accepting reality

Ban the Blame Game

by ultrapeg

My soapbox has been dusted off and is now ready for my latest rant.  Don’t worry – I’m not going to spend much of time on it, but I feel the need to speak out.  For some time now I have found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with blamers and excuse makers.   You know the type:  everything is always someone or something else’s fault.  When something doesn’t happen exactly the way it was laid out these people never just say “I’m sorry.  It just didn’t work out.”  Instead they find it necessary to deflect the attention from themselves to some external source responsible for the shortcoming.  They are always right; it was something else that produced the wrong result. As Flip Wilson used to say, “the devil made me do it”.  (Does anyone remember Flip Wilson??  Or am I hopelessly out of date?  Hmmm . . . probably.  But I’m sticking to my premise anyway!)

This is not to say that there are never occasions when circumstances get in the way of the best intentions.  Of course, this happens all the time.  The best laid plans can get derailed by any number of occurrences.  But instead of launching into a lengthy story about what or who is at fault, a simple acknowledgement that whatever it was just didn’t happen would be so much easier to accept.

Unfortunately, right now we don’t have many good role models for people who are just willing to acknowledge that something went wrong and find a way to fix it.  Instead there is a whole lot of finger-pointing.  In fact, that practice has become so prevalent that inaction often results simply because people are too afraid to be blamed for something that might go wrong under their watch.  So doors get locked and insulating walls are built around these folks and the things they are responsible for that become impossible to scale.  As a result they can smugly say, “Nothing will go wrong now.”  Or my favorite line of late, “This will never happen again.”  Wouldn’t life be lovely if we could find a way to prevent every bad thing from happening ever.

OK – you get the picture.  I’ll climb back off the soap box now.  But if you haven’t stopped reading yet, here are a few more thoughts along this line that may be more relevant to my favorite subject:  exercise.  Have you ever made an excuse for not adhering to your exercise plan? Maybe you finally made that decision to go to a class or begin a walking program.  The day arrives and suddenly the weather is bad.  Or the dog gets sick.  Or your exercise clothes are still in the hamper waiting to be washed.  Something distracts you and suddenly you find the time has come and gone and you never managed to stick to your plan.  There are a couple of different ways you could react to this realization.  For example, you could think “I knew I couldn’t do this.  I’m not cut out for it.  There are two many problems standing in my way.”  In other words, find someone or something to blame.  If it weren’t for all those forces pulling you in another direction, you would be able to do the things you said you would do.

But wait!  Think about that.  This implies that you are powerless and your fate is totally out of your hands.  Do you really believe that?  Of course, there are many factors influencing our lives that are beyond our control.  But, to me, this makes it even more important to take control of the things you can control while you can control them.  When it comes to how you treat your body and your mind you have much more power than you think you have.  It’s all about perception. There will always be unexpected roadblocks in your path.  If you feel like you have to wait for those roadblocks to clear before you can move forward, you might be waiting a long time.  And you will again be dependent on external forces for your own progress.

Perhaps there is another way to view this situation.   Maybe there is a way to get around the roadblocks.  So you stumbled.  We all make mistakes.  None of us is perfect.  Whatever happened, it’s not the end of the world.  But you will find yourself faced with a decision:  should I give up?  Or try again?  This may not even be a one-time decision.  You might find that you have to make that decision again and again.  But that’s OK.  As long as you’re still on the planet and able to move and breathe, it’s not too late.  You can always start over.

So next time your tempted to make excuses for an effort gone awry – even if the excuses are valid! – how about simply acknowledging the malfunction and vowing to do better if given another chance.  Depending on the circumstances, another opportunity may or may not be possible.  But either way, leave it where it belongs.  In the past.  Once the moment is passed you can’t get it back.  So move on.  One thing you can be sure of, there will no doubt be other challenges ahead.  You will have another chance to acknowledge whatever curves life throws at you and still keep moving to the best of your ability.

Taming Transitions

by ultrapeg

Time is such a peculiar concept.  When you look at the universe, the stars, the planets, time doesn’t seem to matter a whole lot.  We measure all movements, distances and changes in terms of time, but it appears to be a human construct invented for the sole purpose of giving us a method for understanding and discussion.  Time matters to us as humans because of the finite span of our own lives.  We want to cram in as much as possible since, by cosmic standards, we really aren’t here for very long.  This makes us very conscious of time and, in fact, our lives seem to revolve around this theme.  We mark the passage of time with each sunrise and sunset.  Also with the seasons.  We watch things grow and know that time is passing with each change we witness.  Acknowledging the passage of time is a critical element in our understanding of changes in our world and our own bodies.

The recent movie “Arrival” is all about the weirdness of time.  In the film beings from another world land on earth.  A linguist is recruited to translate the sounds they make.  In many ways this film highlights the vagaries of chronology, but one thing that I found particularly interesting occurred during this linguist’s initial attempt to communicate with the strangers.  She wrote something on a tablet and was immediately rewarded with visual symbols presented by these creatures.  The symbols were basically circular inspiring the linguist to note that this “language” was not dependent on time as ours is.  Each symbol appeared to have no particular beginning, middle or end.  Later in the film there was evidence that there were some ways in which time mattered to these beings, but perhaps that was because as humans making this film, it is difficult for us to divorce ourselves from time and its implications.  After all the movie itself had to have a beginning, middle and end even if they were kind of intertwined.  Still it was interesting to think about the ways in which our methods of communication are time-dependent.

So here we are, marching along with the unavoidable passage of time which is really just a way of describing change and yet somehow, in so many ways, we remain completely resistant to change itself.  From the time we are born, or even conceived, our lives are marked by change. When we’re young we change really quickly.  Yet many of us can’t wait to get older.  We rail against the slowness of time and the changes it brings.  As the years (another human concept!) progress, many changes govern our lives and there never seems to be enough time.  Then as we get older, physical changes again loom large.  Now they seem to be happening too fast.  Time seems to pass more quickly.  In our middle years we are often more likely to note the changes in others around us while somehow clinging to our own status quo.  So it can be quite a jolt to suddenly realize that our own bodies are changing right along with those of our children, grandchildren and parents.

Inevitably we reach a point where we have to acknowledge that we, too, have changed.  A friend and I were discussing today how difficult that can be to accept.  Sometimes changes in our physical capabilities can also mean the loss of a familiar community.  Years ago I used to belong to a running club.  Club members would all run together regularly.  Of course, there were many different speeds among the group, but there was always someone I could run with.  As time passed it became more and more difficult for me to run with others.  I wanted to keep running, so I did. But I needed to run at my own pace.  It was hard for me to keep up with anyone else, but I also did not expect anyone to slow their stride to stay with me.  So my attachment to this group began to unravel like fabric when a single thread starts to go it’s own way. Eventually, that became OK as I got more comfortable being with myself and enjoying my own movement.  But for a while it represented a loss.  In fact, multiple losses – physical capacity and also community.

As I continue to age, more examples of these losses present themselves.  Fortunately, I have since learned that loss of ability doesn’t always have to mean loss of community.  Sometimes there are other ways to participate with a group even if you can’t do everything they do. Especially in movement classes.  One of the themes I’ve repeated throughout this blog is that there is no requirement in any movement class that everybody has to do everything exactly as anyone else does, including the instructor.  Most of us worry that we will look funny or somehow be singled out if we don’t follow along precisely as prescribed.  In general, this could not be farther from the truth.  For one thing, most participants in a class are too focused on themselves to worry about or even notice what anyone else is doing.  Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, classes should be a judgment-free zone.  If the one you’re attending isn’t, then find another one.  There are so many out there.  Don’t let one bad experience keep you from finding a place where you can be yourself.  Just show up and move to whatever internal drummer motivates.  Ultimately you’ll find a place where you can feel comfortable.  Online classes are great in a pinch, but community is still an important benefit of classes.

However, sometimes we have to move on.  Accept the reality of the moment and find new paths to travel and new communities to join. When I could no longer run, I found other activities like hiking and walking that I could do alone or with a group – my choice.  When certain yoga poses become too difficult, there’s no rule that says I need to keep doing them.  There are so many others available to me.   Many aspects of my life will and have changed, but what I’ve achieved in the past will always be part of me.  No amount of change or passage of time can erase those accomplishments.  And the person I am today is the sum of all of the many experiences I’ve had during the time that has passed since the day I was born. Learning to be satisfied with who I am today is just another part of my practice.  Each day requires a new reminder of that since every day brings new changes.  Change can signal fear or excitement for experiencing something new.  It’s all a matter of how you perceive it.  And that is a choice each of us can make for ourselves.