I often stop and contemplate the course of life as I get older. At 38 now, I am starting to understand many of the things my own father taught me or otherwise held to be true, at which I balked back in the day. It’s only now that I realize that I was the moron and that my old man was right on the money.
Take fishing for example. As a youth, I held fishing to be the most boring activity on Earth, right next to golf. Well, I still hold golf to be boring as hell, but fishing has taken on a whole new dimension for me. My Dad used to go out fishing once a week regularly, to totally cast off all the baggage and stress of the work he was involved in. It was his moment to “zone out” and just “be”.
How many people today can just sit there and do nothing? Nothing at all? I’m not talking about sitting idly and skimming through messages on your cell phone to kill time, I’m talking about total immersion into nothingness. I bet you’d have more luck finding a needle in a proverbial haystack than finding serenity of the kind that I’m referring to.
Fishing with my Dad in Ontario, September 2009
This past weekend I spent some time out in a row boat, just casting a line and staring at the water. It’s therapeutic, I tell you. I was on a somewhat remote island with my girl, camping out and totally “dropping out” of all the bullshit of modern society for all intents and purposes. On that lake, I understood my Dad a whole lot better, and how fishing throughout the ages has been a getaway for men from all cultures. No computers, no TV, no magazines, no traffic, no electronic sounds, no hurry, no stress, no bullshit.
The one thing that I never grow tired of is nostalgia. I was born in ’73, brought up in the 80’s and I remain an 80’s kid to this day. My critical development took place in the 80’s. The 90’s may as well have never happened in my opinion, except for my initiation into the world of pro wrestling as an active talent. Just like every generation before me, I totally understand those who say that things were better back in their day. Those who grew up with Elvis will always hold his music to the best there is. Those who grew up on Metallica will always hold their classic album(s) to be the epitome of music. Those who now grow up on Katy Perry will come to reminisce of her pop as the best music in the world when they are older too. For me, I’ll always owe my musical roots to Motley Crue.
I grew up on movie icons like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, and I still watch the first Terminator and Rambo: First Blood with a fond warmth in my heart. I still hold 80’s pro wrestling, especially from the Crockett era of the NWA and Bill Watts’ UWF to be the best wrestling in the world. I still warmly recall watching on in rabid fascination as Gino Brito’s International Wrestling from Montreal came to Thunder Bay, Ontario at the Fort William Gardens featuring stars like Dan Kroffat, Steve Strong and Abdullah the Butcher. I still at times transpose back to a simpler time of Marvel Comic books featuring childhood heroes of mine like The Incredible Hulk and Conan the Barbarian. As an adult, I have even bought back some of the comics that I used to own as a kid. Nostalgic? Hell, yes.
So yeah, as I get older and wiser I learn to appreciate the lessons and truth that my parents taught me. Not that they were right 100% of the time, but then again who is? They were right enough of the time, and that is good enough for me.
In closing, I hate to tunnelvision but I recall the words of an elderly man just before his time was up: “Just as you get to understand something about this life, it’s time to leave.”
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately in terms of modern food and the constitution thereof. It’s no secret that over the course of the past 10 years our world’s food production has undergone a tumultuous change in the face of increasing supply and demand.
Genetically manipulated food production is the norm of the day. Sadly enough, that means less substance and more volume to fill up your gullet. When raw food products like vegetables and fruits are made nutritionally deficient, our bodies get fooled and we eat more bulk to make up for the empty feeling. Going organic means spending a hefty dime more that most people simply cannot afford the luxury of, even though it can be argued that eating organic foods only would most likely equal eating less per serving because you’d get filled up faster with more substance per food article ingested.
I have personally made a life choice to buy organic foods whenever my budget allows a bit of leeway, which believe me is not often. That said, this past week I bought myself 3kg of pure stock bull meat, 5kg of cow’s intestines including tongue, liver and heart and ground lamb straight off of a rural farm. Truth be told, if I could buy all of my food produce straight from a farm I would do so. Sometimes circumstances and one’s budget don’t allow for such, but nonetheless making the choice to do so whenever possible is a step in right direction for one’s overall health.
No bullshit, know what you are putting on your plate!
I am certain that the decline in overall health in the western world is by and in large due to the nutritional deficiencies of our food. The astounding increase in various diseases over the western hemisphere should have everyone on notice, but for some strange reason most people are willfully ignorant. A staunch bitchslap upside the head of our society is direly needed to wake the slumbering masses up to the reality that by the time the 30-somethings out there get around to retirement, their spines and innards will be gelatin unless something changes – BIG TIME.
Don’t be duped, if there is one thing that each and every one of us should invest in, it’s our health. To quote Brad Pitt from the movie Fight Club, “You are not your fucking khakis”. All of the “stuff” won’t amass to a damn thing if your health goes. So the smart ones out there will put their health first before they lay any money down for material goods of any kind.
Mind, body, spirit: that is what we are. No way around it, no denying the facts.
If you want to be well, you must resolve to pay the price. There ain’t a fucking Camarro in the world that is going to compensate for diabetes or for the loss of a bodily organ. We can cross the finish line of this race of life as a broken, heaving mass, or as a winner who finishes the race and crosses the finish line at the end with their heads held high.
Me personally, I’d rather resolve to pay the price to be a winner because life is short and as Brad Pitt once again coined in Fight Club, “It’s ending one minute at a time”.
Due to the enormous tragedy that has hit Japan over the past few days, both in terms of the 8.9 scale earthquake and the nuclear reactor ruptures at Fukushima, the SMASH wrestling organization that I wrestle for had to cancel their first anniversary show, SMASH.15 on March 18. The new date has been rescheduled for March 31, 2011 at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo.
Obviously, there is much disarray and rebuilding to be done, and everything else takes a backseat to the tragedy that has occurred. I can only pray that my friends and comrades are alright, and in due season SMASH will resume its wrestling schedule.
In the meantime, please support the fine people of Japan however you can. Soudesune.
I’d like to extend my heartfelt condolences to the Japanese people, many of which enthusiastically support me as I compete for Japan’s SMASH wrestling organization, in their time of duress and trial after yesterday’s powerful earthquake. My prayers go out to you, and to the many friends that I have made in your great country.
I can honestly say that the most passionate wrestling fans in the world are found in Japan. Over 2010, the wrestling fans nationwide across Japan took StarBuck into their hearts, and even voted me amongst the top 5 foreign stars in their country in the wrestling industry. On several occasions, the Japanese wrestling fans have presented me with personal gifts, from Katana swords to artwork to food products, and this is something that I will never forget. I am completely sincere when I say that I truly love the Japanese wrestling fans, because they have showed so much love to me.
Stand strong, Japan! Take heart and persevere, because that is what winners are made of.
I have to admit something. I’m not very in-tune with what’s happening in the world. The first time I heard that a guy named Obama was running for US President, I asked ”Obama who?”, wondering if some Arab was running for office. Sounds funny, doesn’t it?
Fact is, I have totally shut myself out of the mainstream media and happenings in pop culture across the board – and there is a reason to that. I find that it adds nothing to my life, offers nothing of personal value, nor does it stimulate me at all in a positive manner.
Look at the Swine Flu H1N1 ”epidemic” – and consider that no one even talks about it anymore! Wasn’t that like current just yesterday? The medicinal drug industry sold you a sales pitch and you bought it, just like the old PT Barnum addage ”never give a sucker an even break”. Now families who took the antedote to the Swine Flu face a strong probability of narcolepsia showing up. I hear cash registers singing along to the next ”cure” all the while.
By the way, have y’all ever considered that the drug industry is one of the main financial monoliths in the world, one which world governments borrow money from, increasing their national debts? Anyone remember the SARS epidemic? Whatever happened, huh? Same coming of the same old cavalry, dressed up in a different cloak of charade.
All across the board on so many fronts, we’ve been duped. We’ve been suckered in, and we’ve played the role of the brainless fool.
But who is behind this mess? I mean right at the top, on the peak of the mountain? Who is desensitizing the masses in a clear ploy to run their own agenda through? Who is responsible for foiling all of us hapless sheep? Do we even want to know, or is the power of fear so great that we would rather play along and let sleeping dogs lie?
From food addatives labelled E-something to vaccinations that break down your own biological immune system to genetically manipulated food production to the ”meat of the matter” that the media focuses on – we are living in a state of coma. And those on top of the mountain cashing in are MAKING SURE we stay in a state of coma.
Chemical food addatives are simply not made for the body, proven by the immense amount of burgeoning allergies and sicknesses, especially across the free world. Consider the sheer amount of drugs being sold to ”help” the symptoms, and it translates into huge business. Speaking of addatives and manipulated food products, nowadays it takes three times as long for carcasses to rot in the cemetary, which really says something and makes you wonder what all that crap is doing to your body while you still live!
The human immune system was designed to create a counter for oncoming viruses and infections, and it cannot function as designed if constantly fed foreign code that mixes up the signals and shuts off certain internal functions.
Want a definitive example? Consider the steroid testosterone, which the body produces as the dominant male sex hormone, which is also found in women at 1/10 of the rate in men. Synthetic testosterone tells one’s body to shut down natural testosterone production because an outside source is feeding the machine.
On another front, take into consideration kids whose parents are overtly sanitary-conscious. Many of these kids are sicker than proverbial dogs because their immune system never gets built up. When I was a kid, heck, I’d eat rocks! Consider that only in the last century have we come up with chemical cleaning aides and how long has the flushable toilet been around anyway?
Biologically manipulated food is another matter altogether, where nutritional deficiency is the key word of the day. In past times, nomads would cultivate a certain spot of land until the soil would no longer produce as it should. They knew it was time to move on to a new patch of farming area and let the land heal itself. Our soil has been depleted of nutrients a long, long time ago, and we still keep churning out ”food” with the help of chemical addatives, pesticides and fertilizers. Everything in the eco-system serves a purpose folks, even those damn worms and bugs.
And then we have the manipulated message sent by the mass media at large, which is orienteered to make you NOT think. It’s quite literally a case of you zoning out and tuning in – almost akin to meditation and clearing the mind – soaking in the message of the boob tube as you immerse yourself in the created distraction. The people behind the curtain know this and they do not want you to think on your own, folks. They know that if they manage to keep you distracted with all forms of clatter and clutter, no matter the form in which you consume it – through the eyes, ears, nose or mouth – you will play along in the grand scheme just fine. Above all, it’s important to keep you ENTERTAINED, folks. No substance, no true grit. And as we speak of entertaiment I bring back to mind the words of PT Barnum aforementioned, and no one wants to be a sucker – do they?
Point blank, I have lived for 14.5 years in Europe, where the media and information stream carries a considerably different slant, angle and tone as compared to the North American media stream. All you need to see my point is watching or reading news broadcasts from various countries and you will get a different slant from each outlet. Especially in the area of world politics where personal vested interests – and the financial backing of those behind the curtain – play into how the stories are portrayed to the public, you will be fed a different version of the ”truth” and ”facts” depending on your demographic and cultural area. That, folks, is called manipulation.
All of this brings to mind the old Greek ideology of the Chain of Being. If you take one link out of the great chain, chaos ensues and it falls apart. This equally brings to mind the words of Christ, ”You will know the tree by the fruit that it bears”, and that said, our society is sick sick sick – and the downward spiral seems be accelerating.
I quote the words of Brad Pitt in the pivotal movie Fight Club, which carried a prolific message overall, ”We spend our lives working jobs that we hate to but sh*t that we don’t need”.
Pitt played the enlightened half of the split personality of the fed up rat race slave Edward Norton in that film, and boy did they ever hit the nail on its proverbial head. Pitt lived in a beated down old, abandoned house in the middle of an industrial area, where the basement flooded and the roof dripped. Norton lived in a posh apartment with all the luxuries of life, before he blew it sky high in his internal emptiness. Check that flick out, folks – and it’s not just entertainment, it’s a definitive eye-opener with a surprising amount of substance.
It’s time to call for a personal revolution. Turn off the TV. Turn off the radio. Turn off the Internet. Don’t pick up the newspaper. It’s time to cleanse the mind, body and soul. Get out of the house, out of the office, and get active and make a difference out there. Moreso, start being proactive, start contributing to your fellow man and you will get more out of this life – guarandamnteed.
When you get out of saturating, pouring rain you will start to see things from a totally new perspective. Above all, you will start seeing things for what they truly are – without the window-dressing and deceitful hype.
You have got to recognize the enemy – the one that keeps you from a quality life that has meaning and substance. And with one life to live there is no time to waste.
I recently had a very interesting conversation with a friend about the impact of Facebook on people’s lives, and she really had a poignant criticism when she surmised, “If someone asks you what you spent the last five years of your life doing, as in the majority of the time, it would really be sad if you had to admit you spent it on Facebook.”
I have to absolutely agree.
Our generation and society at large is hooked on Facebook, and hell, you’ll even find a link to this article on the said media. A very good friend of mine recently stated that Facebook has become a whole independent Internet inside of the Internet. Scary thought, actually.
Think about this: you wake up in the morning, you open your computer and log on to Facebook. You get to work and open up Facebook, and you’re on it all damn day at your employers’ expense. You get home in the evening, and you log on to Facebook again.
A life spent on the Internet is not a life worth living, period. Are you living, or are you virtually alive? There is a world of difference there, folks.
It’s sadder than sad to see some people completely live their lives through the Internet. Relationships are built and destroyed on Facebook, from idiotic misunderstandings of context regarding the written word to jealousy over “friends” of the opposite gender.
It’s absolutely numbing to think how much the Internet at large controls peoples’ lives in general, actually. Instead of investing time in one’s own relationships or hobbies where you actually have to DO something and produce something worthwhile, the Internet offers an easy way out, where you can just drift in cyberspace and get lost in a virtual world full of nothing that will make your life better in the big picture.
Some people say, “I use to Internet as a resource for information,” – yeah, maybe 10% of your time in cyberspace tops. The rest of the time is spent reacting to emails, restlessly surfing and switching between websites full of entertainment of whatever sort, and numbingly wondering what site you should check out next, so as to kill your increasing boredom?
Is that YOU?
Get a LIFE!
Plain and simple, get off the Internet and start living. Start doing old school stuff like hiking, camping out, enjoying nature, sports, cooking, crafts, or whatever actually propels you into becoming a better, more complete and satisfied person.
I made the choice to restrict time spent on the Internet, because I found that my life was just wasting away one minute at a time out in cyberspace, and I wasn’t getting anything worthwhile in return. Hey, I thank God every day for being able to go out there and make my dreams reality. That is exactly what I’m doing, when I leave tomorrow to fly out to Japan to wrestle in the top matches of the SMASH promotion’s cards in Tokyo and Osaka. Life is all about the experiences, and you’ll have none of those on the Internet, unless you get caught in Internet fraud or something similar.
All you’ve got is one shot at glory, one life to live. After that, it’s too late for regrets.
It’s funny, that wherever I travel around the world in my pro wrestling or musical exploits, I hear folks from time to time gripe and lambaste the United States of America.
How, I ain’t American, and I’m not a sympathizer to their cause, but the USA does produce a lot of stuff that the rest of the world enjoys (albeit needlessly) at large. From Nike shoes to Adidas sportswear to Hollywood films to Coca-Cola, the world LOVES to buy American.
As a matter of fact, anyone who likes to spit in America’s direction should look into their own wardrobe and lifestyle, the cluster of STUFF that they own, and see what all there is directly linkable to America. The hypocrites can then raise their hands, or leave them at their sides in shame, realizing that indeed – nearly everyone is guilty in some form or fashion, even in this vein.
Western culture is largely supported by consumerism, and were it not so, our western world would collapse. You are brainwashed to go out there buy shit that you don’t need, which is an undeniable fact. Regardless of whether a pair of shoes were to have the same exact attributes as a pair of Nike’s, the majority of people would go with the brand name, which they have been educated to buy. In short, people associate brand names, marketed with glitz and glamor, as status symbols. And this is where the joke becomes lame.
Since when did a person’s status become reliant upon external, material items? Is the world so blind, that they are unable to see beyond their chosen window dressing? Can’t see the forest from the trees, is that it?
Let me quote some scripture from the second half of 1 Samuel 16:7, if anyone has ears to hear: “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
But isn’t that so true and indicative of us as people? We keep on measuring people by external merits, all too ready to draw conclusions about things we know nothing of. As if the STUFF around you has any bearing on your value as a human being and your integrity as a person.
Yet, I still am willing to bet that the next time you go and buy something, especially items which in truth are vain and frivolous, you will be looking at the label to go with what you perceive as value. Because you have been schooled to do so.
Let me throw a poignant thought at you: many people today are more stressed out than ever before by the constant demands of work life, the reduced benefits, the growing workload and the endless hurry. You have GOT to get shit done, or you will risk being out on your ass in no time flat. You have GOT to produce results in the minimal time allotted to you or they will find someone younger and hungrier to take your spot on that grand Ferris Wheel you call your job.
Is that YOU?
If so, rest assured that you are part of a list of astronomically climbing numbers of people, who are not living their lives anymore. No, they’re performing their lives, waiting for 65 to hit, so they can finally start “living” and enjoy some semblance of personal freedom in the final quarter of mortality. What a hopeless, bleak reality.
The rat race spares no one. In Finland alone, countless folks live only on the weekends and for the weekends. Those weekends are spent in an alcohol-induced coma, a reflection of their inability to cope with their current reality which screams loud and clear that they have no life. They are part of the living dead, breathing but just barely alive. They are sick – mentally, physically and spiritually – and they continue to sell their souls for economic gain, so that they might maintain a self-orchestrated lifestyle that demands a set standard to be upkept.
The sheer amount of pharmaceutical drugs produced which are used to specifically cater to the symptoms of the stressed person are astronomical. As we all should know by now, the three biggest industries that big government and different countries lend money from are: 1) the weapons industry, 2) the drug trade and 3) pharmaceutical monoliths. Maybe we can start adding the porn industry to that list, considering its boom worldwide in the past decade also.
Just think: you are being KEPT sick by your society. This society makes you sick through stress, and makes sure you STAY sick to ensure you generate money for the system. You are expected to be a good, little soldier and spill all of your lifeblood for the “greater good”. Screw you and your personal wellbeing, you should have realized by now – IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU! It never has been. Nor will it ever be.
So let me ask you: are you content with a life of survival – just barely alive so that you can perform your jobs and sacrifice over half of your waking hours a day to someone else’s agenda, being paid to exhaust your personal resources for someone else – or would you rather opt to actually LIVE your life? I mean LIVE, as in feeling like you are ALIVE, because as Tyler Durden said in the movie Fight Club (1999): “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.”
As a personal trainer, I have heard so many people state the same thing: they have no time to look after their personal health and fitness. The demands of everyday life are too much, and those demands require all of the time that they have before clocking in for the night. It’s not just their eight hours a day building someone else’s agenda, it’s the time they must spend getting to and from work, plus the time they must spend preparing for work. Take your 24 hours and deduct the aforementioned time, then deduct the time you must spend with compulsory issues like housework, servicing the kids, paying your bills and planning your next two week vacation to get away from it all and what do you have left for YOURSELF?
Well, you sure as hell don’t have TIME, do you? No, instead you’ve got stress. More stress on top of your work stress to add up to a life of stress, which you try to unravel on the weekends, only to perform and do it all over again on Monday. Sound like a life worth living?
Not to me.
I’ve gone the other route. I’ve chosen to be King of Gypsies, like a modern-day Captain Jack from Pirates of the Caribbean, in lieu of monetary gain and earthly riches. I don’t have a lot of shit holding me down, ‘cos I understand the fact that your shit ends up owning YOU. And the stuff doesn’t make you happy … ever.
Ever hear of women who have a whole closet full of “nothing to wear”? Did they think the stuff they bought would have made them happier? And what about those shoes that they bought in London that they haven’t even worn once? How did they end up thinking that inanimate objects and material goods would ever be able to breathe life into their emotional state of being? Who sold them that bill of goods, and why – after all of the letdowns of the stuff never producing any lasting happiness – do they repeat the same formula throughout their lives?
So when you look at your life and how you are honestly feeling at this stage of the big ballgame of your existence, let me leave you with one final question: would you rather be a king of the gypsies, with nil baggage holding you down, or slave to the grind, with more stuff than your ass can haul behind you?
A simple question. And a simple answer, at least for this good ol’ boy.
starbuck.fi 
Analyzing life as we know it
Posted: June 9, 2011 in Life coaching, Odds and Ends, Social commentaryI often stop and contemplate the course of life as I get older. At 38 now, I am starting to understand many of the things my own father taught me or otherwise held to be true, at which I balked back in the day. It’s only now that I realize that I was the moron and that my old man was right on the money.
http://youtu.be/4XvFKS067D8
Take fishing for example. As a youth, I held fishing to be the most boring activity on Earth, right next to golf. Well, I still hold golf to be boring as hell, but fishing has taken on a whole new dimension for me. My Dad used to go out fishing once a week regularly, to totally cast off all the baggage and stress of the work he was involved in. It was his moment to “zone out” and just “be”.
How many people today can just sit there and do nothing? Nothing at all? I’m not talking about sitting idly and skimming through messages on your cell phone to kill time, I’m talking about total immersion into nothingness. I bet you’d have more luck finding a needle in a proverbial haystack than finding serenity of the kind that I’m referring to.
Fishing with my Dad in Ontario, September 2009
This past weekend I spent some time out in a row boat, just casting a line and staring at the water. It’s therapeutic, I tell you. I was on a somewhat remote island with my girl, camping out and totally “dropping out” of all the bullshit of modern society for all intents and purposes. On that lake, I understood my Dad a whole lot better, and how fishing throughout the ages has been a getaway for men from all cultures. No computers, no TV, no magazines, no traffic, no electronic sounds, no hurry, no stress, no bullshit.
The one thing that I never grow tired of is nostalgia. I was born in ’73, brought up in the 80’s and I remain an 80’s kid to this day. My critical development took place in the 80’s. The 90’s may as well have never happened in my opinion, except for my initiation into the world of pro wrestling as an active talent. Just like every generation before me, I totally understand those who say that things were better back in their day. Those who grew up with Elvis will always hold his music to the best there is. Those who grew up on Metallica will always hold their classic album(s) to be the epitome of music. Those who now grow up on Katy Perry will come to reminisce of her pop as the best music in the world when they are older too. For me, I’ll always owe my musical roots to Motley Crue.
I grew up on movie icons like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, and I still watch the first Terminator and Rambo: First Blood with a fond warmth in my heart. I still hold 80’s pro wrestling, especially from the Crockett era of the NWA and Bill Watts’ UWF to be the best wrestling in the world. I still warmly recall watching on in rabid fascination as Gino Brito’s International Wrestling from Montreal came to Thunder Bay, Ontario at the Fort William Gardens featuring stars like Dan Kroffat, Steve Strong and Abdullah the Butcher. I still at times transpose back to a simpler time of Marvel Comic books featuring childhood heroes of mine like The Incredible Hulk and Conan the Barbarian. As an adult, I have even bought back some of the comics that I used to own as a kid. Nostalgic? Hell, yes.
So yeah, as I get older and wiser I learn to appreciate the lessons and truth that my parents taught me. Not that they were right 100% of the time, but then again who is? They were right enough of the time, and that is good enough for me.
In closing, I hate to tunnelvision but I recall the words of an elderly man just before his time was up: “Just as you get to understand something about this life, it’s time to leave.”