Alexandersmap

    Category: Fitness

    • A Measure of Contentment

      How difficult
      it is to die
      from my
      disbelief
      and kneel
      down
      to the truer
      underlying
      font of happiness
      waiting to
      break
      the enclosing
      surface,
      to believe
      in my body that
      I deserve
      the full spacious
      sense of
      not being
      thirsty anymore,
      of living
      a present
      contentment.
      – David Whyte, Newly Married

      The realization of not being thirsty anymore, of being content with the life you’re living and all that it means; the relationship you’re in, the place you live, the work you do, the mark you’ve made, the places you’ve gone to and returned from, and the fitness level you’ve achieved, this is the promised land of contentment. I look at that list in the previous sentence and know I’m more than halfway there. But the fact that there’s still a list indicates I have a way to go.

      Whyte writes of relationships and having found his thirst-quenching soulmate. When you reach that particular point you recognize immediately that yes, this is more than enough for me in this area of my life. And if you haven’t, well, you’d recognize that too. Contentment isn’t the same as complacency, and each day requires a recommitment to seeing it through. To seeing it continue to tomorrow and the tomorrows to follow.

      Lately I’ve turned my attention back to fitness and nutrition. Eating the right foods, drinking in moderation, exercise and a recommitment to my flexibility and strength that has somehow been missing for too long. I recognize within myself that there’s a thirst, a hunger if you will, to be better than I presently am. This is my current area of discontentment.

      The thing is, things change, and change constantly. If at one point in life I was content with my overall fitness level, I’m not now and work to change it. If I was once content with the number of days I spent traveling and exploring the world, now I’m restless and ready to get back out there. Circumstances change, and we change with circumstances. Contentment is a relative thing, and it’s relatively evasive. We must work for that which we seek in our lives.

      I expect Whyte knows this too. He didn’t say lifetime contentment, but present contentment. We’re dynamic beings coexisting with a dynamic and ever-changing world. Contentment is meant to be evasive. Our purpose is to keep working at this fragile dance, and make of it what we can in the time given to us. To be content with being a work in progress seems the ultimate measure of contentment.

    • More to See for You and Me

      “From here to Venezuela
      There’s nothing more to see
      Than a hundred thousand islands
      Flung like jewels upon the sea
      For you and me”
      – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, The Lee Shore

      I heard about a former coworker, a guy with Israeli good looks and intense blue eyes that no doubt closed many negotiations of the heart, who succumbed to COVID after months of treatment. Younger than me, far more energy with a passion for family, travel and technology, in that order. A whirlwind of energy and intellect and movement. Quietly receding from life in a hospital bed in Miami.

      Which once again reminds me that life is so very brief, and the years of fitness and energy are even shorter. So what do we do with our days? Fritter it all away in spreadsheets and conference calls? Watch other people live their lives on social media? Or do something with our own?

      We miss too many opportunities to dance with the forests and the waves and the sky for this business of living. This busyness of living. But is it really living or just staying busy? The game of deferred living is a tragic and fatal one indeed.

      My friend is a reminder of what the stakes are, what the stakes have been, and why we changed everything. And now? Now we are living in the time of the haves and the have nots. Are you vaccinated or not? If you are, let’s celebrate our faith in science and each other and dance with the world.

      There’s so very much more to do in this short life. A hundred thousand islands are just waiting for you and me. Out there, just beyond the horizon. Waiting for us to weigh anchor and go to them. Let’s go out and meet the world.

    • Killing Phantoms

      “I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defense. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. For as I found, directly I put pen to paper, you cannot review even a novel without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex. And all these questions, according to the Angel of the House, cannot be dealt with freely and openly by women; they must charm, they must conciliate, they must—to put it bluntly—tell lies if they are to succeed. Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up the ink pot and flung it at her. She died hard. Her fictitious nature was of great assistance to her. It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. She was always creeping back when I thought I had despatched her.” – Virginia Woolf

      Storytelling is the most human of arts, the one skill that makes the salesperson or the public speaker excel, that makes our living history come alive. And there’s no doubt that Woolf was a great storyteller when you read this excerpt from a speech she gave in 1931. It came to my attention because of one line, the one I’ve bolded, that became a famous quote.

      And what a quote! We all fight our phantoms. Voices in our heads that gently tell us that maybe we should do something less risky, less audacious. Personally, I’m fighting a lazy sloth that keeps whispering in my ear that it’s okay to skip a workout today and eat some cheese. I hate that bastard, but he’s just so persuasive.

      If we agree that storytelling is an art, then what of the stories we tell ourselves? Myths about how the world is and works. We tell ourselves we don’t have time to work out or reasons why we aren’t going after a position we desire or whatever, really, that the voice says is out of reach for someone like us. And we form ideas about how the world works, and the rules that are in place that we all must follow. Which is why we either chafe or become fascinated with those who live outside the boundaries we put ourselves within.

      “I cannot overemphasize enough how much everything is made up and there are no rules.”
      – Tiago Forte

      A statement like Forte’s jumps out at you for the boldness of his words. But don’t we see the truth in it even as we feel the resistance within? For if the way we see the world and our place in it is all made up, what comes next? Chaos?

      “Myths… are stronger than anyone could have imagined. When the Agricultural Revolution opened opportunities for the creation of crowded cities and mighty empires, people invented stories about great gods, motherlands and joint stock companies to provide the needed social links. While human evolution was crawling at its usual snail’s pace, the human imagination was building astounding networks of mass cooperation, unlike any other ever seen on earth.” – Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

      The perception of order in a chaotic world comes from the stories we all agree on. We agree to live together in peace, to pay our bills, to not cut in line, to do our part, to vote and get married and raise children to be good citizens so that the next generation is just a little bit better off than we might be. This is the mass cooperation that Harari speaks of, all myths commonly subscribed to.

      Which is why we become outraged when someone breaks the rules. December 7th, September 11th or January 6th become dates forever ingrained in our minds because the rules of social order were so clearly broken. I can feel the outrage I felt on September 11th or January 6th even as I write this. But outrage doesn’t solve anything, clear thinking does. Stimulus and response, as Viktor Frankl so often reminds us.

      “Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you’re living in an illusion. There’s something seriously wrong with you. You’re not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? “He is to blame, she is to blame. She’s got to change.” No! The world’s all right. The one who has to change is you.”
      – Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      We can’t change the world, but we can change how we feel about the world. We can take meaningful action in our own lives to pivot away from outrage and towards clear thinking. I can ignore the cheese-pushing troll that lives in my head and just go work out. We can see clearly which perceived rules are holding us back from making progress in our own lives and kill those phantoms once and for all.

      It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. But reality is what you make of it. Once you get past those phantoms.

    • Marching Boldly Down the Path of Better

      There’s a battle happening in the background within each of us. A battle of habits if you will, each with a stake in your game, each working to override the other and dominate the conversation. And the stakes are high.

      We all have bad habits. Habits of consumption that lead us astray. Snacking too much. Relying on relationships for positive feedback instead of diving deep into our own soul. Bing watching and media scrolling and gossiping about so-and-so. Habits of consumption that leave us overweight and bloated on garbage.

      Good god, the garbage! Garbage of empty calories that soften and marinate us, transforming lithe into listlessness. Garbage of bitter political or conspiracy theories or social commentary that calcifies brain cells and transforms good people into trolls. Garbage of money chasing and comparing your stuff to the stuff others have. If you are what you eat what the hell are we doing to ourselves?

      Thankfully, we also have good habits. Habits of productivity that move us a step forward in our lives, marching boldly down the path of better. Eating in moderation and pulling the right dietary levers. Exercise and sweat equity and earning that next thing you put in your mouth.

      Habits that lead us towards something bigger than ourselves. Community building and nest egg accumulating and corporate ladder climbing. Habits of exploration and understanding. Habits of creation; of projects and writing and events and enterprise. Putting it and yourself out there in and for the world. For exploration is seeking more, and creation is contribution.

      So what do you lean into? What dominates the conversation in your own life? Those habits of consumption are loud talkers and want to take over your life. Habits of productivity work on you in subtle ways, pointing towards a better tomorrow with work today. That deferral sometimes makes all the difference, swaying us to the dark side of just this once.

      The trick is knowing which path you’re on. Where are you going anyway? Immediate gratification is just a little nibble or scroll away. But away from what? We’re all moving towards something, which naturally means we’re also moving away from something. What will it be for you and me? Let’s make it meaningful. March boldly down the path of better and see where it takes you.

    • Powering Through That Sleep-Deprived Day

      The older you get the more you appreciate getting a good night’s sleep. I’ve seen first-hand the effects of chronic insomnia and sleeplessness. I count my blessings that I usually sleep quite well and rarely set the alarm, letting my body wake up when it naturally would. This isn’t a blog post about getting sleep, this is a post about how to get through the day after those nights when you just didn’t get enough sleep to function properly the next day. We all have our idea of what functioning properly means, but for our purposes it means being able to do common things like string a sentence together or figure out where the coffee grinder is.

      I mentioned I rarely set the alarm. Well, I did this morning, getting up at 3 AM to drive my daughter to the airport for a flight across the country. I placed my head on the pillow after 11 PM, so you don’t need advanced calculus to figure out this worked out to less than 4 hours of sleep. So clearly I broke protocol with my sleep cycle, and you know what? It showed.

      The first sign that my brain needed some more rest was not knowing how fast I was driving because my eyes locked on the average speed of the car instead of the speedometer. Instead of processing the information quickly and efficiently I fumbled with controls on the steering wheel trying to change the display instead of looking to the right on the dashboard. Great start! Chalk it up to REM, Interrupted.

      Sleep deprivation creates moments like these. I used to be cavalier about sleep, often burning the candle at both ends and relying on caffeine to power ahead through the day. Nowadays I use days like this as blessedly infrequent reminders that I don’t want to do this all the time anymore. As we tick past noon I’ve been awake for 9 hours and feeling the fatigue starting to creep in. Powering ahead when you’re sleep-deprived sometimes requires the entire playbook.

      So how do you make it through a day when you know you’ll be exhausted? Here are some tried-and-true go-to’s for those moments when caffeine offers diminishing returns:

      Hydrate! It’s too easy to let your body slip into dehydration when you’re chugging coffee. Hydration makes you sharper and more energetic, so balance glasses of cold water between cups of java.

      Move! Dynamic stretching and a quick walk gets the blood flowing and the adrenaline pumping. You don’t have to run a marathon to feel energized, just 5-10 minutes of active movement can make all the difference.

      Sleep! That’s right, when all else fails, a power nap goes a long, long way to getting you through the day. I use the Jocko Willink trick of a 10 to 15 minute power nap. He recommends elevating your feet so you get blood flow to the brain, and to sleep no more than 15 minutes for maximum rejuvenation with minimum grogginess. It’s a rare day when I need a nap but when I do Jocko’s method works wonders. If it can help a Navy Seal get through their day, it can certainly help us mortals.

      So go on, power through that day! But remember to get some meaningful sleep that night. We can’t be vibrant when our senses are dulled, and a string of bad sleep nights nullifies even the best wake-up tricks.

    • What’s Next?

      What do you do with the day after a holiday? You clean up, maybe you feel the need to clean yourself up a bit, and then you move on. It’s a reset, if you will, with the lingering glow of celebration slowly fading into memory.

      Americans are waking up to the day after Independence Day. Yards are filled with debris from exploded ordinance, recycling bins are chock full and the wildlife that surrounds the house slowly recovers from the shock of humanity fully expressing themselves. And oh boy, do we express ourselves.

      Americans tend to be hard drivers in the game of life. Work hard, play hard is the favorite expression. You’re either into the madness and frenzy of the moment or you’re not. Those who are not are using the long weekend to get away from the noise and hike or sequester themselves in some quiet cottage somewhere away from it all.

      The day after Independence Day we look up and see that half the year has slipped away and we’ve moved from the earliest days of summer to the height of summer. The days are getting warmer but shorter all at the same time. You aren’t moving towards the sun now, you’re slipping away from it.

      For all the talk of New Year’s Eve and resolutions, the day after Independence Day is the day when I look around at how my year is going, and how my life is going after the frenzied first half and decide how and what I’m going to change in this second half. It’s the midway point of the year, with so much already accomplished or so much potential untapped. But it’s not either/or, is it? More likely a bit of both.

      The day after is the day when you shake off the cobwebs and finally stop for a moment. There’s still so much you can do in the year. Still so much you have to do. The growing season is well underway, but there’s plenty of time before the harvest to do some meaningful work. So it’s a fair time to ask yourself, in the quiet of the morning after the madness, what’s next?

      If July 4th celebrates the Declaration of Independence, what will we declare for ourselves as we look to the future? Shouldn’t we make it just as bold? If that document tells us anything, it’s that an inspired vision that you can get behind can make a big difference in where you go next.

    • Forever is Our Today

      But touch my tears with your lips
      Touch my world with your fingertips
      And we can have forever
      And we can love forever
      Forever is our today
      – Queen, Who Wants to Live Forever

      This idea of living forever is tantalizing, isn’t it? It fuels our fascination with vampires and elves and superheroes, but I’m not sure it’s in our best interest to be immortal. We waste so much time already. Maybe time running out is a gift. as Jason Isbell wrote in his magical song I quoted last week. It does tend to focus us on the urgency of the moment, doesn’t it?

      There are advancements in science that offer legitimate hope for extending life 2-3 times longer than our current lifespan. Swap out a bit of DNA code for something better and become almost invincible. To cure all ills and live a healthy vibrant 150-200 years seems like pure fantasy, but there are people like Peter Diamandis with his company Human Longevity actively pursuing this now. Which makes you wonder, to what end?

      Will longevity become like plastic surgery for the truly vain, with constant adjustments and tweaks to our genetic code based on the latest blood work? Probably. Who wants to live forever? Plenty of people. And the wealthy have the means to chase it. If you want to be in the genetic engineering game you’d better be adept at accumulating wealth before the bill comes due.

      Will our pursuit of immortality lead humanity down unethical paths? There’s no doubt. Hostile governments are likely already working on superhuman soldiers with incredible strength and no fear. 60 Minutes recently aired a segment about foreign governments accumulating information about your DNA. We’re really just at the early stages of exponential growth in genetic engineering. Ethical questions abound.

      “It is naïve to imagine that we might simply hit the brakes and stop the scientific projects that are upgrading Homo sapiens into a different kind of being. For these projects are inextricably meshed together with the Gilgamesh Project… since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, the real question facing us is not ‘What do we want to become?’, but ‘What do we want to want?’ Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven’t given it enough thought… Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want? – Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

      Pretty heavy ethical questions right there. But fair to ask. What is the mission anyway? Perfection? Dominance? Immortality? To what end? There are plenty of selfish, irresponsible people who demonstrate every day that we can’t just trust people to do the right thing. If Sapiens detailed anything in fine detail, it’s that humanity has shoved aside questions about ethics and fairness at almost every step in our existence.

      So where does that leave you and me? There’s the shared wealth of knowledge we can lean on as science sifts through what works and what doesn’t. We all know to exercise more and eat more blueberries and kale. Are we really chasing immortality or just a healthier, more vibrant life in the time that we have? Better surpasses longer on the priority list, I should think. Why would anyone want to extend a miserable life indefinitely? To hold out for just one more Fast & Furious movie to see how it all turns out?

      What do we want to want? Yikes. Forever seems pretty attractive, but personally, I’d like to master today. Forego the maddening crush of distractions pulling you towards perfect smiles and perfect abs and the perfect family and just be incrementally better than yesterday. A good start would be to be fitter and sharper through good decisions and a little discipline. String enough good days together and maybe you have just enough life in the end. Immortality is folly. But we can have today.

    • Illusions of the Moment

      “When you go through life with preferences but don’t let your happiness depend on any one of them, then you’re awake. You’re moving toward wakefulness. Wakefulness, happiness—call it what you wish—is the state of nondelusion, where you see things not as you are but as they are, insofar as this is possible for a human being. To drop illusions, to see things, to see reality. Every time you are unhappy, you have added something to reality. It is that addition that makes you unhappy. I repeat: You have added something … a negative reaction in you. Reality provides the stimulus, you provide the reaction. You have added something by your reaction. And if you examine what you have added, there is always an illusion there, there’s a demand, an expectation, a craving.” – Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      Monday mornings are a good time to revisit De Mello. To confront the reality of the work week ahead without dread requires a measure of acceptance of the moment you’re living in. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing do something else as soon as you possibly can. If you enjoy it, understand what it draws out of you and double down on that. Most people in the world today have the freedom to choose how they react.

      The entire quote above might immediately makes you think of Viktor Frankl’s thoughts on stimulus and response. Even in the worst of moments, we can choose how to react to stimulus in our lives. Accept the truth of the matter for what it is and see things for how they are. That might not make you happy, but it makes you fully aware. And don’t we need to be in that state to make effective, meaningful decisions in our lives?

      The question is, what exactly are you adding in the moment? What are your illusions about the way things ought to be, about how someone should speak with you, about wearing a mask or getting vaccinated or how we see a person a bit different from ourself? How do you view that job you’re going to or the title you have or the car you drive? How about how you view the person driving in front of you or the one trying to pass you? What are you adding in that moment?

      We often confront illusions in how others treat us. I had a conversation with an old friend who was poking at me about a tendency I used to have when we were younger. I smiled and let the moment slide away, knowing I’m not that person anymore. You learn to accept who you once were as you get older. But doing so in the moment is a bit trickier, isn’t it? It requires us to be constantly aware of the illusions we’re throwing up. What story am I telling myself right now? And what might happen if I simply subtracted that story?

      This idea of observing yourself in the moment between stimulus and response is a way of getting outside of your own head and seeing the choices in front of you. To shatter the illusion that you don’t have a choice in how you react. To shift to a state of non-delusion and maybe, to choose the path towards happiness. In the thirty years since I first read Man’s Search for Meaning and accelerating in the two years since I read Awareness I’ve chipped away at this within myself. I’m under no illusion that I’ve mastered it, but I work with the tools available to step outside myself towards wakefulness.

      This is a skill that is especially handy on some Monday mornings.

    • Swimming Season

      New Hampshire has a short swimming season. This is the toll we pay up here in the north country. Since I’m not one to pay for a membership at a gym just to swim laps, every year around this time my body gets reacquainted with the aches and pains unique to swimming. Body parts pushing through the friction of water get tested in ways you don’t test them when you’re doing land-based workouts. These are muscles I haven’t used in months and I feel it the next morning. When I do it all over again.

      Full body soreness is a signal. This signal is telling me “congratulations, you’ve done some work. Now keep it going.” And so I get back at it. Lap after lap back and forth in the pool, slowly relearning the joy of swimming for fitness. Out of breath at first, until my lungs figure out the pace and I settle into a rhythm.

      It’s purely coincidence that the Olympic Swimming Trials are being televised at the same time I’m back in the pool. I’m not at the level that these Olympic athletes are at, swimming to realize their dream or see it dashed by the slimmest of margins. I’m awed by these men and women working for years to a peak of physical excellence, but I don’t jump in the pool and swim laps to be like them. They sacrifice far more in their pursuit than I’m willing to sacrifice (the fact that I’m as old as their parents aside). I’m not that delusional anymore.

      We all sacrifice something. I’m not chasing excellence in the pool as I swim alone back and forth like a ping pong ball bouncing off walls. No, I’m not chasing anything at all. Just a return to the joy of swimming for swimming’s sake. No triathlons or swim meets in my future, just more of the same push against the fluid friction of water. The pool mostly, with a few days in salty Buzzards Bay and the dark, silty waters of my favorite New Hampshire pond mixed in before the days grow cold again.

      Early morning swims remind us of the shortness of the season. The air is brisk at 6 AM, steam rises off the pool and dewy surfaces as the sun reaches for them. Laps in a pool are like the cycle of the seasons; ’round and ’round we go, back to where we once were only to turn around when we get there. This might seem repetitive and mundane, but if we pay attention we find we’re not the same person on our return. Something in us changes, one lap at a time. One season at a time.

    • Everything, Left Alone

      We want the stillness and confidence
      of age, the space between self and all the objects of the world
      honoured and defined, the possibility that everything
      left alone can ripen of its own accord
      – David Whyte, Living Together

      I’d like to think that I’ve arrived at this stage in my life where I can just let things be. To allow nature to take its course, for things to sort themselves out, to let everything left alone ripen of its own accord. I should think that’s too bold a statement, the arrogance of youth still pulsing in my middle-aged body.

      We see it mostly with our children. In wanting to control the pace of their lives, to see them land well when they fly – to see the flight itself aim straight and true towards a logical place a few notches above where we ourselves have flown. For we’re in such a hurry to get them there, wanting the very best for them. You can’t rush the ripening, you tell yourself, and keep your unsolicited advice deep inside, waiting for an invitation to weigh in.

      You learn to wait in the wings, ready to lend a hand, just playing the parent or friend card. Maybe it’s the gardener in me, knowing you’ve got to let things grow, more often than not finding yourself in wonder at the progression as things surpass your expectations. Sure, you curse the occasional rabbit or groundhog that ruins your dreams of a perfect season, but on the whole things work themselves out in the end (letting things be doesn’t mean you don’t have to fight for what you believe in: install a fence when you need to).

      I’m not in any hurry to reach old age, but I know (if I’m lucky) that it’s not all that far away. A few decades, maybe, to make what I might of this life project. This work in progress. Imperfect. Incomplete. But in progress just the same. Seeing this in yourself lends a measure of understanding and empathy for the journey everyone else is on. For the possibility that they’re grinding away at.

      Everything left alone can ripen on its own accord. This is the way of the world. Just remember that I’ll be here if you need me.