A Rider's Journey back to Life

I am reading about the life of Lance Armstrong, he is a legendary bike rider who was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1996. He was given a 40% chance of survival. But he managed to make it, and what even more, he became the champion of Tour de France right after 18 months of that. The Tour is the toughest sport competition in the world which takes more than 3 weeks and the stages are all over France. And he just bounced back.

He won the tour this year again.

I do not think I realize death is that close to us. This really recall me the old saying, live every day as if your last. I really have to live a life. And I was blessed to see twenty-two.

Lance Armstrong asked himself, "If I live, who is it that I intend to be?" He found that he had a lot of growing to do as a man.

I had a lot of growing to do as a man as well.

I won't lie myself. I was totally screwed in the past four years. I couldn't even believe it was four years from the day I thought I was supreme. Though I have done a degree, I hardly find that the degree was in any form of significance and usefulness. A guy like that, with no motivation and effort, can still easily survived the degree. So, what could you possibly expect from it.

Seriously, I do not consider I have learned anything from it, except I learned that how empty a business degree could be, and of course, how empty a degree graduate can be. Obviously, the burden of that was largely laid on me, I mean I was the one to blame for not putting any effort, but the nature of the degree has something to do with it as well. I supposed only a few subjects there can count to be both academic and sound knowledge.

Hard-working is King, this is another things I learned from the failure. No matter how dumb you are, being hard-working makes you king. If we see life as a real, long, serious battle, just like Tour de France, merely being smart is not good enough. (Given you have the quality of being smart, a lot of people out there think they are, but they were not.) In order to win, you have to work really hard. I have never known any successful people who didn't work hard. As in successful, l mean a remarkable one.

All I have written so far seems so negative, as if it was a loser rambling about the past. Indeed, I am such a loser in that period. What a complete failure.

In the first season right after Lance Armstrong recovered from cancer, he skipped all the races he was good at and he was willing to sacrifice the entire season to prepare for the Tour de France. Nobody could understand what he was doing. A journalist come to him and asked why didn't he enter those races.
"I'm focusing on the Tour."That was what he replied.
The journalist kind of smirked at him and said, "Oh, so you're a Tour rider now."Like he was joking.

"Whatever, dude. We'll see."The rider thought to himself.