There's nothing really different about knowing I need to get work done by a particular date, turning down social engagements to do the work, and then obstinately not doing any of it. In the middle of the night, I will get up to do the work I had set aside THE ENTIRE DAY to do. Or not. Then facing the ultimate deadline, pulling an all-nighter. If that isn't the inner-teenager planting IEDs, then I don't know what is.
I hear people complimenting me for my steadfastness on the training or the recent dedication to weight loss, and I have an internal voice ready to call up the teenager's failings.
There are so many incarnations of the duality, that the examples fill my mind, taking over this post. The breadth of this problem is not the issue, really. It's bigger than the ugly realities I face or the mistakes I have to correct as a result. The important piece, of course, is what to do about it. Perhaps that is why it has taken 3 months to actually write this piece. It has been rolling around my head for a while, and was drafted several times.
I have to find a way to overcome the struggle. I know the inner-teenager is trying to tell me something and like any adult, it is my job to try to hear the real message and help resolve the issue. I wonder if this is the final throes of learning how to name what I want and claiming the gifts of the universe. When I act in a self-destructive manner, often it is about withholding success -- like putting a foot out to trip myself. It's pre-punishment, but it's also about making me unworthy for what I want. I have dared to name what I want, but I haven't dared to believe I can actually have it.
I want to learn from the latest escapade. As I said I trained very hard for this race. I made all my runs but one 4-miler up until the 14th week of training; in weeks 12-14 of training, I started seriously limiting my caloric intake in order to lose the weight I had been promising myself to lose since December. All of my motivation, strength and determination were running at full capacity. Any number of outside observers might report I was the most dedicated person they've met. Meanwhile, I knew I was not stretching enough -- not making time for the yoga either at the gym or at home. The doctor would tell you it was only a matter of time and that the shoe episode was a fluke. And he is no doubt accurate in his assessment and diagnosis.
However, the fact is my calves were stretched to the limit and the pain radiated up only one foot and it happened after I wore the new shoes meant for the other foot's slight movement. Two weeks from the race and running one step shoots pain all the way up to my right hip. I spring into action -- doctor's appointment, specialist appointment, concocting back up plans and trying to keep the disapproving voices at bay. They manifested as a tremendous urge to eat man donuts and a deep sadness and disappointment. Using all my resources, I resisted the donuts and faced the sadness and disappointment head on.
Ultimately it took all my physical and emotional energy to determine not to fall to the food/comfort impulse or to give into the voices. I determined to do whatever I could to heal and to be pleased with myself even if I could only participate in the 10K trail walk. Luckily, those emotions came before actually visiting the specialist and his finger wagging: "some people think they can just start running and not stretch." Inside my head, I answered: "I don't like you either." I know all about finger wagging and it never works as a real impetus for doing a better job. I put all my resources to work devising the plan: doctor's orders, extra stretching, a massage and acupuncture. It might work; it might not work, but it couldn't hurt.
I am powerful when I put my mind to it. There's no denying it. The question is, why don't I make better use of that power? I continued my stretching and careful running. The tightness remained, but I determined to start the race and walk whenever the shooting pain arrived, not worrying about bettering my time.
I am happy to report that I had no foot pain. I flew through the first three miles before I even started noticing the miles. I still had a spring in my step at mile 8, singing along to the songs in my ear. Slow, but steady the only walking came between water tables and trash bins. It wasn't my best time, but it was a very acceptable 13 min miles and NO PAIN and a tremendous feeling of accomplishment.Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering Catholic-bashing Texas preacher who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee's delusions, or thinks AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right. After 9/11 Jerry Falwell said the attack was God's judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.
Jon Stewart recently played a tape from the Nixon White House in which Billy Graham talks in the oval office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he nows in his heart that they are undermining America. This is crazy; this is wrong -- white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren't.
Which means it is all about race, isn't it? Wright's offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He doesn't fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone's neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettle some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship. We are often exposed to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen anything like this -this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner -before our very eyes. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said "beware the terrible simplifiers".
Thank you so much for having Reverend Wright on your show. I am alwaysI am not a person of faith in any traditional sense, but I have a great respect for those who feel their faith strongly, and especially those who work from that faith with the integrity intended by faith not the prejudice frequently preached through orthodoxy.
appreciative of your show, but I am especially grateful today. Anyone and
everyone who feels the right to throw the first stone should be first required
to learn something more about a person than a sound bite. You have provided this
glimpse.I am especially happy that the first question was how he was called to
the ministry. First things first, you said. Thank you again.
A little ray (or TWO) of sunshine for this Earth Day...
[This is what they WILL look like some day not the actual newbies.]
In these days of war when so many of our young men and women are marching into hell daily for reasons many of us cannot understand, it is entirely fitting to honor this man, who died during an anti-war protest march. On April 22nd, the United State Postal Service will honor this man with a stamp, so I am bringing him here at least through some links.
If you don't know who Ruben Salazar is, find out something about this man.
There is plenty of lemonade, though, and it is well worth reading. The DailyOM was feeling this search for how to make lemonade on April 10th...I am a little behind on my OM reading.
From my sis: Yes, hopefully he can be taught to communicate...and eventually live life as a decent human being.
The dry air, the strong wind, the smell of the earth and this incredible vegetation. Each landscape has its own sense of beauty, and I appreciate the lushness of the bushes in New Jersey's tropical rain forest summer, and the tall green trees of West Virginia and the green grasses of Kentucky, etc. But there is just something about the desert. I had never experienced it in spring and I was OVERWHELMED with the beauty.
I am not saying that the desert is the MOST beautiful place in the world. It just calls me in a way that other landscapes don't. It inspires in me a sense of belonging. As soon as I take my first breath in the desert air, I feel calmer, different. Maybe it is because it is a place where you need to be strong and flexible and resourceful to survive. 
It almost, ALMOST, made me want to go out and buy a camera. I have lived without having to try to fit something into a little viewfinder for so long, I am not able to control digital cameras when someone asks me to take a photo with one. Yet, I did long for someway to capture these beauties.
These photos really do no justice at all to the staggering beauty.
I was thoroughly enjoying each new variation on life in a place where you would least expect such a rush of color and pride. It is a good thing that I was running because I had to resist the temptation to pick one of each flower to press and keep as if you could somehow harness their energy and save it for later. I kept telling myself to live in that moment. Enjoy those beautiful flowers and all their lives embody in the place they needed to stay.
These (below) were my favorites, even though it seems against the law of nature to choose one over the others. These caught my eye as we were driving to Mount Charleston.
There was just something about the hardiness of the stalk and the seeming vulnerability of the bloom. And, well, that gorgeous color. So, even though the photos dominate my post (thanks to the blogger.com god(dess) for protecting my post from crashing as I uploaded all these pics!), these are not at all like the real thing. I wish you all the chance to get out there and see the desert in bloom sometime in your life.
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