I once read somewhere: "There is more to life than fitness, but there is more to life with fitness." This quote is something that I feel like I've been living by without even realizing that I've been living by it. Fitness has enabled me to participate in activities that I use as outlets to unwind and actually live a life that I feel fulfilled in. Maintaining a certain standard of physical fitness allows me to keep up with friends, participate in recreation, and live life with the most confidence possible. Maintaining a certain level of physical fitness has allowed me to take part in the activities that I love to do every day. For example, staying physically fit allowed me to play basketball and thrive during my high school years. I've instilled healthy habits that allow me to work with all of my effort without feeling lethargic or gross. These small healthy habits, like tracking my diet, lifts, steps, etc. have all been a part of contributing to my success on the basketball court. Even now after basketball season, staying fit has allowed me to maintain and even improve my physique and confidence in myself. As I transition into other hobbies and a different lifestyle after high school, remaining physically fit is aiding me in being able to keep up with the activities that bring me joy. My friends are introducing me to combat sports: more specifically jiu jitsu and boxing. Although these are sports that I have never had the opportunity to take part in before, my endurance, strength, footwork, and flexibility are all factors that play a role in me being able to learn and advance decently quick. I was able to learn and enjoy the sports seldom physical restrictions. I was able to be free within the sport. One of the other big things that being physically fit has enabled me to do is be able to endure and enjoy activities like going to an amusement park, hiking, or going to the beach. I can enjoy all of these activities without having to worry about resting for prolonged amounts of time or not being able to keep up because I have worked hard to be able to live like this. Of all of the benefits being physically fit has brought me, I think that the most important and consistent that benefit that I've received from maintaining my fitness is joy. Being physically fit helps me stay mentally healthy by providing an outlet for emotional distress and helping enable me to live how I want to live.

I was saved and truly started my Christian walk two weeks after my eighteenth birthday. Before then, I always knew about God and figured simply acknowledging Him would be enough for my salvation. I knew about the Gospels but I never attempted to study my word, build a prayer life, and learn to love like the Bible calls me to love. Fittingly, I have now come to regret the way I treated my relationships with peers, parents, and siblings during this phase of my life. I prodigality of my perverted and twisted faith was my downfall. A few months before I was saved, I had made the decision to start going back to church. I was hearing messages in a different way than I had heard them before. Sermons caught my attention. My actions began to change slowly but surely. I didn't know it then like I do now, but I was making myself a target of the enemy by doing this. I lost a relationship in a hard manner and received an injury that prevented me from completing my senior year of basketball. I become very stone hearted and bitter to the world, carrying grudges with me that I refused to let go, and killed my hope in the world. The turning point in my walk to live in compassion was when I was graciously given an invite to my church's youth ministry. My very first day, my youth pastor delivered a sermon on forgiveness and the selfish act it was to forgive and thereby receive healing and forgiveness for myself in Christ. That could not have reached me in a better time at a better place. My interest was caught from my very first day experiencing God in a way that didn't feel like an obligation but a choice to. With some bumps and bruises along the way, I began searching and figuring out how to forgive, be forgiven, and spread the love that I am commanded to. I spent so long looking for how to be compassionate and love when the whole time I should have been asking myself "what does it mean to love my neighbor?" With some studying and practice, I was pointed to the ultimate way I could show compassion and love: Exemplifying God and spreading the Kingdom of Heaven in all my ways. I learned that I needed to respect everyone as an image bearer of the Most High and that was what really flipped the way I treated people. After all, who was I to withhold forgiveness and love when I am forgiven and loved in a way that knows no bounds? I would be lying if I said this road is easy, but I began forgiving everyone I could think of whom I believe wronged me. This included a past relationship, my siblings, and my parents. When I learned to forgive, I then learned to be gracious in my giving. I'm currently learning to tithe, give up my time to those who sought help, and faced rejection after rejection trying to plant seeds to lead people back to the Lord. It hurts to be rejected, but I would rather take on that hurt than the shame of the missed opportunity to be the change in someone's salvation like my friend was for me when I was invited to my youth group. To recapitulate, showing compassion is a Biblical action. It requires sacrifice, patience, and sometimes persecution. Despite all of this, there has never been a time showing or receiving compassion is a regretted action that I have taken.

I look up to my basketball coach more than just a teacher or someone to keep me on my heels. My coach became a father figure throughout my high school life and gave me someone to look up to and aspire to be like. He taught me and many other of my teammates what it’s like to be a man outside of basketball through basketball. During my high school life I’ve seen him evolve from a history teacher to a student guidance teacher to making himself more valuable by adding the ability to teach English to his résumé. One of the aspects I really admire about my coach is that he values education over anything else. No matter who the player is, or what they’re capable of on the court, my coach holds all of his players to the same academic standard. His ability to lead a program of good young men has earned our basketball program an increasing amount of respect throughout the years as we have worked hard to build from the ground up when he took the coaching job three years ago. He encourages us to push our limits because he knows that there’s a life after basketball. He wants us not only to be great basketball players, but great value men of great character and ability. Some of the ways he keeps us accountable are confessions to mess ups and allowing the team an opportunity to forgive the player. I love this method because it encourages team bonding and reinforces the type of culture that coach wants within the team. Another way coach has influenced my life is by being involved personally. I was having grievances with my biological father, and my mental health plummeted as a result. Such problems stemmed from “being a disappointment” to my biological dad. I’m glad that my coach was able to tell that something in me was wrong and offer me the counsel that I needed to not give up. He showed me that people, regardless of who they are to me, would have something to say and that it is our job to rise above the negativity and excel in our own right no matter what. These lessons were principles that I’ve since added to my life, and whenever I’m told I won’t achieve, it becomes mind over matter. This experience with coach is similar to the experience he had with countless other players and students of his. Coach had inspired me to be a representable man of good character and to stay faithful to the teachings of our God so that we may one day lead in our lives in the work place, at home, and in our minds.