Pain

A masochistic is a person that enjoys to receive and/or to inflict pain.  In the Marines they say that pain is weakness leaving the body. In skiing, pain is a byproduct of performance.  Even one of my coaches tells me that you must love to go to what she calls "the pain cave".

I like that kind of good pain.  Pain is one of the few feelings that you know will return great dividends of performance. And I don't know how everyone feels about this but I would not trust someone that has never felt pain in their life..  I am talking the kind of pain that once it sets in you can not help it but to smile.. Smile because you know you freakin' love it, and you have proven to YOURSELF that nothing can stop you.

Paradigm

Thinking back..  One of the best leaders I have ever had in the Marines once told me a story..  A man rides in a train with three of his children.  He sits quietly looking in the distance.  The children play loudly and are jumping all over the place.  The rest of the people in the train look at the children and are bothered by the fact that the man is not doing anything to control his children. Finally, another man approaches the father and demands him to control his children.  The father responds "I am sorry if my children are bothering you..  Its just that they just lost their mother and I wanted them to experience something they had never experienced so I brought them to ride a train for the first time."

The story exemplifies the notion that NO ONE should judge anyone by their own paradigm (worldview or point of view).  Everyone is fighting a war.  Everyone deserves a chance to fight it.

Empiricism

Nothing EXISTS if your senses cannot detect them..

Success can not be achieved without enjoying your craft..

True story..

On the matter of forgetting

A big part of what makes me is my grandfather Mariano Ochoa.. The reason for that is that when I was growing up and way prior to my military experience, he was the only one in my family that actually would go out of his way to educate me and instill character in me.. He would tell me "tuck in your shirt" "speak proper" and "respect others".. He was a hero in my eyes. He lived a life the likes of the movie goodfellas.. He had a rough beginning but then joined the Mexican cavalry, where he was an enlisted men. He did not like guns, and did his talking with his fists as he was a golden gloves amateur boxer, and I remember him showing me his cavalry sword that seemed when I was younger bigger and heavier than myself. After his time in service he went to school where he seek a career as a news reporter. He made it out with honors and worked for one of the biggest news outlets in Mexico, even to this day. He drove the coolest cars, and knew
everyone that could call themselves somebody back in those days.

All this I found out from other people because he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's a decade ago.

Now he lives in a hospice, where him and my grandmother basically spend most of their days together, but he does not remember her or anyone for that matter.

He is such an interesting man, yet without the ability to tell anyone anything it makes me sad, and it fuels me with rage sometimes.

At times I think.. What if God was diagnosed with Alzheimer's?? Why did it made such a sad disease? I don't know.. All I know is that if I ever just begin to remotely fall in my grandfathers shoes, I know I would make a difference in this world. For you CoCo!! I will not quit!! I swear..

Emotions

Control your emotions!! its what everyone tells you all the time..

I think emotions are our own body and mind acting up on itself to survive or achieve our most deepest goals..

If I feel sad.. I will feel sad.. If I feel content.. I will feel content.. And if I feel like winning a Paralympic medal.. Well for that it takes more than a couple of emotions.. It takes ALL of them..

Be yourself

As I was completing my homework and talking to friends, my computer spilled out a great song.  Audioslave's "Be yourself".  This is such a good tune and it needs to be appreciated more in my personal opinion.

The song itself goes back and forth from polarizing life events that could happen to any given person, and then threads right through the middle with the chorus of "Be yourself, it's all you can do".

This song needs to be appreciated because it is so true.  Sometimes life puts you through some obstacles that are just too great for anyone to understand or even grasp at all.  When this sort of things happen, at least in my experiences, we try to change ourselves in order to correct what is in front of us but we only make it worse.  This song exemplifies the notion that sometimes is better to be ourselves and push through the pain than to become something else and hurt while being confused at the same time.

The best lyrics of this song are:

"Don't lose any sleep tonight
I'm sure everything will end up alright
You may win or lose, but to be yourself is all that you can do"

A lesson of life by way of skiing

My coaches tell me all the time..  "slow down, slooooow down!"  Which to me it has been one of the hardest things I have had to do.  The reason for this in my opinion is that no one has ever really told me that before.  Quick life recap: As a child, the fastest I got from school to home the more time I could spend playing soccer, pogs, or video games.  As an adolescent, living in Grand Rapids Michigan, I always had to rush to avoid the blistering cold or humidity, and finally as a young adult in the Marines where they constantly tell you that you should say to yourself all the time "Im up, they see me, Im down!!", well my whole life I have spent it in the driver seat of the most Mexican Nascar car the world has ever seen. (think about it)

Its funny but it's so true.  The slowest you go, the faster you are..  In Nordic skiing, and in life as well.