{"id":2769,"date":"2023-07-04T07:45:04","date_gmt":"2023-07-04T11:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2769"},"modified":"2023-07-04T07:45:04","modified_gmt":"2023-07-04T11:45:04","slug":"shattering-barriers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/07\/04\/shattering-barriers\/","title":{"rendered":"Shattering Barriers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>.
\u00a0
\u201cYour legs are thinner than my arms!\u201d
\u00a0
That\u2019s how one of the contestants at Nathan\u2019s Hot Dog eating contest on Coney Island on July 4, 2001, mocked the new guy.
\u00a0
The new guy was Takeru Kobayashi, a 23-year-old Japanese economics student who had taken up competitive eating as a way to pay his light bill.\u00a0 Kobi, as he came to be called, stood 5 feet 8 inches.\u00a0 He looked frail compared to the human Sasquatches who typically dominated the contest.
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He wasn\u2019t even what one might call a big eater \u2013 definitely not an asset in which the main point is to slam as many hot dogs as possible.
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No one suspected that Kobi was about to revolutionize this strange sport.
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Nathan\u2019s keeps score according to HDBs (hot-dog-and-buns) consumed in 12 minutes (since reduced to 10 minutes).\u00a0 In 2001 the record stood at 25 and 1\/8.\u00a0 The numbers hadn\u2019t varied much for a few years, and many suspected that humanity might be bumping up against the mystical Hot Dog Ceiling.
\u00a0
Any condiments are fair game, and contestants can also drink anything they want.\u00a0 But who would want to fill up on pickle relish and lemonade?
\u00a0
When the contest began, Kobi did things no one had ever seen before.
\u00a0
He broke each hot dog in half.\u00a0 He ate the meat by itself.\u00a0 He dipped the pieces of bun into a glass of water, squeezed out the liquid, and smooshed the remaining soggy mess into his mouth.\u00a0\u00a0 And from time to time he would jump up and down and wriggle his body, something that became known as the Kobayashi Shake.\u00a0
\u00a0
Kobi didn\u2019t just win or break the HDB record that day.\u00a0 He pulverized it.\u00a0 The Nathan\u2019s girl who held up his tally had to hand-write the numbers past 30 hot dogs, since no one had thought to pre-print them.
\u00a0
At the end of 12 minutes he had eaten 50 HDBs, doubling the world record.\u00a0 That\u2019s more than four whole hot dogs every minute.\u00a0 This was equivalent to a baseball player coming out of nowhere and hitting 140 home runs in a season, or an Indy car suddenly going 450 miles per hour at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.\u00a0 Surely he had cheated.<\/em>
\u00a0
Inquiring hot dog minds wanted to know:\u00a0 Had he swallowed stones to enlarge his stomach?\u00a0 Had a doctor surgically implanted a second esophagus?\u00a0
\u00a0
Actually, what Kobi had done was considerably simpler.\u00a0 As he addressed the problem of winning the hot-dog eating contest, he changed the question.\u00a0 The old question had been: \u201cHow can I eat more hot dogs?\u201d\u00a0 Kobi asked instead: \u201cHow can I make hot-dog eating easier?\u201d
\u00a0
His physiology put him at a disadvantage under the limits of the old question.\u00a0 But by going at the problem from an entirely new angle, he suddenly found he had a striking advantage.
\u00a0
His brain, in other words, turned out to be more critical than his stomach.
\u00a0
Takeru \u201cTsunami\u201d Kobayashi went on to win the next five July 4 contests at Nathan\u2019s.\u00a0 Because of a 2010 contract dispute with Nathan\u2019s, he ultimately passed his crown to the American Joey \u201cJaws\u201d Chestnut, who will be going for his 16th<\/sup> win in the Coney Island competition today, and who owns the current HDB world record of 76.\u00a0
\u00a0
No one doubts, however, that Kobi paved the way for Chestnut.\u00a0 He revolutionized competitive eating and gave it global exposure for the first time.\u00a0
\u00a0
He currently holds the world records for 13 grilled cheese sandwiches in 60 seconds; 62 slices of pizza (that\u2019s 15 and a half whole pizzas) in 12 minutes; and 57 cow brains in 15 minutes \u2013 which we can only imagine must have been a quarter-hour to remember.\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, the economists of \u201cFreakonomics\u201d fame, point out that amazing things can happen when we refuse to abide by artificially imposed limits.
\u00a0
\u201cAll of us face barriers \u2013 physical, financial, temporal \u2013 every day.\u00a0 Some are unquestionably real.\u00a0 But others are plainly artificial \u2013 expectations about how well a given system can function, or how much change is too much, or what kinds of behaviors are acceptable.\u00a0 The next time you encounter such a barrier, imposed by people who lack your imagination and drive and creativity, think hard about ignoring it.\u00a0 Solving a problem is hard enough; it gets that much harder if you\u2019ve decided beforehand it can\u2019t be done.\u201d
\u00a0
The apostle Paul was almost certainly not thinking about hot dogs or grilled cheese sandwiches when he wrote Ephesians 3:20-21:\u00a0
\u00a0
\u201cNow to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory\u2026forever and ever!\u201d<\/em>
\u00a0
Followers of Jesus cite that verse rather often, and for good reason.
\u00a0
Day by day, we can place ourselves in the service of a God whose power can blow away barriers.
\u00a0
Which means we\u2019re genuinely free to dream far bigger dreams, and to shatter old barriers, when it comes to helping heal this broken world.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here.\u00a0\u201cYour legs are thinner than my arms!\u201d\u00a0That\u2019s how one of the contestants at Nathan\u2019s Hot Dog eating contest on Coney Island on July 4, 2001, mocked the new guy.\u00a0The new guy was Takeru Kobayashi, a 23-year-old Japanese economics student who had taken up competitive eating as a way to pay his light… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2770,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[608],"class_list":["post-2769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barriers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2771,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2769\/revisions\/2771"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}