Practicing Life #7: When Life Gives You Lemons, Sometimes You Just Drink Sour Juice and Feel Like Sh** for a While
Meditation:
I’m going through a really friggin’ deep valley in my life right now. As I said in an earlier post, I’m not telling you this for sympathy. I’d prefer you not offer it. I’ll of course take you at face value and be nice in response if you do, but this is only context for what I’m thinking about.
There is a lot of good, fundamental advice in the sort of “self-help” and “positivity” world that can help you. But also sometimes things are so difficult that it’s annoying to hear that stuff. Like somebody just yelling at you “don’t be sad!” or “just stop struggling so much!”. Gee, thanks. Hadn’t thought of that. I know people generally have their hearts in the right place and unquestionably optimism is better than the alternative, but sometimes all that stuff is a real pain in the rear to see and hear.
I don’t begrudge happy people. I’m one myself on occasion. My misery hates company. I want you to win, I want my friends to win. I want everybody to have a good time and succeed. I just happen to not being doing any of that at the moment. And that’s okay. (Caveat that I’m talking about things subclinical here. If you’re having a life-threatening hard time stop reading and get some emergency help. For real. This meditation is for when you feel like things are impossibly bad but you got enough left in you to do something about it.)
This is all prelude to talk about the forgotten virtue of endurance. The Bible talks about it a lot actually, but I’m going to reference the extremely popular sport of road cycling to talk about it (as Jeff Goldblum’s character says in an HBO mockumentary on cycling, “we’re talking about a sport with literally dozens of fans”).
I used to ride a bike a lot before I was a dad. Not as much as some diehards but I was regularly clocking 100 miles or more per week. Online fitness culture prioritizes strength and short burst athletics over everything else. But there is something about knowing you can go for 60 miles on a bike and not die. Because you will feel like it sometimes. The greatest cyclist of all time, Eddy Mercx, said the cyclist who wins is the one who can tolerate the most pain. It hurts like hell after a while to keep riding when everything in you is telling you to stop. If you’re on a 15% gradient, you literally can’t stop if you don’t want to make violent friends with the asphalt.
And really that’s all I’m getting at here. You can’t stop. You just have to keep going in life. No matter how bad it hurts. People are counting on you. And sometimes there is no balm for that pain. You can’t make the pain stop. You just don’t stop. It’s a slog. It’s ugly. Look at a rider’s face climbing a mountain in a grand tour. It’s not pretty. And their bodies are functionally broken for a little while after they finish one of those month-long races. But they finish. Obviously it’s best to finish on the podium, but it’s an achievement to get it done at all. I don’t know if I’m going to win. I want to. I don’t know if you are. I want you to. All I know is I won’t ever quit. I’d rather have my heart explode than stop pedaling.
This is all, in fact, a virtue, I think. We need more endurance. These painful, trying, seemingly impossible-to-go-on seasons of life build endurance in us. All you have to do is never give up. That’s it. You don’t have to like it. It doesn’t have to feel good. It doesn’t matter if anyone cares. It’s just you and the road and the bike and the mountain and your racing and breaking heart. Just get to the line. It gets better after that. Until the next climb.
Writing:
I didn’t do a journal yesterday because I wrote an essay instead and finished off my story as promised. It’s on this Substack page for your reading pleasure. Ended up about 6.7k words, I think. Spent the night editing it. Probably around 4.5k words total yesterday. I tend not to count non-fiction writing but if I do this week is sitting at a cool 12k. Not bad at all. Writing is the keeping pedaling I talked about above. Whatever it is for you, don’t stop it when life is kicking your ass.
Reading:
Same book. Might need to just marathon finish it because while it’s good I shouldn’t spend this much time on a book. Feels like forever. Going to read Louis Bujod McMaster’s space opera series next, the first two at least. I forget the name. Vorki-something. Sounds cool. Looking forward to it.
Viewing:
Nothing much to talk about here. Watched a little pointless TV.
Ciao:
I hope that’s not too serious of a post for you. The aim is to be encouraging. Keep pedaling and I’ll see you tomorrow.
🖤
🫂