Fly!

In the past month, I've experienced every point on the emotional scale. I felt endless fatigue, I felt strength and an all-conquering will, but I also felt apathy, weakness, lethargy, feeling like I wasn't capable of it, and I wanted to give up.

But life is just like that, I think it's part of the process, because every day is a new day, and life tests you every day, and you have to prove yourself daily, to someone else, to society, but it really doesn't matter to whom, you just have to keep going. Currently, my trainer is Peti Molnár, Hungary's best and one of its most successful bodybuilders. I don't say this because I train with him, but because he is the best. I've learned a lot from him recently about humility, perseverance, real performance, and attitude towards training. It's never shameful to learn from the best, and I proudly sat down in his "classroom."

We must have been 22 years old. One June day, three childhood friends and I decided to pack up and drive around Italy. Just like that, without any plans, ideas, planning, or concept. We didn't know what we were looking for, we didn't know why Italy, and what we would look for there, but we knew one thing: we were going to do something, something silly, for which there was no rational explanation. This was a crucial point in our search for freedom, and a kind of declaration of war from us, where the possibility of breaking rules appeared before us as the primary motivational force.

Our determination was followed by action, and two days later we found ourselves in the car. Back then, we barely had any money, but we didn't care about that either. We didn't care where we would sleep, what we would eat, or what we would do when we got there, wherever it might be, but none of that mattered, because we were together. Four guys, intoxicated by the feeling of freedom, stepping out of the zone of security and stability, just into the unknown.

We barely had money for gas and some food, and accommodation was out of the question. Sometimes we slept in the car, but there were also times when we slept on the beach, or didn't even lie down at all. We went from city to city, rotting on the beach during the day, or if we found a cove, we went there and spent the day among the rocks. I remember once we pretended to be guests in an apartment so we could use the pool, and meanwhile, we showered at the shower. We solved this very simply, we just walked in. I loved that trip, and to this day I haven't forgotten what we experienced there and then, where no rules applied to us.

When we came home, our parents and friends who stayed home asked us about the trip, wanting us to tell them something. But somehow, neither I nor my friends could give a meaningful account, because sometimes the most defining moments of life simply cannot be put into words. How could we even minimally convey what only those who go through it can understand? How can one describe true love, or articulate those moments that fundamentally determine our thoughts about life, and from then on, we view the world from a completely different perspective?

I feel similarly about the Aesthetic program. How should I put into words the past month so that everyone can feel the emotional highs and undoubtedly numerous negative moments that dragged me down, which I experienced in the last 30 days? Just like the workouts now, during our trip to Italy, only the road was ahead of us. Just as rest days and training days alternate now, during our trip, one city was like another, the sea sparkled the same everywhere, the waves crashed on the shore the same way everywhere, as they did thousands of years ago, and as they undoubtedly still do today. The sun still rises the same way, but something has changed.

There's a saying that it's not the destination that matters, but the journey. But in the meantime, I've realized that's nonsense. Because there is no destination, only the journey exists. No one can ever reach the destination, or I could put it this way: our destination can only be defined by life, which we call death.

There is no goal, because if there's even a tiny bit of what we call affirmation of life and striving for development in us, then we can never stop after achieving our goal. The goal remains merely a mirage for us, something you can never reach, thus fulfilling your destiny and opening the way for the continuous development of your life.

I remember, it must have been the first week. We had a leg workout, and I was struggling on the leg extension machine. My thigh was burning like hell, I felt insane pain with every single exercise, but I didn't care, I kept pushing. By the end of every set, my legs were so trashed that I could barely feel them, but there was still one more set to go when Peti walked over and asked me...

– Why aren't you doing it properly?

– Peti, damn it, you see I want to, I am doing it.

– I see you want to, but you're not doing it. There's more in you, let me see that you want it.

Then he increased the weight.

"Do it."

I started. The feeling that I had trouble even with less weight and was completely exhausted by the end was still in my head, but I didn't care. I thought, so be it, let's do it, at most I can't handle it.

I put on the music I usually listen to at my lowest points, and I started.

I started with all my anger, all my disappointment, and everything that made me start this whole thing. I just pushed, and nothing else mattered. I couldn't feel my legs anymore, and with every exercise, I felt such pain that I had never felt before. The outside world completely faded away for me, at one point the pain transformed into a power I hadn't known before, and this feeling flooded my entire body. By the time I finished, I was simply reborn. I tried to stand up, but my legs couldn't hold me, and I collapsed. This was the point where the pain, the past events, the memories of the girl in my head, the huge emotional charge that had accumulated in me over the years because of Tilt, and I simply broke. There, in the middle of the gym, on the floor, I simultaneously met my end and was reborn. It was a fantastic, terrifying, and at the same time exhilarating feeling for me. Such emotions, such power overwhelmed me that I hadn't even thought possible of myself before. For the first time in my life, I tangibly exceeded my physical limits, and at the same time, I understood how little I had trained before. I leveled up.

Then Peti came over to me and just said this.

"Now you've done it."

This program gives me these ineffable feelings and milestones, and sport gives this to everyone if they take it seriously and want to achieve goals with it. Life itself is sport, and sport itself is life. Sport confronts us with everything we run from, or rather, it teaches us that no matter what we think of ourselves, no matter where we are in life, there is always room for improvement. Most of the time we think we've truly done everything, that we've gotten the most out of ourselves, when in reality we're just scratching the surface, not mobilizing real energy, and then we wonder why we didn't succeed.

Life humiliates us all, and we must accept that. We receive many wounds in life, and if they see us as weak, they kick us even harder, because if you stand over a person lying on the ground, you feel superior to them. That's why the rejects will try to bring you down, because they want to feel that they are better than you, when in fact they are just standing there, and it doesn't even cross their minds that they could fly.

Most people are like this. They can't stand it if someone is better, prettier, more talented, more persistent, more skilled, or has achieved more than others, so it's easier to drag the other person back into the muck, or to make others appear there, instead of reaching at least the level they are criticizing to death. This will always be the case, no one can change that.

What can you do in such a situation? You can get into petty squabbles and start fighting with them, but what's the point of that besides wasting energy on something that doesn't build you up? There's only one thing you can do then. You close your eyes, endure the slaps, the malice, and meanwhile you move forward on your path, you try to perform, and even more importantly, you try to fly. Higher and higher. You don't look back, you don't fight with anyone, only with yourself, because if you conquer yourself, who can stand in your way?

This whole damn life is a huge mystery, full of questions to which no one knows the answer, which we mostly don't understand because standing on the ground, we can only see a certain distance. But to understand life, you have to fly, because the higher you soar, the better you will see what life is really like, so you will be able to see distances that you would have no chance of noticing or understanding from the ground. But for this, you have to suffer. It's not enough just to get up from the ground and stay on your feet, but you have to fly, and this is the point where life demands what lifts you up, and what you must continuously maintain so you don't fall back. There are questions to which you only get the answer up there, and after all, we are all searching for answers.