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mythos

The moniker begs a little explanation.

Mythos in my thinking is equal to story. The rationale is simple: your life is your story. You are connected to your ancestors and descendants through a network of genes that spans across eons of time, but in this time you have on the earth, it belongs to you. Nobody controls you but you. Whether in luxury or abject poverty, we still awake each day and find ourselves in the here and now.

Right now.

That is what is tattooed across my back. Kairos is the Greek expression for the quality of time. We all are familiar with Chronos. It tells us of the quantity of time. Kairos is much different.

Both relate to this notion of mythos. Kairos and Chronos both inform and shape the outcome of your personal mythos. It’s how you choose to shape the quality and quantity of the time you’ve been given that determines the outcome of your story. It all comes down to your character, which I see as the sum or complete portrait of all your decisions. Others do not make those decisions. You make them.

This is not to say that there are not other actors that have a vote. Even the non-human “actors” (meteorites and hurricanes come to mind) can play a part as well. I get it.

But we can easily fall into the trap of letting everything else dictate the outcome of our lives. We can easily give in and give up.

A lot has been said lately in many circles of this concept of meritocracy. This relates to justice. How so? Justice is essentially getting what you deserve, or what you earn. Life is not always just, because we may do nothing to deserve a particular suffering imposed on us, or an oppression rained down on us. But we still must respond to that situation which arises. How will we handle it? Will we overcome? Will we endure? How? Thankfully most of us are not facing dire choices all day long every day. Suffering will come to us all, and we will either endure it or perish. But while we find ourselves in a good place in time, when we yet have the opportunity to build, then it is our responsibility — I feel even our birthright — to build and be ready. And to build well. It’s been said in the agricultural way of life to “Make hay while the sun is shining.” That is what we’re doing here.

A familiar question in the running community (of which I’m a member) is, “What are you training for?” Meaning, of course, what race. A familiar reply is one that sums up what we’re doing here: “I’m training for life.”

My philosophy as a health coach is that we are all on our own unique journeys, and we are the primary agents of where that journey leads. Part of my vision — if not the largest part in fact — is to help others empower themselves to shape their own lives. Their own mythos.

Zero Dark Thirty.

Get some.