ProjectMoment

On to the meat of the entry-

I was thinking this morning during Aikido class about the phenomenon of the 3 month student. Many, many people have joined the dojo over the years and have stopped attending after 3 months. Over those years I have non-formally kept track of reasons for stopping. Although most won’t come out and say it straight off, by far the most common reason is, ‘It’s just too hard’. Isn’t it supposed to be?

Exercise, real exercise, the kind that will have actual results isn’t easy. It shouldn’t be. It’s an effort, and meant to be. The whole point is to stress the system to either force an adaptation to grow, or expend more than common amounts of energy in an attempt to burn away excess. It’s not easy. But people stil want it to be. You can see this thinking if you watch almost any exercise infomercial, or read a trendy diet book. Somehow the work to improve one’s condition and health should be simple and easy. The classic, ‘magic bullet’ wish. Well, I’ve tried them, they don’t really work. Re-shaping yourself takes more effort than letting yourself get out of shape in the first place. No quick fixes. No easy cures. A simple mental comparison of sitting eating pizza while watching a date movie in the comfort of your own home with a loved one, versus hoofing through a 10 mile hike with a lunch break for nuts and cheese in the comfort of the wilderness with your loved one should suffice. Mind you, both of these activities should lead to at least a little exercise later on that night, but still…

The easy path leads to a sedentary, at best marginally healthy, life. The hard path leads to an active, at least healthy, life. Mind you, there is a breaking point. A point of diminishing returns on effort, followed quickly by a point of negative impact. So, I am also against the other extreme in modern health and fitness thinking, ‘give 1000% effort and you’ll get results 10 times as fast’. Yeah, sure buddy, you’ll get dead ten times as quick. One must rationally assess ones starting point, and proceed intelligently there from. But, in the end the hard path yields better results, ie any results. Anyways, I should get back to work (and do some more pushups), I just think there is something in this that speaks to the state of our culture. It seems way to easy in people’s minds to term something, ‘too hard’. How many opportunities does that thinking cut off? How many rewards? How much happiness?

Once upon a time I took part in Landmark Education’s The Forum: A Course on Powerful Living. It was a weekend long intensive followed up by a 13 session weekly meeting designed to question our methods of living, and tune into the internal conversation which forms our view of the world. The course was, to me, fascinating at least and I took away many tools that have helped me further my goals in life. At the start of the weekend intensive, right at the beginning, the man who lead the intensive asked all the participants why we were there. Were we there for ourselves or to satisfy someone else. He said that some of us were present with a commitment to ourselves for ourselves, and some of us were there with a commitment to ourselves for someone else. He made clear that the second category would not work and we either needed to decide we were there for ourselves, or get a full refund before things got started and be on our way. He did not let up until some of the participants admitted that they had come because of someone else. He made sure they got a refund and left. When those people had left, and the doors closed we began in earnest. The next morning he repeated the offer, since we had a better idea what the course was about, this time with a 75% refund. Some more people left, and then we got back into it. The end effect was a period of intense self study just for the individuals in the room. The course consisted of A LOT of sharing of issues, but we were each of us doing it for ourselves. That made a difference, and made the whole thing quite powerful and lasting.

I think the quest for fitness is like that. If I am in it for anyone other than me, then my efforts will be severely degraded and hampered. This quest must be for oneself, and for no one else. Not our family, nor our friends, nor strangers, no one else. In the end, it doesn’t matter one whit what anyone else thinks of what we have done. What matters is what we think of our accomplishments. Only we can decide what is necessary for us. Only we know what we have been through, what we have done, and why. Only we have all the evidence. In the end they will put us in a box, in the ground, and shovel dirt on our faces. At that time we will be the only ones qualified to judge our own lives. We do this thing for ourselves, or it does not count.

And, if you don’t want to do it? Don’t.

In Aikido we fall. A lot. The skill is called ukemi, which means literally, the practice of receiving. I’ve noticed that the nature of my accidental stumbles have changed since I started practicing Aikido. My response before was to resist the fall, to struggle with it, usually to get a little hurt, and to stumble back to my feet. Now, I accept the fall for what it is, go with it, land as softly as possible and get right back up. There’s a good life lesson in that, for me anyways. If I can learn to apply that skill elsewhere, to life’s little falls, it would be very useful. I should go with setbacks, stalls, mis-steps. I should take them for what they are, nothing more, land as best as possible and get back up again.