Archive | Personal Development RSS feed for this section

I Was Never Just a Runner

23 Feb

I like to think that the real me is the me that emerges when I’m joyful and relaxed and healthy and content in who I am.

And I like to think that the me that emerges when I’m stressed and unhappy and injured is the fake me.  And it really doesn’t count.  Because everyone knows that this is not me.  That this is just an evil version that has come down in a UFO and taken me prisoner for a few hours/days/weeks/months.  Right?

But I don’t think there is a real me or a fake me.  Just me.  Lots of good, lots of bad, lots of gray areas.  And the people who have never known me in a good time have no way of knowing what good I am capable of.  And the people who have never known me in a bad time have no way of knowing what evil I am capable of.  And most people have seen both and know that I’m capable of quite the gamut of emotions and personalities.

And no, I am not special. We’re all that way.

But I’ve been realizing it more and more.  It’s been two months since I ran without pain (and the two times I ran were so unpleasant, it’s best to forget they ever happened).  Two months feels like a long time.  I am passionate about running, it fits me in a way that I needed a hobby to.  It makes me feel athletic and strong and it gives me a much needed break from work drama and school reading and life.

I miss changing into running gear for lunch runs with my coworker. I miss catching up on life with my coworker.  I never really appreciated just how much time we spent together training for my marathon. I feel guilty that I’m not logging all those miles with her while training for her marathon.  I miss the river.  I love the river.  My life has revolved around the river these past few years – biking, running, races, suicide, walks, the journey from work to class to gym to school that I have made umpteen times, the bridge between my home city and my work city.  I miss the sweat and how freezing cold you are for the first wintery mile and how quickly you warm up. I miss Sport Beans and power gels and electrolytes.  I miss the running jargon. I even miss all the runners who would smile and nod at my Reach the Beach and Ragnar shirts.  I miss feeling athletic.

And rather than settling into my new identity – the girl learning to live through IT band pain and focusing on strength and core and lifting weights and keeping my knee from buckling during squats – I’ve been grasping for the old one.  And failing.  And being a little miserable git who has no doubt annoyed a fair number of people.

“It’s not me,” I say, as an excuse.

And coworkers ask about my training and tell me that they’ve taken up running because of me (5!  5 people this month!) and HomeSlice asks what crazy event I am doing next.  And I feel boring and dull because I have nothing to talk about but this only-fascinating-to-me world of balancing and muscles and tendons and kinesio tape (I wear the black stuff but lately, it starts unsticking from my skin.  Apparently even my skin is defective.)  I crave early Saturday morning long runs.

Maybe this would make sense if I was a good runner.  Technically, I am. I run straight and true without kicking up limbs behind me or running knock-kneed.  But I am not a fast runner, I am not an especially talented runner, I’m just a girl who loves running.  And biking.  And boxing.  And soccer.  And lifting.  And apparently, even balancing.  But for some reason, my frustration over not being able to run outweighs the rest.

It really comes down to identity.  If I can’t run, can I call myself a runner?  Can I still consider myself athletic? Am I athletic?  Even after all these years, I still feel like I’m the childhood me who was never athletic, let’s be honest.  Maybe because I never tried.  Maybe because I didn’t have confidence in myself. Or  maybe because I am just not an athlete.

If I can’t run, can I call myself a runner?  Can I still read my running magazines and make my fruit smoothies and get excited over planning future races?

And if I am this sad about running, can I trust that liking things and losing them is still better than being apathetic to everything in general?  Is my love of running more important than other people’s needs for me to be happy and focused and independent when I feel moody and distracted and needy?

Unfortunately, no, it’s not.

I’m learning to let go of who I used to be and embrace this time of stumbling towards what I will be in the future.  Maybe a runner again.  I hope so.  But also, just a person with so much more to offer than miles per hour and foam rolling techniques.

I am a runner.  But I was never just a runner.  Just as you are _____.  But you were never just a _____.

We are more than the things we do.  Today, more than ever, I’m grateful for that truth.

The Power of Functional Reserve

20 Feb

Reading Sports Illustrated is my guilty pleasure.  It’s time to be honest about it. Not only do I like the stats and the sports discussion but I like the stories about real people beating the odds, conquering their demons, becoming someone new.  It’s very inspiring stuff.

“Consider a scientific phenomenon called functional reserve. The human heart has a reservoir of unused ability, like a powerful car that can go 150 mph but never gets pushed above 75. A normal heart will pump about 60% of its blood volume with each beat. But one cardiologist tells the story of a bodybuilder who thrived for nearly a decade with a heart that could pump only about 10% per beat…The body finds a way to compensate, at least for a while.  Functional reserve is not just for the heart.  Every organ has this hidden power, this ability to outperform its perceived limits when the need is desperate.”  (From February 20, 2012 issue)

The human body is an amazing creation.  If I were more scientifically inclined, I could probably elaborate on what I read in a not-very-scientific-article.

Instead, let’s substitute the word organ for person and move into a realm I am more comfortable with:

Every person has this hidden power, this ability to outperform its perceived limits when the need is desperate.

We’ve heard the stories and seen the YouTube videos of women lifting entire cars off of their toddler’s legs. Of people running 72 hour races (if you really want to feel sick, go read about the TripleIronMan events – 7.2 miles of swimming, 336 miles of cycling, 78.6 miles of running all done back to back).  And we all know about Aron Ralston, having to cut his own arm off with a pocketknife.

Some of us believe it is the grace of God who gives people their functional reserve.  Others believe it is purely a scientific result.  Some of us believe those two aren’t incompatible.

Regardless, people do amazing things when they need to.  People outperform their own perceived limits and the perceived limits we put on them (in the sports realm, think Brady, Lin, Tebow, etc.)  But so does the woman juggling a household and three toddlers and the unceasing demands of it all.  So does the man working long hours at his career but still showing up at all of his son’s sporting events.  The woman scared of traveling who goes on a missions trip. The man scared of public speaking who agrees to talk about his entrepreneur successes at a local non-profit.

If I spent less time judging people’s limits and more time encouraging those I see who are surpassing theirs, I think I’d be a more joyful person. It’s time to expect great things from those we know and cheer for, to not admit defeat before the clock runs out, to stay in the bleachers until the last second and see the game to its completion good or bad.

Because, as Theodore Roosevelt put it so eloquently:

In the battle of life, it is not the critic who counts; nor the one who points out how the strong person stumbled, or where the doer of a deed could have done better.

The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who does actually strive to do deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, spends oneself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if he or she fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those timid spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

I Hate When You Apologize

9 Feb

1.

“I hate when you apologize. It makes you look weak.”

I’m not sure if I ever spoke those words to my brother or if I just thought them. I was predisposed to be proud of my brother. To want everyone to know that we shared a last name. But I was also competitive.  And those two factions were at war during the years we played on the same soccer team.  We rarely won a soccer game.  And I’m still proud of my brother.  So I guess we know which side won.

But the audacity at the time was galling.  My brother, a useful midfielder, was forever apologizing to the opposing team when he took the ball from them.  Me, a less than useful but determined forward, was embarrassed.

2.

“I hate when you apologize. It makes you look weak.”

My boyfriend spat these words at me. Since I was forever being accused of running faster than him, walking faster than him, having to be better than everyone else at things, I’m not sure if the real issue was that I looked weak.  Wouldn’t he have enjoyed that?  Or if it made him look weak by association?  Since I never apologized for things in front of other people, I’m not exactly sure what the problem was.

And yes, I did consider apologizing for apologizing too much.

Which just shows that maybe he had a point.

The irony, forever lost on him, is that I was actually in the wrong.  I was forever apologizing for doing the right thing, for being the adult, for thinking about others.  I never should have apologized in the first place.  I wish I could apologize to myself now – that younger, wishful, innocent self – for ever being led to believe that I was bad and not good enough and second rate.

3.

“I hate when you apologize. Because then I have to, want to, will always forgive you” he said.
“I hate when I apologize. But I have to, want to, need to know that I’m forgiven” I said.

And my love for being forgiven always trumps.

The Man Who Lived on His Bike

6 Feb

If you want to see a man living on his bike for 382 days, go here:

The Man Who Lived on His Bike

Showering. Shaving. Eating. Checking his email. You name it, he did it while biking. It was a grand gesture in support of a cause. The sort of big gesture that gets a lot of publicity and followers and “Likes” on Facebook.

There’s nothing wrong with big gestures.  They can be pretty important in garnering support or proving allegiance or proposing marriage.  (Which are all basically the same thing, now that I think about it…)

But this year I am finding joy in the small gestures.

The security guard who doesn’t treat me like a nameless employee but greets me by name with a smile every single day.

The coworker who manages to work Dumb and Dumber and The Office Space quotes into a Monday lunch.  Laughing at a Monday is highly underrated.

The busboy who patiently explains some of the hidden rules of expensive restaurant waitstaff etiquette.

The engineer who accepts it good-naturedly when he asks what “his” chapter will be titled when I write a book about engineers someday.  It’s going to be called “The Engineer who couldn’t close a deal.”  It basically explains his entire life.

The handwritten card in the mail with a photo from a fun December memory.

Ibuprofen being hand-delivered to my desk when I put out an SOS.

My Tuesday-night-house-guest keeping me fed with Panera salads and Mexican burritos and Thai dishes (I eat well on Tuesdays!)

The emails.  The texts.  Even the boys who, in their attempt to make me laugh, go a tad too far.  The woman who held our apartment door open as I carried my bike in. The race official who decided I deserved entrance to the beer tent without an official bib. The friend who stayed up watching the Super Bowl with me even though he’d worked a double-shift and neither team was his. The maintenance worker who kicked my bathroom door down to rescue the Southern-damsel-in-distress.  A Mom who drives the getaway car after I commit a murder (ok, that was only in my dreams).

None of these moments will be featured on YouTube.  Probably very few are even remembered by those involved. Except me.  Small gestures need to be acknowledged because if I had to choose, say, 1 big gesture a year or a myriad of small gestures every single day, I’d want the latter.

So if you don’t have the time or energy or desire to live on your bike or your roof or your toilet seat or the top of a very tall pillar, don’t despair.  Keep it simple.  Keep it small. It still counts.

 

Catching a Train in Ukraine

4 Feb

“The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the train before.”  ~G.K. Chesterton

I have always loved trains.  Even after I ran along train tracks as a small child (completely absorbed in my own little world, as only a child can be) never hearing the train whistle alerting me that it was chasing me down the track, it’s powerful wheels churning faster than my little legs.  I love to run. But I also love trains.

And my love for trains wasn’t dimmed by the incident on Amtrak headed to Boston when we hit and killed a person.  And we sat there in the darkening train for hours on end, after seeing the train conductor stumble past on, with tears in his eyes, no doubt being questioned over and over by the police.

But the Ukrainian train that brought so many emotions to the surface almost killed my train passion.  I’ve always loved the thought of riding the TransSiberian Railroad.  I’m not immune to the delightful train scenes whisking kids to the countryside (think The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe).  And the delightful intrigue and spy scenes that take place in trains with sleeping berths (think Mission Impossible, Indiana Jones, Sherlock Holmes).

But this train.  This train came at the end of a very intense 2 weeks of staying with a Ukrainian family (the kind that want to practice their English and cook you 9 course meals which is incredibly sweet but also frustrating when those practice sessions and meals take place at 2 or 3 am and you know you have to be awake at 6 am and dealing with 100+ kids who all speak a different language than you).  A very intense 2 weeks that involved being chased down the street, performing minor surgery on a lacerated bloody foot, dealing with difficult personalities.

So here we were, all this energy and excitement and exhaustion crammed into this train berths.  And I lay on a top bunk and tried to sleep, to find relaxation in the clacking of the train wheels, to ignore the swearing and very-drunk-on-vodka singing of the Russian in the next berth.  And sleep was impossible.  Because we were on a Soviet era train with tiny bathrooms and when would we ever experience this again?

Because we had been warned that the train would stop, but not really, at our stop at 3:15 am.  Yes, the stop was listed on the train.  Yes, we could get off there.  But no, the train would not physically stand still and let us off.  In order to conserve fuel, the train would merely slow down and we could jump from it onto a platform.  We would have ~60 seconds to get all 30+ of us and our luggage off the train.  They even agreed to open 2 doors.  We would gather in the hallways at 3 am, line up the suitcase, us girls would jump first, a bag in each hand, the guys would follow, tossing the larger duffel bags containing our sports gear.   It is a testament to how long we’d been in Ukraine that I didn’t find this entire plan ridiculous.   No one blinked an eye.  We knew that somehow, somewhere, to some person this “stopping but not stopping” made sense.

That probably explains why I found myself in the dining car, surrounded by drunk Russians singing traditional songs, staring out at the very-unchanging scenery, watching the light disappear, discouraged.  Our team had fulfilled our mission: 150 Ukrainian students versus 3 British, 1 German, 1 American and 1 South African.  We’d managed to teach some drama, some art, some sport, and most surprisingly, some English.  We’d met the local town officials and, on an hour’s notice, put together a very entertaining evening for a large part of the town.

Our team succeeded but despite being splintered.  Despite a lot of sarcasm and surface discussions from one individual in particular.  And I was the one mostly singled out for his frustration and annoyance.  As the oldest, we were lumped together haphazardly, expected to get along and be good role models and we were not.  Now, all these years later, I wonder if I should have just addressed him on the first day – laid out the ground rules – questioned why he was acting this way – tried to negotiate some friendly agreement.  But I didn’t.  And I, the one who thrives on sarcasm and biting wit, let his comments get to me.  Once you let something under your skin, it burrows deep.  In this case, very deep.  Our team viewed the trip as a success, I viewed it as a personal failure.  I’d failed to get him to open up, to shed light onto why he was being so difficult, and why I was the one being personally chosen to be bullied.

And then he came into the dining car.  And we sat together, on opposite sides of the table, and I wanted to be home.  Not home to England where I was living but home to New Hampshire – to the house with the wooden beams and ice cream cones in summer and laundry on the clothesline.  Instead, I was on a dirty train stuck talking to someone who I wanted to hate but couldn’t.  I’d even failed at that.

He surprised me then with a present.  A present that was 2 weeks too late and useless.  But he opened up.  He talked about his life growing up. His family.  His achievements (there were several award-winning record-setting ones) and his failures (mostly relational).  He didn’t draw conclusions and I didn’t either.  I just listened.  And instead of being grateful for finally understanding him a little, seeing that curtain of self cinched back just a tad, dipping below the layers of apparent unconcern for our feelings that he’d worn for weeks, I felt angry.  Angry that he was a real person who only opened up when he wanted to.  Angry that he wanted someone to really know him and he’d picked me.  Angry that I couldn’t say or do anything to change how he interacted with people.

“Why me?”  (I’ll never know exactly what I was asking.  Why did you pick on me so much? Why did you put me down and appear to hate me? Why are you choosing to open up to me?)

“Because you cared. Because I don’t think anyone gets under your skin and I did.  It was a challenge and I won.”

“A lousy challenge.  A worthless challenge.  You  made me feel like nothing.”

“Only people who are something feel like that.”

There was never an apology.  We got up at 3:00 AM from the still-singing dining car and walked to the sleeping berth to collect our bags and prepare for our stopping/unstopping exit from the train.  And for once, I was glad to leave.  To pretend that I got on the wrong train and somewhere there is another train where things make sense.  Where trains stop and start like they say they will.  Where people act how they really feel.  And where a simple “Why me?” leaves a satisfactory answer.

Maybe the train I missed, the one where life makes sense and every story has a tidy ending, doesn’t exist.  Maybe the train I caught, where life is crazy and strange and stories don’t begin and end, is the one I am still traveling on.

Why I Like Engineers and 6th Graders

1 Feb

Today I hung out with some sixth graders.  I haven’t done that since…well, I taught sixth grade which was a long time ago before I went to college and then moved to England and then worked in Portland, Maine and then came to Boston to watch the Red Sox and get an MBA. Or something similar.

A number of us, mostly engineers, ate lunch with a couple classes of sixth graders.  Mostly African-American (except for one) and all attending a school weighted heavily towards math and science.  I had a blast.  Our engineers had a blast.  (Granted, this was a subsection of engineers who had volunteered for the task and were therefore unnaturally extroverted.) The rest of the employees – those in HR, Finance & Administration, did not.

They came to me, one at a time, asking “Wasn’t that exhausting?  I’ve never tried so hard to get kids to like me before.”

I don’t think they were prepared for my answer: “Why did you want them to like you?  The point was to engage them in conversation, answer any career questions, get a window into their lives.  The point was never to be liked.”

Most people want to be liked.  It’s true.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But one of the great not-so-secret secrets of life is that one does not approach a group of sixth graders hoping for some encouraging words.  For some validation.  For security and acceptance.  If you go in with that mindset, you will be disappointed.  To say the least.  More likely, you will enter a mild identity crisis (even if for only an afternoon).

I think it’s the same with engineers.  Sixth graders are so insular, focused on themselves and their emerging abilities and world, too absorbed with being cool and popular but also still shyly vulnerable – willing to tell you that they love reading and hoping you won’t tear them apart for the maybe-not-so-cool-truth.  Engineers can be insular too, solving their problems, diagnosing other people’s problems, finding solutions.  It’s not about you being less cool than their robot or their math problem or their lab.  Ok, you probably are.  Just accept it.  And maybe they aren’t cool and popular, except amongst other engineers, and maybe they don’t realize their shy vulnerabilities make them more approachable.

You don’t approach a group of engineers hoping for encouragement.  For validation, security and acceptance.  You approach a group of engineers with a problem, hoping for a solution, an open mind to entering their world and learning about what fascinates them.  The same with sixth graders.

Other employees tried to begin conversations with “What’s your favorite subject? What do you want to be when you grow up?”  And then they got stonewalled, tuned out, ignored.  Not saying it’s good behavior, but it is typical.  I began my conversations with “What will the Super Bowl score be on Sunday? If you could have any dream job in the world (but you’d have to do it forever/someone who has treated you poorly also has the same job/you wouldn’t get paid for it) what would it be?  What are you interested in enough that you’d be willing to skip meals and ignore your crush in order to do?”

The answers were fascinating.  Our hour and a half flew by.  I had a great time.

When an engineer or a sixth grader compliments you, it matters.  It rarely happens. But it matters.  And when they don’t, it does not mean you’re any less of a person.  It means that they are focused on something else, something other than buoying up your psyche and making you feel good about your existence.

If you enter a room seeking validation and security, most likely you’ll end up frustrated.  Even if your interactions are positive.  But if you enter a room seeking information and bent on listening and observing, you’ll end up rewarded.  You may learn something. You may become passionate about something you never even knew the acronym for before. Or you may just survive. Enter a room completely secure in yourself rather than seeking it from others and you’ll be freed up to explore just how great other people can be.

Sixth graders.

Engineers.

Basically everyone.*

 

*except clowns

Pick-pocketed by A Friend

30 Jan

“People in your past have dipped their hands in your purse and taken what was yours.” – Max Lucado

We are all owed something by someone.  An apology.  An explanation. Justification.  A childhood.  A marriage. A chance to prove our worth.  Trust.

Every one of us carries wounds from a hurtful conversation, a past snub, an intentional slur. And the closer the person was to us who did it, the deeper the gash. A thief enters a home he has not been granted access to and steals things that are not his.  A friend enters a home that she has been invited into, takes things that she has been offered, and then, once you are both comfortable with this arrangement, occasionally oversteps the boundaries and takes more – often of a personal nature – knowledge. And disperses that.

When a thief steals, we feel unsafe.  When a friend steals, we feel betrayed. And we retreat or shut down or vow to cut off all friendships and live a pathetic hermit existence. Or we vow to get even. Even though we often dip our hands in another’s purse while our own is being ransacked.

  • Learn to ask for forgiveness  and to mean it.
  • Learn to love your friends and be genuinely open with them without entrusting all of them with especially important information.  Use the term “please keep this confidential” sparingly.  Your really good friends don’t need to be told that in order to keep it to themselves.
  • Keep things confidential that others tell you. If you don’t think you can, be honest with them before they share their concerns.  Wounds on top of wounds take much longer to heal.
  • Learn to walk away.  Learn to not respond to hurtful emails sent just to bait you. Learn not to respond to vindictive comments said just to spite you. Learn to be okay with leaving things unsaid.

In the movies, there is almost always that scene – where everything is confessed and everyone realizes just how woefully wrong some of their previous judgment calls were and how utterly confusing their conflicting communications were.  If it’s a romantic comedy, this is followed by a lot of mushy I Love You and let’s start over and forgive the past because you’re the only one for me.  If it’s an action film, this is usually followed by a slap on the back or a quick-witted barb or something to show that the guys realize they were always fighting on the same team.  If it’s a science fiction account, there’s really no need for this scene because everyone is too busy handling the alien carnage and getting patched up, unless they are lucky enough to book a vacation stay in a Ewok village in which case they can learn that the person they were crushing on was their own twin.

That scene rarely happens in real life.  In real life, you don’t always get to know the how and the why and the when and the for how long.  Often because the other person doesn’t even understand why he or she is acting this way.  In real life, you get told that you walk too fast, apologize too often, ask for too much, ask for too little, talk too much, talk too little, have wacky personal beliefs, aren’t negative enough about life and…slash bike tires.  And then, when you choose to walk away, you are told that you are acting immature because you won’t fight back. And so you keep walking away.  But then realize you are being followed.

It’s times like these you want to slash a bike tire. Instead, you just keep walking, knowing your shadow will eventually get distracted along the route and take a different path.

Still beats finding out you were in love with your twin.

 

The Horror of The Same Old Thing

28 Jan

“Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.  The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart—an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, [God] has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating Pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together on the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme.” – The ScrewTape Letters by C.S. Lewis

I’ve rarely read such a truthful paragraph before. As humans, we need the union of change and permanence.

We don’t like the status quo. We don’t want to be viewed as boring. We get depressed at the thought of the daily rat race.  If you don’t believe me, check out a few Facebook statuses.  Or listen to the next phone conversation with an old friend.  After the “How are you?” we typically jump right into the “What’s new and exciting?” phase of the conversation.

And we also like permanence.  We like the guarantee of seasons and holidays marking the passage of time.  Always bringing something new but always bringing a sense of tradition and stability with them.

Seasons.
Holidays.
Baby milestones: rolling over, sitting up, crawling, walking.
Age.
Morning, noon, and night.
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Weekdays and weekends.
September – the beginning of a school year, May/June – graduation.

Because temporal rhythms are so important to us as humans, and we do not do well without them, we make up markers and then retrain our activities around them if need be.  They may be surrogate markers for real beginnings and middles and ends, but they work just as well as the real thing.

Trimesters in a pregnancy.
Mid-life crisis.
Semesters at college broken up with fall and spring breaks.
Dating, engagement, marriage.
Fiscal years broken into financial quarters.
Workweeks for work and obligations, weekends for errands and relaxation.

While change is good and permanence is good and we need both, sometimes we use our built-in High Beams to look too far ahead.  So instead of enjoying our crisp fall air, we are already gathering and squirreling away to prepare for “the best Christmas ever” only to find ourselves on Christmas Day already planning for something else.  We spend  time asking freshman/sophomore/juniors about their classes (with occasional side discussions on career plans) but we only ask seniors about their job prospects. We plan the next vacation while on vacation.  We spend the weekend preparing to make the next workweek manageable.  All good things but we sometimes miss the relaxation, the fun, the opportunity in The Same Old Thing.

When doing The Same Old Thing makes us lethargic or moody, maybe we need to revamp The Same Old Thing. But when doing The Same Old Thing makes us consider ditching our responsibilities, having an affair, or walking away from a friendship, our attitude is in the wrong.

If you want to grow strong, you have to challenge your muscles.  You stick with a routine for a few weeks or a month until it is no longer challenging. And then you switch it up.  This is called change.  But even though the activities you do and the sets you perform may vary, the muscle groups you are inevitably working remain the same (that is, if you are committed to working them all and gaining overall strength).  This is called permanence.  Change without permanence gives you very little results for your effort.  Permanence without change gives you an imbalance – inconsistent results (maybe you end up leg-strong with a weak core) and eventually a plateau.

The Horror of the Same Old Thing should push us forward, help us embrace the cyclical nature of life and make us stronger. The Horror of the Same Old Thing should never be used an excuse to give up, run from activity to activity without committing to any of them. Delight in change coupled with delight in permanence provides us with a stabilizing and refreshing rhythm that is our gift to enjoy.

My Dad Isn’t Superman

26 Jan

My Dad is not Superman.

We do have a classic family photo with both my Dad and brother wearing matching Superman shirts (and capes!). But I knew my father was wearing a costume just as much as my brother was.

Lucky kids are those who go through the growing up trauma of learning that their Dad isn’t a superhero.  Unlucky kids know this immediately – they have no father or their father is emotionally distance or physically and verbally abusive.  They know their Dad as a villain. Maybe, as they grow older, they begin to see him as a terribly flawed human being.

The rest of us know our Dads as heroes.  Then, as we grow older, we begin to see them as flawed human beings.

Superhero —-> Flawed human being <—- Villain

The hints are always there.  Your Dad goes to sleep at night just like any other human. Bad things happen on TV or you drive past a car accident and your Dad doesn’t “disappear” briefly with no explanation for his sudden departure.  Your Dad doesn’t wear spandex under his clothes.  Your Dad looks the same with or without glasses.  Your Mother is not Lois Lane.

But seriously.  The hints are there.  You fall down the stairs and bruise your knee.  Your brother gets lost in the woods with his best friend for hours and although your Dad frantically searches, your brother eventually reappears on his own, having found his way home, not riding safely on the triumphant shoulders of your Dad.  Your Dad doesn’t hold you tight enough on the Raging River and you slip under the water, below lots of feet and inner tubes where you realize you are stuck and cannot get back up to the surface.  This happens again in the Wave Pool.  Although most people like your Dad, a few people don’t.  You are vaguely aware of this as a child although never quite sure who they are or why they don’t like your Dad.  There are hushed conversations between your parents, no raised voices, but enough discussions throughout your childhood that you get the idea that your Mom doesn’t think your Dad is perfect.  Which means that your Dad probably isn’t perfect. Mothers know these things.

And you realize that your Dad will do his best to keep you healthy and fed and financially cared for. But he can’t make people like you. He can’t stop rejection from happening. He cannot get you into college and find you a job and buy you every Christmas present that you’ve thought about wanting but haven’t expressly written down on your wish list.

And this is a relief.

Because if your Dad isn’t SuperDad, then you don’t have to be SuperKid.  You can just be blessedly, weirdly, comfortably, normal. Since the propensity to love has nothing to do with the depth of flaws, you have nothing to worry about.

My Dad isn’t Superman. He can’t save the world. But what he does do is…

  • Get excited when I call him at work.  Say over and over again “this was so nice! Call me again sometime!”
  • Tell me over and over again how proud he is of me.
  • Get really excited when I come home and tell me how happy he is.  For instance, “Well, now that you’re home, Christmas can officially begin!”
  • Tease me so much that I wonder what life would be like without a jokester father and a how-far-can-I-push-the-envelope brother.  Then dismiss the fantasy as boring.
  • Attempt to develop interest in sports.  Because he ended up with a son who doesn’t follow them and 3 daughters and two son-in-laws who do.
  • Cook really fantastic meals. Like Chinese food and omelettes.  And once, when we were little and had read Amelia Bedelia books way too often, cream puffs. They took hours.
  • Support us in whatever whenever for however long it takes.  And if anyone has ever sat through a 4 hour dance recital where your child was showcased for exactly 22 seconds, you know what I’m talking about.
  • Find more parental pride in any of our accomplishments than he ever does in his own.
  • Love my mom.
  • Pretend he loves all of his kids equally even though I know I’m his favorite. (Just kidding.)

Who wants SuperDad when you can have imperfect-excited-proud-happy-teasing-chef-ballet-viewing-loving-won’t-care-that-this-sentence-contains-poor-grammar-General-Tsao’s-stirfrying-Dad?

I thought you’d agree.

People Are Not Leaky Faucets

25 Jan

“Figure out what’s broken and fix it. That’s the way we naturally think. But that attitude reduces us to things like faucets that sometimes break and fail to function properly…we are relational, not mechanical.”
- Dr. Larry Crabb

I like to figure out what’s broken and fix it.  If I can’t, it goes on the To Fix list until I find someone else capable of fixing it.  I know I’m not alone in this desire to see everything function properly.  Ask any engineer.

But people cannot be fixed by other people. (At least not by me.) A friend of mine passed away the night before his brother’s wedding.  I could not fix that.  A friend of mine chose to stay in a verbally abusive relationship. I could not change her behavior.  And trust me when I say that I’ve tried, to the point where I was so stressed that I stopped sleeping at night.  A friend of mine suffers from epilepsy.  There’s no tool for me to fix that.  Another friend suffers from depression.  I cannot change his attitude.

And the engineer a few years ago, who graciously told me to lose weight so I could run faster (thinking he was being incredibly helpful) did not fix me.  I still weigh about the same (actually, more. But I swear it’s all muscle.  And I’m happy about that.) I was treated like a leaky faucet.  But I’m a person.  With complex un-faucet-like emotions and needs and desires and choices and consequences and behaviors.  Learned and unlearned, natured and nurtured, and complex and simple.  A faucet is just a faucet.

But people cannot be fixed by other people.  We are not in control of other people’s reactions or decisions.  There are times when, in love, we have to tell people uncomfortable truth.  But it’s not our responsibility to fix their mistakes, change their attitudes or force their behavior to change.  Ask anyone who has attempted that and they can tell you how often it backfires.

If you think otherwise, that you can change people,  please explain to me how often you’ve been successful.  How many marriages have you stopped from ending in divorce when people tried to change each other rather than accepting and supporting who the other person truly was?  How often have your desires to mold someone else, like PlayDoh, ended in them looking exactly how you planned?  What parent has ever given birth to a robot?  Please.  Enlighten me.

Until then, I am going to treat myself like a newly landed alien from outer space.  You know, the kind that walks around with flashcards: This is a leaky faucet.  This is a human being.  These two items are not the same.

Leaky faucets are to be fixed.  And then used for faucet-needs.  Flawed people (aren’t we all?) are to be loved.  And then encouraged and propped up and loved some more as they make their own choices and behavior changes and attitude adjustments.  The best we can do is to be there for them.  Viewing them as a person.  Not a project.  Maybe even holding their hand.  Definitely handing over a Kleenex when they get leaky.  Rather than frantically searching for a wrench.

← Older Entries

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.