Not too long ago, we talked about avoiding the ugliness in the world. We will come back to that in a minute, but I would ask you to pause and think about all those amazing people in your life: those masters of their craft, whether this craft directly overlaps with your profession or not is irrelevant. Think of those masters, whatever it is that they do.
Some easy ones stick out for me, when it comes to my career—Sushil Beriwal, Tim Showalter, and Wenyin Shi, to name but a few. In the nutrition and exercise world, I was lucky enough to work with Jeff Volek and Will Yancy, and I fully understand their immense and unreal amount of knowledge that helped to form my entire thought process as it revolves around nutrition research. More importantly, Jeff taught me to critically question studies, even when the great gods of the ivory tower tell us it is forbidden. I currently am in the fortuitous position to be coaching my patients in clinical exercise studies with mentorship from other CSCS’s, like Frank Velasquez, who train professional athletes. Every day I pick Chris Peluso’s brain on exercise programming, anatomy, and movement patterns. I live a couple blocks from my cousins Mark and Deb, whom Juli and I adore and mimic many aspects of their life. There are masters all around us, and we are more than thankful for them all. These individuals provide inspiration and the road map for emulation. Some are like us, many are vastly different than us, but all provide us insight as to what it takes to be exceptional, and we learn from their lessons.
The influences on us have been immensely positive. We learn from them and I pass these lessons on to my residents and others in my life, including my girls. The mere mention of envy never even crosses my mind. I am not envious of these individuals, I am thankful for the lessons they teach me through their words and actions. Yet, the world these days tells us that is the exact opposite of how we should approach life around us. Envy is jammed down our throats from the news sources (purveyors of fear and anxiety) and social media (making us envious of people 2,000 miles away!).
Envy tears us and others down, while admiration allows us to appreciate and grow. Which one will you choose?
Envy stands at the center of Botticelli’s famous Calumny of Apelles, as he attempts to cloud the king’s vision.
Focus on me, not on others
We are constantly bombarded with news sources, social media and other sources that tell us we are supposed to judge others, crucify them, belittle them, and do whatever we can to put them down. All we hear is this person is racist, sexist, a bigot, cheating, stealing, privileged, etc. etc. Most of all, be envious and tear down others, particularly those more successful than us. Ignore thousands of years of warnings, being envious is good for you and society. Ignore that feeling that it causes as it eats away at your soul. Ignore Dante, Plato, Aristotle, and nearly every philosophical and religious figure ever and instead be envious of others and tear them down at any moment. This is rampant in medicine and academia. Skillful and compassionate docs get torn down frequently. The doers get chastised by the talkers. Good teachers and professors that empower their students to be critical thinkers get dragged through the mud and lambasted, academically bullied by fellow academicians. Other academics, particularly those that are not masters of their field, bite in like ravenous dogs. We have all seen it and most of us keep quiet due to fear. We do not want to be the next meal of the envious bloodhounds.
And no, this is not a political discussion as politics is the junk food for the soul and processed food for our brains, providing no benefit whatsoever, only disease and pestilence.
Frankly, I am tired of it. I am tired of these envious individuals that do nothing to help society. And I am tired of these destructive actions being promoted by our “fearless” leaders. They now promote such actions by redefining words and using them to tear down instead of analyzing or praising the achievements of others. This creates confusion in the push for sameness, particularly since they do not want everyone equal (last I checked, 99.99999% of us are not gallivanting around in private jets like our lords that push this message), they want us crushed into sameness.
If such falsehoods actually existed, I would have not played division III basketball at MIT with a bunch of nerds (no offense here as I was/am one of them), but would have been right there next to Jordan dunking from the foul-line. Well, except that I can’t dunk from the foul line and the only way I would have even been in the NBA was if they banned the 6,000,000 people that are better than me at basketball. See the magic trick? That is is envy at its worse. It is me envying everyone better than me and wanting them squashed. No, I don’t envy Mike, I respect him and marvel at his mastery of the game. I marvel at his insane ability to take on a challenge and destroy it, in front of the world, with the flu, or not long after he found out his father was murdered. I envy his steel trap mind and unwavered desire to win and zone out everyone around him. I often clammed up on the court in front of large audiences while Mike used it to be the best—and I respect him for it.
The good news is, I can instead turn to other pursuits that I am in fact pretty good at, like treating breast cancer, doing research, writing ranty newsletters that you all read, and getting people healthy. Huh, maybe I don’t need to envy Kevin Durant, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. I can instead cheer them on and not tear them down. I bet I can crush them in ping pong, so take that! I can appreciate the beauty they have emanated and the mastery of their craft. I will never be a sculptor or painter, but man was Michelangelo so talented that he literally blew away every sculptor in the history of the world and then stepped back up to the plate to blow away Raphael (one of the greatest painters ever) while painting the Sistine Chapel! Oh, and then he blew away a million architects when he designed the Medici library! Damn you Michelangelo how dare you be so skillful!
Michelangelo is a great example of someone who lets us know that we have two options in life:
1. Damn you Michelangelo for being one of the most talented human beings in the history of the world! Let’s smash you down so you can be the same as me (terrible at painting, sculpting, and decent at architecture—at least with Legos when I was a kid…)
2. Learn about Michelangelo, marvel at his works, thank him for creating beauty that is still, centuries later, available for the world to see, and read about what he did in life and try to mimic it to make myself and society a better place.
We live in a strange time when number 2 is forbidden, particularly in the ivory tower of academia, which is more often a cesspool of envy and hate than paying homage to those incredibly talented individuals that the world is lucky to have.
Giotta, one of the greatest and earliest Renaissance painters painted “Envy” in 1306, with the fire of jealousy burning at her feet.
Yet, ignoring the toxic media and hateful academia and our universities, we have two general options in life. Take for instance a woman that trains at our Exercise Oncology Center. She was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer 5 years ago. She beat it. The chemo, however, beat her. Well, it beat her nerves to a pulp and she now has peripheral neuropathy. She does not have feeling in her feet. She also had both knees replaced. In other words, she is a fall risk and fracture nightmare, not to mention her bones are weak from 6 months of the roughest chemo on the block.
So what did she do? Did she tear others down? Was she envious of those who can feel their feet and walk normally? Did she despise all those other women who did not have to battle triple negative breast cancer? No, she joined our center, enrolled in our protocol, and walked out three months later split squatting with a 30 pound kettle-bell in each arm. It brings tears to my eyes thinking about it. Pure beauty at its finest. Oh, and this was her favorite workout song that we played in the gym. She took her situation, ate it up, and spit it out. She walked through the door a trip hazard, and left lifting more than 98% of the population. She is a true warrior, a master, and someone we should emulate, neither asking for pity nor harboring animosity for those around her who didn’t face the cards she was dealt.
We are all different, no matter how hard they try to tell us otherwise
In my line of work I deal with people who are fat, short, tall, skinny, muscular, with massive thighs, and with chicken legs (yes, me). We all have the opportunity to get healthier, and if we do not for some reason, that absolutely has to change. We all deserve to try our best to improve our health. But, we are absolutely, positively, not ending up the same on the other side. We may all be leaving this large planet the same way, but prior to that, we are all different (and often wonderfully different). Ask that 96 year old who smokes a pack of cigs and eats 3 twinkies a day or the 40 year old ridiculously in shape mother of 2 who exercised 5 times a week, ate amazingly well, and died last week from from metastatic breast cancer. This ending up the same business is fodder for fools trying to destroy the minds of those of us who are simply trying to do our best. We are all different and masters of our own domains.
Plato and his contemporaries saw envy as a cancer of the soul. Stop promoting the cancer and stop listening to those that do. They should be pushed to the fringes of society and nobody should listen to a word they say. They spew hate and feed on the anxiety of the masses.
What helped the women at the ExOnc Center who need to improve their health: envy and hate or hard work? The latter led to a loss of ten pounds of fat and a gain of 6 pounds of muscle. There is no place for envy here.
There is no sameness—we are all different, some more successful, some more creative, some more careful, some more careless, some smarter, some more athletic, some kinder. And that is what makes us different, and that is what makes us great. The only absolute that we can all know within ourselves is that we were the best people we could be, and we gave those around us our best. Nobody can take that from us, and we all have that option before we leave this place. Otherwise, we are all different in a million amazing ways.
The good news is that avoiding envy and instead, like Plutarch, wrote books on the greats, Georgio Vasari wrote about the best architects and painters and explained why we should emulate them. Instead of being envious and tearing people down, we should read about what great people did in life so we can learn lessons about how to be better ourselves. This self-serving mechanism of improving ourselves is a win-win as it is good for society as well. Promoting beauty within ourselves promotes beauty emanating externally, promoting beauty throughout all of society (arete and fare bella figura).
Tear down no more.
Build up yourself and build up those around you.
Emanate beauty and we will rub off on our friends and families.
We will be good role models and leave the world a greater place.
So, in conclusion:
Thank you Tim, Wenyin, Sushil, and Maria for being so much more intelligent than me that you taught me the importance of intelligence.
Thank you Jeff and Will for questioning the current massively incorrect diet and nutrition literature, you taught me the importance of questioning everything (including myself).
Thank you Michael Jordan for making me realize early in life that I will never make the NBA and should focus my efforts on schoolwork, reading studies, and doing well in school so I had the intestinal fortitude to make it through MIT, med school, residency, and my current insane workload so that I can help others beat breast cancer and live a healthy life.
Thank you to Mark and Deb for making me realize the importance of appreciating the beauty in life.
Thank you to my grandfather to being the master of meditation as he grew his garden and taught me the importance of perseverance, patience, and permanence.
Being thankful and mimicking those that are better than me (and there are a lot) got me where I am.
Thankfully I avoided envy and mimicked the masters.
I hope you will do the same.
© 2023 CDR Health and Nutrition, LLC. All Rights Reserved.