were finished with High School and both really needed him. He wasn’t obvious about it, but he needed them too.
Suddenly, JJ had to care. He had to drop that “don’t give a fuck” act and walk the line. Simple things too--he had to ask his youngest sister if she had finished her homework. He had to check in with his other sister to make sure she wasn’t hanging out with the wrong crowd.
The wrong crowd. Yes. JJ’s old crowd.
For the better part of a year, JJ took care of his sisters and worked jobs he wasn’t interested in that didn’t test him mentally or physically. At night he’d come home and he’d retreat to his father’s old office and he’d sit at his father’s desk and just wait for the world to stop moving.
The office still smelled like his father’s cologne and somehow it put JJ at ease.
He’d tell his father things, like how well his girls were doing. He’d tell him about their good grades and how they were putting one foot in front of the other. He’d tell his father that he’d be proud of them.
Then JJ would admit that he had no idea what he was doing or where he was going.
One of these same nights, JJ was going through his father’s desk and unearthed a framed photograph of his father when he was much younger. The picture showed his father standing alongside another man, one JJ didn’t recognize. The caption beneath it read “Laurence Young & T.C. Bragg, Bragg Gym.”
Along with the picture, JJ found information relating to his father’s early history in fighting. JJ learned that his father, at a young age, had an interest in Mixed Martial Arts and had a respectable record to go with it. Ultimately, thanks to some correspondence he found, JJ surmised that his own birth would drive his father away from the sport to find a more stable job to help support what would become five person household.
Meaning.
JJ found out that his father’s life quickly became a struggle to keep a family afloat and three children and his wife happy. He lost touch with his dreams, it seemed, and gave up his potential destiny of being a fighter. At that thought, JJ felt guilty. He realized that his father had given up a big part of himself to make sure that his children would be able to thrive.
Months passed and JJ thought about what his father had given up and he thought about how crushing it would be if his father gave his dreams up just so JJ could walk the same path.
Guilt lurked in JJ’s shadow.
JJ knew his mother had given up on some dreams as well to ensure her children would lead happy lives. His imagination raced as he remembered all the different pursuits she spoke of. The guilt mounted. JJ felt a hole in his heart and a weight in his throat knowing that he had taken the sacrifices of his parents for granted.
JJ had no one to confide in.
Soon JJ would augment his route home from work to take him past the Bragg Gym. He wanted to understand what it meant to his father, but didn’t know where to begin. He’d drive past every time and he wouldn’t stop. He’d always tell himself that dinenr wasn’t going to make itself, so he had to get home.
JJ the Chef.
JJ had lost direction and soon his life became almost blind and predictable routine. He stopped venturing into his father’s office and stopped thinking about the fighting and the dreams. He decided that the only meaning to be found in his life was the fact that his sisters had come to depend on him. He hoped that would be enough. He believed that if not for them, he’d have little reason to go on. He had fallen into a deep hole from which he couldn’t rationalize escaping.
JJ had become lost.
He had compartmentalized his grief just like he had done with his experience in the sandbox. He knew he had no one to confide in and imagined that no one would really care to hear about it. Outwardly, he represented the happy go lucky guy he’d always been known as. Internally, he imagined himself a steel box which could be easily sterilized with the right amount of what he’d come to recognize as denial. He didn’t want to go through the pain and sorrow knew would come if he finally accepted that his world had permanently changed.
He found himself driving past the Bragg Gym again, wondering what he’d find inside. He parked on the curb some nights and closed his eyes and imagined what it must have been like when his father was young and his life was out in front of him. He wondered if his dad would have been a big name or possibly would have done more with his life, if he hadn’t ended up with kids.
Sometimes JJ wondered if all the stress and late nights lead to his father’s cancer.
JJ the toxic thinker. JJ the life waster.
Occasionally, JJ would stop by the church he knew as a child and would consider going inside. He knew that he could find someone who would listen to him, but he couldn’t push himself to talk about it. He felt like it would weaken him to open up about how twisted up he had become inside. He didn’t want to allow the emotions out and he didn’t want to allow the reality in. He’d just grit his teeth and put the church in his rearview.
Some nights JJ would find himself talking to God. He wouldn’t demand answers, but he’d ask for help in figuring out what he needed to do next. The guilt he felt was nearly crippling and all he could really handle was the routine he had grown accustomed to. Anything outside of that routine was too much for him. He couldn’t bring himself to face anything more.
God’s answers wouldn’t be as obvious as JJ needed them to be.
JJ just wished that he could hear from his mother and his father one last time. He needed to know that he hadn’t kept them both from living the lives they wanted to live. He needed to know that it wasn’t all a mistake, because that’s what it felt like.
Sometimes JJ’s mind would take him back to the sandbox and he’d feel the cold metal of his firearm in his hands. He’d think about what it felt like to watch his friends fall around him. He’d force himself to accept that they were doing it for God and Country. It was the only way he could handle it, but he never fully bought into it.
Deep down, he decided that, just like his parents, those friends of his had died for very little.
JJ decided that life was just a series of sad events and loss that could not be overcome.
When JJ would get really low, he’d force himself to remember the quote from General Patton. He’d say it out loud.
“The measure of success is how high you bounce after hitting rock bottom.”
Sometimes even the quote didn’t help.
JJ gained the courage to go back into his father’s office and searched through his father’s files. He needed to find something--some proof that his father was happy. He couldn’t take it anymore. It took a while, but eventually JJ unearthed some correspondence between his mother and father. The letters that caught his eye were from a period of time when his father was enrolled at Penn State and his mother was six months pregnant in Philladelphia.
There was one letter in particular that caught JJ’s eye. It was from his father to his mother. In part of the letter, his father wrote, “I’m really looking forward to seeing you at Thanksgiving. My stomach is almost as eager for a homecooked meal as I am to hold you again in my arms. It’s been too long, even if it has only been a couple months. Still. My goodness. Too damn long. Oh, by the way, I had a random spark the other night, thinking about Grandpa. If we have a boy, at least, what would you think about naming him John James? I think Grandpa would like that. I am still like Melody for a girl, but I can’t help myself. I think it’s going to be a boy. Either way, I am so excited to embark on this journey with you. You know the one filled with diapers and sleepless nights? Yes. Mama told me all about it. Haha.”
JJ felt a tear run down his cheek as he poured over the letter--the first tear he’d let loose since the beginning. His hands shook as he wiped the tear away and he felt the guilt he had been carrying around slowly give way for a feeling of silliness. Right then and there it dawned on him that they hadn’t given anything up. JJ felt a genuine smile overtake his lips and let tears roll through laughter.
JJ’s parents found great meaning in having three children. Three children who would one day take on the world. This didn’t take anything from his parents, it only added towards two lives full of struggles, stress, worry, but ultimately, love and happiness.
JJ couldn’t ignore the bittersweet nature of it, but he realized that he needed to get back into the world and find meaning--before it was too late.
Barely a week later, JJ walked into Bragg Gym for the first time.
We were all born into the world as confused and vulnerable little carbon based lifeforms. Our futures were uncertain and the concept of our lives having ‘meaning’ is distant and obscure. Born as small children, we were almost protected from the fact that we would eventually spend the remainder of our lifetimes attempting to find meaning.
Some of us would turn towards money and success as our meaning. Some would turn towards faith. Some wouldn’t find meaning until the bitter end. Some plain never would.
To tell JJ Young’s story, the history needs to be skipped, for the most part, because it’s not that important. The takeaway here is that he’s on a search for meaning.
This meaning he couldn’t find in high school or college sports. The same meaning he couldn’t find in the military. Then, when he came home to find both of his parents had passed on, he took a significant step backwards in finding this meaning. So far back, that he questioned his very existence.
His first night home, hours after the remembrance for his parents, JJ found himself grappling with emotions he felt needed to be suppressed. Grief, sorrow, denial, and anger all seemed to mix together at once and he couldn’t seem to sort it out inside his head.
With a dark Philadelphia night over his head, JJ had one last conversation with his folks.
He was convinced that he had days, months, even years to change his relationship with his parents. He knew the day would come when he’d stop taking them for granted. He remembered back to the days when they encouraged him to be a better person and he didn’t want to hear it. He ran from them and he knew it.
He thought he could do better on his own and felt foolish for trying to find answers out in the sandbox that was the Middle East. Yes, foolish and alone. All he wanted to do was get out of the United States, but as soon as he was in the thick of it, all he wanted to do was get back home.
JJ didn’t know what to do.
The night’s sky didn’t give him any answers. He felt that question cropping up in his mind and he couldn’t ignore it. He didn’t know why he was still tied to the earth. Nor did he know what he would be remembered for. He convinced himself that no one would care if he died. Told himself that no one would shed a tear.
JJ wouldn’t shed a tear, so why would anyone else?
He thought about how his mom used to tell him how special he was and he hated the fact that he “sprung some Tyler Durden shit” on her by retorting that he wasn’t special.
JJ realized that he was special to her and that should have been good enough.
He asked the night sky why being special to his mom wasn’t good enough.
There wouldn’t be any answers for JJ that night.
JJ would immerse himself in routine. He made sure his sisters got out the door for school in the morning with lunches. He went and got himself a job. There would be no free rides. The insurance money would be enough to pay off debt and pay off the family home, but very little more.
Soon he found himself caught up in the world of time clocks and check stubs and he really lost track of what little meaning he thought he had found in his life. Life behind a counter was a lot different than it was behind a barricade. Things changed when you were dodging your boss instead of bullets. The respect he was given in the Army was non existent in mainstream society. That fact set in really quickly.
None of it felt right.
What little meaning he had left, he saw in the eyes of his sisters as he gazed across the dinner table at them. Neither of them were finished with High School and both really needed him. He wasn’t obvious about it, but he needed them too.
Suddenly, JJ had to care. He had to drop that “don’t give a fuck” act and walk the line. Simple things too--he had to ask his youngest sister if she had finished her homework. He had to check in with his other sister to make sure she wasn’t hanging out with the wrong crowd.
The wrong crowd. Yes. JJ’s old crowd.
For the better part of a year, JJ took care of his sisters and worked jobs he wasn’t interested in that didn’t test him mentally or physically. At night he’d come home and he’d retreat to his father’s old office and he’d sit at his father’s desk and just wait for the world to stop moving.
The office still smelled like his father’s cologne and somehow it put JJ at ease.
He’d tell his father things, like how well his girls were doing. He’d tell him about their good grades and how they were putting one foot in front of the other. He’d tell his father that he’d be proud of them.
Then JJ would admit that he had no idea what he was doing or where he was going.
One of these same nights, JJ was going through his father’s desk and unearthed a framed photograph of his father when he was much younger. The picture showed his father standing alongside another man, one JJ didn’t recognize. The caption beneath it read “Laurence Young & T.C. Bragg, Bragg Gym.”
Along with the picture, JJ found information relating to his father’s early history in fighting. JJ learned that his father, at a young age, had an interest in Mixed Martial Arts and had a respectable record to go with it. Ultimately, thanks to some correspondence he found, JJ surmised that his own birth would drive his father away from the sport to find a more stable job to help support what would become five person household.
Meaning.
JJ found out that his father’s life quickly became a struggle to keep a family afloat and three children and his wife happy. He lost touch with his dreams, it seemed, and gave up his potential destiny of being a fighter. At that thought, JJ felt guilty. He realized that his father had given up a big part of himself to make sure that his children would be able to thrive.
Months passed and JJ thought about what his father had given up and he thought about how crushing it would be if his father gave his dreams up just so JJ could walk the same path.
Guilt lurked in JJ’s shadow.
JJ knew his mother had given up on some dreams as well to ensure her children would lead happy lives. His imagination raced as he remembered all the different pursuits she spoke of. The guilt mounted. JJ felt a hole in his heart and a weight in his throat knowing that he had taken the sacrifices of his parents for granted.
JJ had no one to confide in.
Soon JJ would augment his route home from work to take him past the Bragg Gym. He wanted to understand what it meant to his father, but didn’t know where to begin. He’d drive past every time and he wouldn’t stop. He’d always tell himself that dinenr wasn’t going to make itself, so he had to get home.
JJ the Chef.
JJ had lost direction and soon his life became almost blind and predictable routine. He stopped venturing into his father’s office and stopped thinking about the fighting and the dreams. He decided that the only meaning to be found in his life was the fact that his sisters had come to depend on him. He hoped that would be enough. He believed that if not for them, he’d have little reason to go on. He had fallen into a deep hole from which he couldn’t rationalize escaping.
JJ had become lost.
He had compartmentalized his grief just like he had done with his experience in the sandbox. He knew he had no one to confide in and imagined that no one would really care to hear about it. Outwardly, he represented the happy go lucky guy he’d always been known as. Internally, he imagined himself a steel box which could be easily sterilized with the right amount of what he’d come to recognize as denial. He didn’t want to go through the pain and sorrow knew would come if he finally accepted that his world had permanently changed.
He found himself driving past the Bragg Gym again, wondering what he’d find inside. He parked on the curb some nights and closed his eyes and imagined what it must have been like when his father was young and his life was out in front of him. He wondered if his dad would have been a big name or possibly would have done more with his life, if he hadn’t ended up with kids.
Sometimes JJ wondered if all the stress and late nights lead to his father’s cancer.
JJ the toxic thinker. JJ the life waster.
Occasionally, JJ would stop by the church he knew as a child and would consider going inside. He knew that he could find someone who would listen to him, but he couldn’t push himself to talk about it. He felt like it would weaken him to open up about how twisted up he had become inside. He didn’t want to allow the emotions out and he didn’t want to allow the reality in. He’d just grit his teeth and put the church in his rearview.
Some nights JJ would find himself talking to God. He wouldn’t demand answers, but he’d ask for help in figuring out what he needed to do next. The guilt he felt was nearly crippling and all he could really handle was the routine he had grown accustomed to. Anything outside of that routine was too much for him. He couldn’t bring himself to face anything more.
God’s answers wouldn’t be as obvious as JJ needed them to be.
JJ just wished that he could hear from his mother and his father one last time. He needed to know that he hadn’t kept them both from living the lives they wanted to live. He needed to know that it wasn’t all a mistake, because that’s what it felt like.
Sometimes JJ’s mind would take him back to the sandbox and he’d feel the cold metal of his firearm in his hands. He’d think about what it felt like to watch his friends fall around him. He’d force himself to accept that they were doing it for God and Country. It was the only way he could handle it, but he never fully bought into it.
Deep down, he decided that, just like his parents, those friends of his had died for very little.
JJ decided that life was just a series of sad events and loss that could not be overcome.
When JJ would get really low, he’d force himself to remember the quote from General Patton. He’d say it out loud.
“The measure of success is how high you bounce after hitting rock bottom.”
Sometimes even the quote didn’t help.
JJ gained the courage to go back into his father’s office and searched through his father’s files. He needed to find something--some proof that his father was happy. He couldn’t take it anymore. It took a while, but eventually JJ unearthed some correspondence between his mother and father. The letters that caught his eye were from a period of time when his father was enrolled at Penn State and his mother was six months pregnant in Philladelphia.
There was one letter in particular that caught JJ’s eye. It was from his father to his mother. In part of the letter, his father wrote, “I’m really looking forward to seeing you at Thanksgiving. My stomach is almost as eager for a homecooked meal as I am to hold you again in my arms. It’s been too long, even if it has only been a couple months. Still. My goodness. Too damn long. Oh, by the way, I had a random spark the other night, thinking about Grandpa. If we have a boy, at least, what would you think about naming him John James? I think Grandpa would like that. I am still like Melody for a girl, but I can’t help myself. I think it’s going to be a boy. Either way, I am so excited to embark on this journey with you. You know the one filled with diapers and sleepless nights? Yes. Mama told me all about it. Haha.”
JJ felt a tear run down his cheek as he poured over the letter--the first tear he’d let loose since the beginning. His hands shook as he wiped the tear away and he felt the guilt he had been carrying around slowly give way for a feeling of silliness. Right then and there it dawned on him that they hadn’t given anything up. JJ felt a genuine smile overtake his lips and let tears roll through laughter.
JJ’s parents found great meaning in having three children. Three children who would one day take on the world. This didn’t take anything from his parents, it only added towards two lives full of struggles, stress, worry, but ultimately, love and happiness.
JJ couldn’t ignore the bittersweet nature of it, but he realized that he needed to get back into the world and find meaning--before it was too late.
Barely a week later, JJ walked into Bragg Gym for the first time.
