What Dragon Ball Z Taught Me About Quarantine(And Life)!
On the day of Space X’s first manned mission into space it’s fitting that I reflect upon how a man in a spaceship changed my Quarantine outlook and maybe my entire life.
Let’s take it back to the beginning of March. (It feels like a lifetime ago) I was doing okay. Not great but not bad. Getting by, I thought I had a decent sense of things and where I was headed. I had a good workout routine going and I was building a nice daily meditation practice. Then Boom, shutdown city, literally. When the shart hit the tighty whities I had a single thought, “I’m either gonna get hard, like that hard mother fucker David Goggins human terminator, or I’m going to decay into mental and physical rot. And then through all of this I had a single vision.
In a weird Japanese-anime designed spaceship an even weirder spiky haired man in an even weirder 80’s-cobra-kai-reminiscent-jump-suit, poured-out puddles of sweat as he performed thousands upon thousands of sets and reps. This man was Jesus… I mean Goku, his name was Goku. Definitely Goku. But you already knew that. If you didn’t, you’re probably a turd, but luckily this thing called the internet exists and you can go unturd yourself by watching the entirety of the epoch that is the DragonBall series. Any who… Goku is a bad ass. He’s like David Goggins if David Goggins was an extraterrestrial from the planet Vegeta who could summon pure energy into Kamehameha Waves. (Now that I think of it, are we sure David Goggins isn’t a Saiyan.) Either way Goku is like the definition of “A Beast”. (used in the most masculine sports oriented way.) More importantly though, he’s incredibly disciplined. He’s so disciplined he’d be out there painting that fence before Mr. Miyagi’s old wrinkled ass even got out of bed. So how do old men’s wrinkled asses related to quarantine? I’m getting there.
So during this one part of the DragonBall Z series Goku needs to travel to the planet Namek to save his friends. But as we all know approaching the speed of light and traveling through space is like boring and junk. In Goku’s words.
“It sure is dark out here. Pretty lonely too. I’ve got a lot of work to do if I want to get my power levels up as high as Vegeta’s. I might as well go ahead and start training now. It’s not like I have anything better to do in this place.”
Does this situation sound familiar? As soon as Quarantine began my mind went right to this episode. So what does Goku do. Well, he goes over to this computer system and changes the ships gravity to 20 times that of earth. This means everything he does, even walking, will be like lifting thousands of pounds. Over the course of his time on the ship he steadily increases this gravitational force and constantly pushes himself beyond his comfort zone. He increases the pressure, increases the workload, increases the challenge. He takes this seemingly useless, empty, lonely time and turns himself into one of the hardest mother fuckers in the universe. This is the mindset I took into Quarantine. This is how Dragonball Z set me on a path to enhance my life and push myself beyond my boundaries.
As an aside, I think there’s too much emphasis in life about finding balance and not pushing ourselves. Honestly if your in balance you probably aren’t learning shit and you definitely aren’t getting to any of the good stuff. Balance is everything except we probably aren’t finding balance, we’re finding comfort, which is a whole other bag of dog doo. I think a big problem is people don’t push hard enough to realize what’s really there when they push that hard. It’s not what they think. To be honest when you get to that place it’s a lot easier than you think. What’s hard is the squirming, the self doubt, the questioning, the uncertainty, and the suffering. A little discomfort aint shit compared to years of emotional anguish. Let’s take exercise as an example. There’s probably a lot of people who dislike exercise but I wonder how they view the activity. They want it to be easy so they pussy out on it and go through the motions of some annoying activity. This means they never get to that level of some human instinct survival shit coursing through your veins. It only gets good when your vision narrows and your mind gets intense like some savage ass deep jungle tiger.
Let’s think about the complete opposite, partying. Think about your glory days. You didn’t go out and sip one beer, that sucks. You went out and you went heavy cause that’s where the good shit is.
Be like Goku, kick up the gravity and get to work. You might just find out you like it. And the next time you need to go Super Saiyan you’re gonna be surprised at how much you’re capable of.
You can watch the full episode here:
Artist/Audio Engineer - Social Media Specialist/Content Creator
4 年Yes. So ironic this is the first thing I see when I come to your page. I'm down with Space X, and DOWN with Son Goku. I look back to Dragonball Z all of the time in life... During quarantine, I started working out with a weight vest, specifically because the image above has been etched into my mind since childhood. My whole goal for quarantine was to stay in, and reemerge, a ssj!