The 22 Pushup Challenge

Recently a buddy of mine invited me to join a new challenge. Yes, I know I'm doing the 90 Day Video Challenge already, and that's going great. I'm up to day 13 now. You can see a list of them in my 90 day video challenge index.

But this new challenge is important and from a practical point of view, it aligns well with the video challenge. The 22 Pushup challenge is about bringing awareness to the situation that many U.S. veterans encounter on a regular basis. Suicide.

The original challenge was to count 22 million pushups to raise awareness and buzz around this. The challenge was crafted by the folks at 22kill.com and while that number of pushups has been reached, there is more work to be done.

The situation is that at least, but likely more than 22 veterans are committing suicide each day. And there are different sources that report different numbers. CNN recently wrote this about the situation.

This article reports that in fact the 22 number is not exact. Not even close, the actual number is closer to 1 per day.

I know this is a grim topic, but whether the number is 22 or 2, it is too many. It is important to know that bringing light to this issue can help the situation. I believe in people and I know that veterans are strong, resilient and the article that explains the real number also has this at the end of it:

As veterans, we’re far more resilient than we’ve given ourselves credit for. If we do our job now, and extend a helping hand to our brothers and sisters over 50, we can decrease that suicide rate, and ensure our generation avoids despair in the future.

That's speaking to other veterans, but I feel like I can use some of my abilities to bring this issue to light. I think that can only help, so I took up the challenge.

Each day I complete the 22 pushups I'm doing a short video and sharing it on social media. This was my first video about it which also happens to be one of the 90 day videos.