Remember this.
You have been wont to use your mind to command your body to perform. As if your body were separate from your mind, and not part and parcel of it. Your mind in the driver’s seat has its advantages: you get a lot out of what God has given you in terms of athletic achievement, and that is no small thing. Your body needs exercise – craves it, in fact – and you give it what it wants. And then some.
But, but, but…
You don’t always listen to what your body has to say. Your body constantly is speaking to you, but you don’t always listen. This is not a new development. True, your body speaks in a language which is not always easy to translate directly into a course of action. There are pains and aches in one place, which can signal a problem in another part of your body. It can be misdirection and indirection. It takes a close and attentive listener to hear the message the body is sending. But trust this, Rich: the body IS talking to you. Are you listening?
Yes, I am listening. But maybe not very closely. Or if I pay attention, maybe I don’t pay enough attention? One has to translate vague aches and pains into direct understanding of an underlying problem. It is not always easy. In practice I simply endure aches and pains, and often come to ignore them. As a public school teacher I have become very good at enduring poor working conditions and painful realities I can’t control – I can endure almost anything, which is not the same as taking the initiative to improve it. As a teacher I have so little control over so much which happens in my job that I have learned to live with what I must live with – I have become stoic and tough, but maybe also too passive and slow to take action. Maybe the same with my health?
For example, Richard, you have fasciculations all over your body, but mostly in your lower legs and arms. They come and go. It freaked you out at first, some ten years, when it started. The doctors even gave you a nerve conduction velocity test (re. possible ALS) before claiming they had no idea what was happening or why. But your performance on the tennis court did not diminish, and so you got used to the spasms and figured they were annoying but not incapacitating or dangerous. You were no longer alarmed and learned to live with it. Similarly, you have had tinnitus for almost 20 years. You were terrified at the beginning, but then you got used to the ringing in your ears everyday all day. Year after year, I get older. Little by little, your body is declining. There can be no doubt about that. But this much is equally true: “though much is taken, much abides.” As Bruce Lee rationalized when examining his own physical problems, “My capacities exceed my limitations.” Even Bruce Lee – a renowned martial artist – struggled with his body’s difficulties. His left leg was almost one inch shorter than his right one. Lee had horrible vision. So he was forced to adapt.
I practiced martial arts for years when I was a young man. I dedicated many of my best hours and years to it. And now some 35 years later, I have returned to it. Some six months after starting martial arts again, I realize my body is different than it was 35 years ago. Like Bruce Lee I am forced to work with physical limitations. My hips are less flexible, my left knee is dodgy, and my left shoulder…
Well, my left shoulder is trashed at the moment! I tore my right rotator cuff about a decade ago in a tennis injury, and I had surgery and a protracted recovery. So I know all about shoulder injuries and rotator cuff muscles. Now it is my left shoulder that is injured, but I won’t see a doctor. I don’t think I tore a tendon, but the rotator cuff muscles which keep the shoulder stable are a mess.
What is my body telling me? It is telling me – by various means – that my shoulder needs to heal. In swimming too much over several years you created an overuse injury. This did not happen overnight, and it will not be healed overnight. You should have listened to your shoulder when it was telling you it hurt, Richard. Instead you continued to swim on it for… years? So it might take a long time to heal. How much time? As much time as it needs. This is far from your first such “overuse injury.” Why don’t you listen to your body, Richard? A physiotherapist will tell you what they have told you many times before: you need to let your rotator cuff muscles heal, and the shoulder, too, and then work on regaining strength and flexibility in them. This will take months.
But the body heals. Yes, it does. After you have fixated on an injury for so long, and are tired of the pain and the worry about the pain – after waiting and waiting and waiting, until you will finally are sick of thinking about the injury and so learn to ignore it – then one day, you will realize, it doesn’t hurt anymore. It healed. My right rotator cuff injury took about 15 months to heal (plus surgery).
Your body speaks to you, Richard, and speaks continually. But do you listen? True, it might be difficult to interpret the subtle signals it sends you into a definite course of action for your body. But that is the task set to you. This is how it works. It just took me almost five and a half decades to figure it out. Or at least to recognize the dynamic properly for what it is. But as I get older I will have new overuse injuries or other physical limitations which I have not encountered before, and I will have to try and figure those out and try to understand how my body is speaking to me at the time. It is not easy.
But there is no other way.
“My capacities exceed my limitations.” This is still true at 55-years of age. So don’t get too down on yourself as you age, Richard. Exercise smarter, not harder – while still pushing the envelope, as appropriate to your age. Keep the long view in mind. Console yourself with the fact that if you might be less physically capable than you were decades ago, you are also smarter and wiser in plotting a course of action and sticking to it. Where is that sweet spot between working out too much and not enough? How much time ideally do you need to recover from intense workouts? Recovery time grows longer as you get older, and it is not easy to know exactly how much time you need. The ideal recovery period might be ever changing, as your body changes. But it is important to try and find out, and to be aware when you need more or less rest. “What is your body telling you?”
Richard, your body has been your friend for over five and a half decades. It has rarely let you down, and it has been your ally most of the time. Seek to give it what it wants, and to avoid what hurts it, if at all possible. You are in fine shape, overall. Your blood sugar and cholesterol are a bit high, but your doctor says that is normal for your age and is not a problem at this time. Enjoy your body – and enjoy your life – knowing it will not last forever, and that NOW is the time to do it. Yesterday is GONE, and tomorrow is a LIE. Do it now. Live in the present. Listen to your body. Pay attention to what is happening in the present, without forgetting about tomorrow or next year. Raise your daughters and finish out your career. Earn your Hapkido black belt before you retire. Give your mind and your body what it wants and needs.
Exercising hard has never been the problem, Richard, but exercising smart and remaining uninjured has been – make the necessary adjustments, and be as smart about sweating as you are ardent about it. “Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat” is fine for a logo. But “moderation in all things” is also sage advice. “Hit smarter, not harder!” is what you tell young tennis players who grow frustrated, start overhitting, and make more and more mistakes. Does this advice apply to you, too?
“Physician, heal thyself!”
But remember, Richard, this above all: Your body is your FRIEND, an ally and co-participant with your mind. Work WITH your body, not AGAINST it. Listen closely for hints and warnings. What makes your body feel good? What doesn’t? What is happening? Why? How? Take care of your body and treat it as well as you can.
And live your life as well as you can until it is your time to die.
If it took decades and decades to learn the first things about how to live well, it seems. But I don’t have decades and decades left in my life. I have maybe ten or twenty years from now. It won’t be long. Sometimes I look back ten, twenty, or thirty years ago and it just seems like yesterday. The years are drops in a bucket. A year is a long time to hold your breath, but this year and the next are like nothing. They will pass by quickly. Five years will have happened and you will be amazed at how fast the years sped by.
2022 will be 2025 and then 2035. Then 2050 or 2080.
The present is connected to the future. And to the past.
Esteemed reader, I reach out to you. This individual posting, this whole website. My life, your life; writer, and reader. Typing in the text, readers engaging that text. Past, present, and future. It is all happening right now. This is how I see it. This is how I saw it.
It is the wonder of what it means to be alive, even long after I am dead; my beating heart, my flesh and blood, and my active mind, as best I could describe it.
Ars longa, vita brevis.
