I once was and Instructor in a military modeled high school. At the time, I spent a lot of time feeling bad about having to be so intense to the young men and women that attended this at-risk academy. I guess the reason was that I am very sensitive to the feelings of others. I'm not talking about how you feel about me, but how you are feeling. I do not particularly relish being cruel or mean. My youth was spent at the hands of cruel and mean young men. I have a distaste for that human capability. Cruelty, in my mind, has no real place in generally acceptable society.
Or does it? What if you were to use moderated cold-heartedness to get people through self-imposed barriers? What if intense emotion is what people need to seed new change, to motivate themselves to take more control of their own lives?
I have been blessed with a particularly loud voice. Blessed. Hmmmmmm... Perhaps "saddled" would be a more appropriate verb. My own mother describes it as "cutting through walls". Modulating my volume is a consistent presence in my mind. I try to be conscious of my effect on other people's ears. Before you bridle at me using the term saddle, remember that it is the saddle that allows the rider to sit comfortably upon the steed. I understand the power of my voice and I am thankful for the training I have sought out and received if only to use it when I actually fuck my voice up. I really need to be more careful... Anyhow, this is a story of how my voice earns me money and changes lives.
As the Careers Instructor at the Oregon Youth Challenge Program, it was expressly forbidden for me to enact any sort of corporal punishment on the Cadets. Being me, I quickly developed ways around this rule. One of the more entertaining ways was to put a Cadet in the front leaning rest position and forbid him or her from doing one, not even one push-up. I made it clear to them that I was not allowed to "PT" them and that if they did a push-up, it would be against the rules. Cruel, yes. But with a purpose. Wanna start working on your will-power? Lie on the ground on your stomach, use your hands to push your torso off the ground until your arms are straight and your toes are the only points of contact. Now, stay there until you fail. Be careful of your mug, you don't want to break your nose! I would routinely put Cadets in this position and walk out of the room.
Another way for me to maintain strict discipline in my classroom was to elevate the volume of my voice until it was unbearable. I would yell. Now, if you have never experienced a full power shout from me at a close range, you can't imagine what it's like. It is painful. I can make you wince. It is not a pleasant experience. When faced with teenager behavior that was unacceptable, I would warn, "I will ruin your day from three feet away." Then hold up my arm and ask them to stand at the ends of my fingers. It would only take once or twice with one Cadet before all of the Cadets realized that it was much more preferable to deal with the Drill Sergeants with their push-ups and sit-ups than to have your head split open by Mr. Plueard. This is one of the things that I used to do that makes me feel like a real tool. Tool.
However, whenever I meet any the the young adults that weathered their difficult teen years with me for six months as a Youth Challenge Cadet, they immediately deny my apology for being a Dyed in the Wool Dick. One hundred percent of the kids that I used to teach tell me that being in my class was exactly what they needed. That my teaching method and punitive style prepared them for success directly after high school. To be clear, I was just a part of a large cohort of people who had it a job description to fuck with out of control teenagers. There were multiple people committed to convincing these youngsters that they could, in fact, achieve. The whole scene was a difficult place to be if you didn't get yourself real. Imagine basic training for six months. It was very intense for the first two months and then it mellowed. These kids endured. Well, most of them. Out of one hundred and forty-one initial participants, we would graduate between eighty-five and one hundred and seven at the end of each six month cycle. So, when a kid tells me that I was responsible for them making the transition in to young adulthood, I take it with a grain of salt. There has to be a willingness to change in the first place and that has nothing to do with me. I was merely there to help the process along.
These days, I am a fitness instructor. I teach deep water fitness to some of the finest people in the cit of Portland. In all economic stratae, in nearly every sector of the city. From Southeast to Northeast to Southwest, I get to witness some of the most physically adept and committed exercise participants a person could hope to see in a group class. I enjoy a more than moderate success. It has gotten to the point that my pools are past capacity at an ever increasing frequency. I have new clients every day.
Here's the deal. I am cruel to them. I am unrelenting, demanding and generally domineering in my classes. I push them ahead of the second hand on the clock like a mass of dread warriors. They burn in my eyes. Daily. Three hours a day. I blister the pools with demands of forty-five second's worth of vertical running, ninety seconds of bent leg cross-country skiing or two and a half minute endurance tests of resistant application of your whole body. It is difficult. I often see flushed faces and shoulder tops. Please keep in mind that I am a certified instructor and an employee of a professional organization, with oversight and training. I give everyone appropriate cool downs and encourage safety at every turn. But, I am cold hearted. I bear no whinging and I get results. By yelling. There are moments when the acoustics of the pool building and the "bounce" off the water collate into my voice being akin to a sonic boom. When I stand on the deck and amplify my tone to full height and yell the word, "MOVE!", everyone in the building hears it and the people in the pool react accordingly, rising up on their pad of water and moving water like a bulldozer. It is amazing to witness. It is very aesthetically pleasing. I invite you to come and witness it.
So, what does it all mean? Here's what I've come up with. People need to be challenged. I once read a quote that went something like this:
"I am thankful for my enemy. For it is he that keeps my knives sharp."
I have always more or less subscribed to the attitude that suffering is path to enlightenment. It started when I was young and I read in National Geographic that there were Tibetan monks that could chop holes in the ice, soak cotton fabric in the water and then lay the fabric across their bare backs and dry them by will-power alone. This fascinated me. The concept that the mind could control the body past what "reality" had to suggest really, really became attractive to me. This is where I started my suffering journey. By the way, I have been entertaining the next phase past suffering. A willful, radical acceptance of Joy as my evolution. But, more on that later.
The upshot is this: We humans grow through challenge. Hard life either breaks you or improves you. Yes, improves. Once you've suffered through something that you thought you could not do, say perhaps, graduate from a military modeled high school that put you in the room with an insanely loud instructor who got in your face when you made the slightest mistake or this: show up at six am to be subjected to an hour of cajoling, prodding and demanding by a slightly cracked and loudly yelling fitness instructor.
My name is Jon. I am unrelenting because I believe that you are unrelenting. You may have an idea that your are capable of the type of mental toughness that it takes to not only endure, I just try to encourage that idea to become your reality. Defined. And I have to be cruel to do it. Really though? There are plenty of people who endure my "cruelty" and perceive it as something completely different.
Love.
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