Determined To Succeed

Day Thirty-two.

I don’t know if you guys know about this or not, but NASA confirmed yesterday two small asteroids passed within the moon’s distance from the Earth about 12 hours apart. Yep, near-Earth asteroid 2010 RX30, which is estimated to be 32 to 65 feet in diameter, passed within 154,000 miles of Earth around 5:51 a.m. ET, while the second object, 2010 RF12, estimated to be 20 to 46 feet in diameter, passed within 49,088 miles of Earth close to 5:12 pm ET. This double encounter was unusual in the sense that NASA spotted the objects three days in advance and successfully plotted their orbits, demonstrating the need for closer monitoring of near space for Earth-threatening encounters.

According to Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near Earth Program, which tracks potentially hazardous asteroids and comets within 28 million miles of Earth, the ability to track these asteroids days in advance of their “arrival” confirms that the process NASA has in place (whereby they find, observe and then quickly predict when such things pass Earth to get that info out) works pretty well.

I would say so, although my initial gut reaction was “holy crap, it’s ‘Armageddon’ and we need Bruce Willis to go up in a shuttle and yell ‘yippee-kay-a mother fucker’ before saying ‘we win, Gracie’ and blowing up the damn thing. My second reaction was to think back to a time when I was a kid working on his science fair project about space, specifically black holes.

According to the general theory of relativity, a black hole is a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape. Around a black hole there is an undetectable surface which marks the point of no return, called an event horizon and it is called “black” because it absorbs all the light that hits it, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect black body in thermodynamics.

All of that is a fancy way of saying ain’t nuthin’ gettin’ out of any black hole.

Thinking back over the past few decades I have come to realize how very close I actually got to that event horizon in my life, that point from which I could never have returned because of my behaviors and my fractured soul. And thinking about how close I got made me shudder but instantly thankful I was able to bottom out and escape the nothingness of true failure.

Last year I wrote a couple of pieces on failure. I wrote them after attending church one Sunday and hearing the pastor talk about a passage in the Bible that says how people will fall and rise seven times as we try to achieve success or victory over evil.

I’m human, and humans look for too many quick fixes, solutions, methods or excuses so there’s (or seems to be) less likelihood of failure, I wrote, and how we use these things to blame someone or something else for our failures. We say to ourselves: “Oh, well I ordered that thing and did what I was supposed to do to lose weight but it didn’t work.” My friends, I said it then and I will repeat it now, the highest peaks of our achievements and successes always go through the lowest valleys of failure. And humility, patience, the ability to learn and grow from mistakes and, most of all, appreciation for success comes from failure.

Having known what true failure is in life I truly appreciate the feelings I now have of sobriety and being a better human being each and every day. Not acting out (especially with food and eating – I was so much better yesterday) and appreciating life again and all its positive energies is what I will continue to do throughout the rest of my life – that is my focus. But there are forces out there in the universe like those asteroids and like those black holes that threaten our stability, even our very sanity, and we must do our best, like NASA, to see them coming and prepare for them so we can avoid the blackness and destruction they bring.

No journey worth taking is without risk, pitfalls, bumps and dangers. I know that. In my current weight loss journey, for example, I am still trying to re-lose this damn extra almost 14 pounds (grrrrrrr). But I will, especially now, succeed in all the aspects of my life especially when I can see asteroids or black holes coming my way. There are black holes out there in the universe, but it’s the stars and light that surround them that mark their path so we can avoid them along our journey. I came dangerously close to the event horizon once in my life and I will be damned if I ever again get that close no matter how the universe can sometimes conspire to want me to fail again. And you should hold onto that assurance, too, that you can and will achieve success in your life no matter how many times you stumble. We are all human and we will achieve success together.

Bruce Willis is a person and an actor. He’s not Harry Stamper, the character he portrayed in “Armageddon,” and he won’t be flying at 22,500 mph to land on that asteroid and blow it up before it hits earth. No, my success or failure in the end depends on one person, me, and I am holding firm at thirty-two days and counting that I will continue to grow, be positive, be a better man day by precious day and be my mother’s son again.