That period just after finishing high school is one of the most idle times one ever has in their lives. And idle I was. Luckily, I had friends that were basically cut out of a different cloth. My friends and I were really into football. We had been playing football at a small field that was two farms below my house when we were kids - the entire neighborhood always turned up. We had been playing football after church when we were kids. But high school kind of disrupted that for a while. But now we had time. And we had a big advantage. We had access to a high school pitch whenever schools closed. A relatively good pitch at that. And well, after KCSE exams, schools were closed! So we’d go to the pitch everyday at around two, along with another friend, and just shoot free-kicks, passes and what not. Now I’m not sure whether the gang of guys found us or we found them, but soon we had a whole group of people who showed up to play football.
We had this thing where we’d play until the other team bowed out - or a significant number of the other team did, and it became unfair to continue. We were competitive, taunting and mocking each other, especially when you’re on the winning team. Because of this, we’d play well past the point of physical exhaustion. So long as the mind hadn’t given up, we’d continue. And that basically marked the first six years of my journey with fitness. That plus the make-up of my neighborhood. It was unlike that of many other places, especially within Nairobi. It was farmland, meaning that the pitch was a 10-15 minute walk away. The nearest urban center was a 15 minute walk away. And so along with football, walking 15 minutes to meet your friends, or do anything outside of your home, was a way of life.
Initial Conditions
Why this walk down memory lane? Well, I’ve been thinking on what makes working out for me easy compared to what I hear other people say. And this history of football, of walking around, might be the single biggest factor that makes it easy for me. I had already gotten used to a pretty active lifestyle growing up. More active than a majority of people out there. And when you are used to that kind of lifestyle, it’s hard to go back to a sedentary lifestyle. Your body shouts at you when you do. I don’t know if its just me, but you always have the urge to do something with yourself. You find work, even when there is none. Just to do something. When people look at me weird when I’m working out, when they ask me questions like ‘isn’t that hard? Aren’t you just disturbing yourself?’, the answer usually is “it’s not. I’m not.” I had already gotten used to it. Movement has been a way of life for as long as I can remember.
If I was to come up with a formula that determines success in any endeavor, it would be made up of three factors. Initial conditions, hard work, and luck. Those first few years are what constitute my initial conditions when it comes to fitness. And without that solid foundation of movement in those early stage of life, I wouldn’t look as I do now (most people place me 3 - 4 years younger than I am). I wouldn’t be able to run as I can now. Walk as I can now. I’d maybe look my age more. And fitness would seem like a foreign thing to me. an unnecessary aspect of life.
Of Billionaires
Initial conditions aren’t everything, but they matter a lot. Thing is, you’re more likely to end up being rich if you were born rich. The causality factor for such a person would be almost a one. It doesn’t mean that its impossible for anyone else. I just means that its a whole lot easier for that one person compared to another. When you look at the richest people in the world right now, you find that this factor permeates the list. They had some early advantages that made it a lot easier for them compared to the general public. This is not to discount the amount of work they put into getting to where they are now. They must have put in a lot of work. But their initial conditions helped a lot. A lot.
Bill gates had a major advantage when it came to computers. By virtue of his parents, he was exposed to one at a young age, when computers were rarities, and very few had access to them. That’s on top of being decidedly middle to upper class. Elon was decidedly middle to upper class growing up - his dad flew a plane for fuck’s sake. Warren Buffet started a partnership where the members - most of whom were his family - contributed millions. This is back in the sixties and seventies. Your family doesn’t give you that much money if they aren’t loaded. That’s on top of working for the godfather of value investing - Benjamin Graham - at a relatively young age.
Initial conditions include the schools you went to. Did you go to the best schools around? Were your parents able to afford the fees? It includes the course you took in campus. A lot of us have realized why certain courses are better for employment and financial security than others. And we’ve realized this the hard way. Initial conditions include the environment you grew up in, as is the case with me. Someone born in the US will have more entrepreneurial drive than basically any other person in the world. Someone born and raised in Nairobi will have a different way of being compared to someone born and raised anywhere else, as I’ve been told a couple of times. As the saying goes, nurture will always beat nature.
You Suck Compared To Me.
Brian Scalabrine, from what I can infer, wasn’t all that. Throughout most of his career in the NBA, he was viewed as relatively mediocre. He was benched for a lot of games. And looking at his stats, it’s hard to argue with that view. He scored less points in his ENTIRE career than James Harden did in his first 45 games of the 20/21 season. But this was a comparison to the players in the NBA. And not just any players, the stars of the NBA. Because it’s their stats that are salient in our minds. Not those of the ordinary players in the league. And because of this, some fans took the view that they could beat him easily, going as far as challenging him to one on ones. Brian, then into his early 40’s, took up the challenges, and went around courts playing his challengers one on one. He swept the floor with all of them. Swept. The. Floor. He then proceeded to drop one of the coldest lines I’ve ever heard. ‘I’m closer to LeBron than you are to me.’
There are many things that go into being an elite athlete. Time is one of them. Whatever it is you do, how good you are at it will scale with relation to how much time you’ve spend on it. And most elite athletes started young. Brian started in high school, the prime development years. And he spent a decade in the NBA, playing against the most elite players in the world. Physical features matter a lot too. For the NBA specifically, height matters a whole fucking lot. It provides an initial condition that puts you in a better position to make it into the sport. For swimmers, its a long torso and short legs. Look at the elite swimmers and you notice that they have a particular physique. And more locally, there’s a reason we have so many champions in long distance events. Certain factors provide potent enough initial conditions to allow a greater chance of success. It will always exist. Someone will always be better placed to do something better than you can. It’s an unfair advantage. But unfair is a distinctly human belief. Nature doesn’t care about fairness, does it?
Service To The Newcomer
How is this useful, Chris? Especially when you imply it’s out of our control? Well, not entirely. We all have unfair advantages. Things we do that come easily to us compared to anyone else. The best thing you can do is to try and optimize for those unfair advantages in whatever you do. If you can outwork everyone, make sure you put yourself in a role that rewards that. If you are more creative than most, put yourself in a role that optimizes for that. And just in case you are shouting how? FIGURE IT OUT LOVE. Plus, I mentioned that if I had a formula for success, it would have three factors. Well, there are two others that I haven’t even touched on in this article. Hard work will get you a long way. And sometimes, sheer fucking luck can happen (for believers, substitute luck with blessings). I think the goal is to ensure that whatever our initial conditions are, that we create better initial conditions for those that come after us. Give them a better chance for success. And hope they carry it forward. Hope. That’s why our parents struggled to get us through school and such. To create initial conditions that are better than what they had. That, to me, is the definition of being of service to the newcomer.