I’ll never forget the day I met The Almonds Guy.
There I was, a young and dumb teenager, out partying with my young and dumb teenager friends, in the middle of some local woods, doing young and dumb teenager stuff, when all of a sudden…
This guy walks onto the scene.
…Not too much older than us—early college maybe. Built. Wearing a football jersey that struggled to fit his biceps (which were the size of my head), who was casually eating from a can of… almonds.
Now, mind you—there were a lot of young and dumb teenagers on scene… maybe 30+. And all of them looked just as young and dumb as the next. But, this guy? …He stood out.
He wasn’t drinking. He wasn’t smoking. He wasn’t there for any of it. He was just roaming, laughing, connecting, and… getting his protein on.
I was completely captivated by it.
So, naturally, I stayed close and listened to this out-of-place figure speak what felt like his sermon. And at one point, somebody (finally) asked why he wasn’t partying like the rest… he smiled and said, “My body is my temple. And I treat it as such.”
I didn’t realize it at the time, but this hit me at my core. And later became an image I would base the image of my highest self around.
What’s strange though is I never saw or heard of him again. Nor did I ever hear my friends mention anything of him again. I never even got his name.
…And sometimes I wonder if I ever really did meet The Almonds Guy?
Or if The Almonds Guy was something that met me…