In memory of Robert Alan Berkowitz on his 70th birthday

There comes a time in every person’s life where they must sit down and evaluate their journey. Their journey through the valley depths as well as the mountain tops. So, being that I am forty years old I decided to make that the main focus of this blog entry. Why did I choose this show? Why did I choose body-building?

From the time I was a little kid I always looked up to my dad. As I am sure every little boy does, I both admired my dad and feared my dad… I say I feared my dad not in an “I don’t want to be near him” kind of way… Rather, I say it because he was such an intense personality… In other words, my dad had a stealthy way about him… You never really knew where you stood with him, but at the same time you did…

My family was never one for emotions… If you felt something you didn’t that share something… If you liked something you kept it to yourself… And I think part of that reason was because of my dad… Certain humans seem to have an ability to control a room of people without having to do or say a single thing… That was my dad… A man who had the ability to control people merely through his presence…

Never was this more visible then when he coached both my soccer and baseball teams… I think this is where I began to realize my dad’s effect on people… More specifically, his effect on me… My dad had a no BS approach to coaching… You showed up, worked hard, never gave up and did exactly what he said… It’s as if his motto to sports was “If you are here you have to be dedicated. If you aren’t dedicated, leave.” Both of my teams were extremely successful and this was in large part to him… He made my team’s one cohesive group… We were of one mind, one spirit and one body… I think I might have been too young to realize that, but looking back now I see that he was the glue that held everything together…

As time passed and I grew older I came to the realization that every young man has… I was becoming my father… For every young man this is a cognition that is terrifying and glorious at the same time… When you are younger the thought of being like your parents is ghastly… Mainly for the fact that they grounded you when your grades weren’t satisfactory or wouldn’t let you play outside after the sun went down… And for a while I felt this way… I wanted to be different; I wanted to be me…

Then on April 30^th, 2005 that ghastly young adult fear disappeared… Gathered around my father’s hospital bed, my family and I were given the decision of whether or not to continue my dad’s journey here on earth and to say this was an every day decision would be a disservice to my father’s memory… As my father’s last moments drew near I began to be more aware of my fondness for my dad, and to think that he would soon be gone destroyed me more than I ever thought possible…

He had a history of heart problems… When he was forty-years old my father underwent a triple bypass surgery, and it was this operation that would unexpectedly change the future of both my father and I… Before this surgery my father was told by his cardiologist something the effect of, “You have two choices either do the surgery, and add more years to your life… Or decide on a burial plot…” It’s never easy for anybody to come to the realization that they might be at the end of their lives… and it’s not any easier for one to hear their father is in danger of dying… Most people who are given this news would break down and become immobilized… My father, on the other hand, rose above… It was after this news that my father changed his way of living… No longer would he go a day without working out… No longer would he allow himself to engorge himself with artery clogging food… In a period of a year, my father went from a large 260 pounds to a lean 180 pounds… a heroic feat for many, but a necessity for him…

At around two o’clock in the afternoon on April 30^th, 2005 my family decided to let my father go… and it was in this moment that I decided that I needed to change my ways… My family has always had a history of heart problems and when looking down the barrel of life I didn’t want to see myself dying because I was out of shape… Things were going to be different… I was going to carry on where my dad left off…

I don’t really show nor express how my dad’s death has affected me, but to be honest it is a large part of who I am today… Everyday I decide that I am not going to lose control; that I am not going to give in to the easy way in life… My father always showed me that a man is supposed to be somebody who does not back down in the face of impossibility… A man is somebody who climbs above the crap circumstances that life seems to handout every so often…

My reasons and motivations for this current path are due in large part to my father’s memory… I will not allow my self to become blinded to the finish line… My dad always pushed me to succeed… Sometimes in a way that seemed unloving, but as a grown adult I see that it was his way of telling me that he loved me… and as his son this show, this new path in my life is my way of telling him how much I love him…

"The future doesn't just happen, it is created... Our destiny is not in the stars, but in ourselves. We may need to follow in the wake of those who have gone before, but what we do and where we go is ultimately up to us. The attitude of initiative is an on-going state of exploration that is never finished...a journey that never ends".