I remember being taught in my tenth grade English class this wisdom of Benjamin Franklin: “Moderation in all things.”
Deciding to train for triathlons and starting two companies, one for profit, one non-profit, all in one year, does not demonstrate that maxim.
I have spent almost a decade opening myself to being, not doing, to presence in the moment rather than striving and straining for future outcomes. I have fostered my consciousness, my awareness, my enlightenment. I have come to value these.
I have worked on self-care, understanding with my head that before I can be of any service to others, or to be available for relationships with them, I have be well cared for myself. Since I’m an adult, the caring for is to be done by me. This does not come to me naturally.
Something about turning 49 turned me.
I have 44 days left to be 49.
In my fifth week of my early season training as a triathlete, I missed a workout. So I decided on my own to do a brick. During week six, I missed two workouts. I spent two hours in bed yesterday.
The striving and straining are out-weighing the moderation.
So this would be self-care for me:
Guarding the early morning hours for solo creative work.
Training during mid-morning.
Lunch and a nap.
Afternoon hours for appointments, phone calls, and e-mail.
I often awake as early as 4, tend the cats, prepare his coffee and my tea, then begin work by 4:30. By 10:30, I’ve already put in a 6-hour work day. Another 4 hours in the afternoon, and that’s 10 hours.
Some inner cosmos never measures what I do as enough.
My plan was to fix that by 50.
Wasn’t that smart to start competitive triathlon training and two businesses--where more is almost always better?
It certainly has provided a laboratory to test my real values.
I continue to evolve, however, into a person I respect. I don’t always take care of her, but I appreciate the candle she keeps lit in search of the high road.
***
Insights I have had as a result of a one-year quest to resolve all personal issues before turning 50 so that the next how-ever-many could be error-free:
Despite my creativity, my intent, my will, my earnest, intense effort, I am hard to change. As much as I might wish to be different, other, or more, after 50 years of a practiced pattern, the pattern probably will not be subject to much altering, despite my best efforts. There’s a “this is it” finality to that that saddens me somewhat.
My striving and seeking to find the one truth is a quest I must relinquish. My striving and seeking to find, in any situation, which is black and which is white, which is good and which is evil, must be relinquished. My yearning to always, always follow the high road is admirable and sweet, but ultimately naïve. “Always” is much rarer than I thought. What is right and what is wrong in any situation is so often unclear and the choices seem to array themselves on a continuum of sort of right or sort of wrong. Judgment calls must be made and uncertainty must be tolerated.
I think I believed I would find peace in absolute certainty. All I had to do was determine that absolute and I would be free of the unquiet of doubt.
Probably peace, although I still find myself resisting this, is found in accepting the ever-presence of uncertainty.
Phooey.
***
What I treasure in my life:
My husband, my cat, his cat, my family, a specific list of individuals, my friends, tea with milk, wine, steak, writing pieces like this early in the morning, and triathlon training.
I love focused exertion: the hard, fast pull of this right arm just where I can see it in the water then under my body, lifting this left quad at the top of the pedal circle, right triceps driving my arm back at a right angle as I fire up a hill.
My husband said to me yesterday, “You train to exhaustion.”
It may look that way. I train to intensity.
What I love about this season’s training over last season’s training is that I have learned enough technique to reach levels of smooth intensity in each sport. I’m catching on to cadence and rhythm. I’m not just trying to stay afloat, pass the miles, get one foot in front of the other. I’m trying to cover distance. Fast.
I love it.
That said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have my aches and pains and sometimes I don’t wanna and no one’s watching when I train so sometimes when I’m given my choice of a non-freestyle stroke, I dog paddle.
I love my life when I’m training. I’m not seeking absolutes or resolution of all irresolutions in 44 days. I’m there, I’m feeling my life, I’m blood and breath, I’m open, ideas come and go, I’m there.
