accepting reality

Reflections on the Journey

by ultrapeg

While walking this morning I saw a friend that I used to see frequently on the trail but had not seen for some time.  We stopped to chat.  He told me he had recently had a heart attack.  As followers of this blog know I have had my own health issues to deal with over the last couple of years so we found ourselves comparing notes on setbacks and recovery.  He said, “I never thought I was a candidate for heart problems.  I have always exercised and, in fact, used to run marathons.”  Hmmm.  That sounded familiar.  I could certainly identify with his surprise. After all my years of yoga and Pilates it was equally mystifying to find myself with a back problem that required surgery.  Still more amazing to me, and still a source of bafflement, is the fact that I’ve had cancer twice and somehow I’m still here while others with what seems like similar conditions have not been so fortunate.  Stuff happens.  None of us know why.  The medical community can try to address these issues.  Sometimes they succeed, sometimes not.  At times it seems that as we continue to unravel the mysteries of the human body, questions continue to outnumber answers and every answer seems to uncover more questions.  What’s a person to do??

For me, it all comes back to the basics.  Take one step at a time and focus on the journey, not the outcome.  At this particular moment, I’m feeling better than I have for at least the last 3 years.  Maybe this will last, maybe it won’t, but that makes focusing on this moment right now all the more important.  It has become a practice requiring frequent reminders, but this time I’m determined to try to celebrate every moment of feeling good. During most of last year, while I was experiencing pretty constant pain, I frequently lamented the fact that I had once been pain-free but failed to appreciate it.  Now that I am reasonably pain-free again I have to remember how truly fortunate I am.  Not everyone can experience the results that I have and I can’t attribute these positive results to any particular talent, skill or even genetic trait of mine.  I don’t have any special abilities or powers.  It is tempting to try and find some rhyme or reason why I’m doing great while others aren’t, but there really is no definitive answer to that question.

So rather than spend time pondering the whys and wherefores, I would much prefer to just be grateful for right now and try to take as much pleasure from it as possible.  It’s so easy to get caught up in regrets about the past or concerns about the future.  Whatever was is done and gone.  It can’t be changed.  Whatever hasn’t happened yet is unknown.  Anyone who claims to be able to see into the future is fooling themselves and probably others.  They might luck out and get it right every now and then, but any prediction is still a guess. Sure, we can try and be prepared for circumstances that might arise and certainly we don’t want to throw all caution to the wind.  But it’s still best not to cling too hard to any particular outcome.  If things go the way we hope, that’s great.  But if not, that’s just the way life is.  It’s nothing personal. And we still have to deal with the reality of what is rather than wishing that things were different.

A recurring theme throughout this blog has been to focus on what you CAN do rather than being sorry for what you think you lack.  Years ago I used to read mysteries by the author Sue Grafton.  Her books often made reference to her daily 3-mile run.  In one of those books – unfortunately, I don’t remember which one – she mentioned her run and then said something like, “If I’d known what was about to happen, I would’ve enjoyed that run more.”  That probably isn’t the exact quote, but the sentiment somehow stayed with me.  I thought at the time that I never wanted to have that kind of regret.  Admittedly, however, the concept got away from me.  I forgot to enjoy the pain-free times while they were happening and instead took them for granted.  When things are going well it’s easy to develop the illusion that everything will always be like it is.  But nothing ever stays the same.  We can see evidence of this all around us.  It might seem like the solution would be to restore the past, but it’s never possible to do that.  Even attempting to make that happen always has unintended consequences.

Still there are times when illness or injury – yours or someone else’s – makes staying in this moment really challenging.  In times like these we are all stronger than we think we are.  As impossible as it may seem, it can be an important practice trying to find something positive to focus on.  I don’t mean to make that sound easy.  It’s not.  And even trying to implement a practice like that seems inherently doomed to fail.  But failure is temporary; there is always another opportunity to practice.  If it doesn’t work today, try again tomorrow.  After all, tomorrow will probably be different.  Everything that happens is an opportunity to learn something new – about ourselves or about life in general.  That in itself is something positive.  We may be handed lessons we wish we didn’t have to learn, but learning is part of the journey.

The Way Forward

by ultrapeg

In last week’s blog post I talked about acknowledging changes in our lives and finding the resilience necessary to accept the changes and adapt to the new reality whatever it might be.  Acceptance is the first step toward moving forward.  But what comes after that?  Depending on the type of setback, it’s length, your age and a host of other variables, the next steps will be different for each of us.

For some of us, the idea of returning to any kind of routine might seem impossible.  The change feels so great we may feel like the darkness is permanent and unyielding.  We can easily sabotage ourselves and become our own worst enemies.  For example, if you’ve fallen and suffered an injury you might develop a debilitating fear of a recurrence.  This might keep you from making even simple moves toward regaining your strength.  We’ve all heard the expression “get back on the horse that threw you”.  This can be a totally daunting prospect.  And, in fact, might not be appropriate in all cases.  Still, inertia can become a wall and finding a way through or around that wall can be overwhelming.  In previous blog posts I’ve often talked about the difficulty of resuming activity, especially exercise, after being away for a while for whatever reason.  Of course, it is important to take steps to avoid the circumstances caused the fall, but that shouldn’t become an excuse to stop you from all activities.

On the flip side of that coin, there are those of us who throw caution to the wind and get back on that horse way before we should.  Perhaps we have not fully recovered from the injury, illness or whatever precipitated a change in our lives.  Some of us might even have the hubris to believe that our case is special and the usual rules don’t apply.  This type of thinking might lead one into that “danger zone” referred to in an earlier post when your energy begins to feel restored and you start to feel like your former self again.  This is a place I know all too well.  The desire to return to the way things were overshadows the reality of the way things are.  Returning too quickly can lead to discouraging setbacks.  At best, the process of recovery will take that much longer or, at worst, may be jeopardized altogether.

Actually both cases call for the same prescription – courage, patience and above all the decision to go on with your life taking whatever baby steps are necessary to follow through on that choice.  Interestingly, in my opinion the same leap of faith is required wherever you’re at.  If you are the fearful type described above, the decision means taking that first dangerous step back into your life no matter how scary that might be.  If you want to start moving again, the first step is the hardest.

After my back surgery a physical therapist gave me some exercises to do right away.  They were pretty simple movements, but they were difficult at first.  Among them was the suggestion to walk for 5 minutes several times a day.  For a person who used to run ultramarathons that might sound easy, but just getting up and overcoming the initial stress of moving was itself a formidable task.  My doctor had given me the simple instruction, “If it hurts, stop; if you think it’s going to hurt, don’t do it.”  Sounds reasonable enough, right?  For the fearful person, that initial hurt might be enough to encourage stopping altogether.  In fact, I even found myself thinking I would never overcome that initial discomfort.  But what I discovered was that if I just got started, I would eventually start to feel better.  If I began to feel pain I stopped for a few minutes.  The pain would usually stop and I could resume the walk.  Or I could simply try again later.  I would set a timer for 5 minutes, stop it when I needed to wait for pain to subside and start it again when I started walking again.  It might take me half an hour to do 5 minutes worth of walking but I quickly learned that the more I walked, the easier it got.  I noticed too that once I got going and my body adjusted to the movement, the initial soreness would usually subside.

Our bodies are made for movement.  Fortunately, the medical profession has recognized that movement following a trauma like surgery is actually beneficial.  Anyone who has had surgery recently knows that patients are required to get up and move as soon as possible.  Although rest and sleep are important to the healing process, retraining your body to move as much as it can is also essential.  Still it’s not easy to overcome the many excuses that loom in front of the starting line.  That’s where the decision-making process comes in.  Making that decision to try to move even for a few minutes takes courage.  Beyond that is the resolve to follow through even if it the first few efforts are unsuccessful.  I knew the physical therapist would not have told me to walk if it wasn’t the right thing to do.  But I also knew I had to abide by my doc’s advice and stop if it hurt.  Even that was hard for me having been a person schooled in the old notion of “no pain, no gain.”  So both starting and stopping required decisions.  I had to consciously remind myself that extremes in either direction would not help my recovery.  That meant believing that I would, in fact, recover and that the directions given provided the road map to get there.

Bottom line – moving forward is not rocket science.  Have patience and be kind to yourself.  Do what is recommended and stick to it until you’ve healed.  After that be mindful in all your activities and avoid being careless, head strong or just plain stupid.  If it hurts, stop; if you think it’s going to hurt don’t do it.  That’s not an invitation to do nothing.  It just means pay attention.  Simple, right?  But not easy.

Making the decision and taking that first step is the hardest part.  Especially if you’re not used to moving in the first place.  If you keep at it, no matter what you are doing will get easier.  Although we often think of stress as a negative, your body needs a certain amount of stress to adapt to a change.  The trick is to know when to back off.  As acknowledged in last week’s post, life may be different after a set-back.  Those differences need to be honored.  But that shouldn’t be a license to drop out.  No matter what has changed, there will still be things you can do.  Give those positives a chance to shine and they will lead you forward.