Two weeks since my last entry bemoaning the tweak. I know I have been doing “stuff,” but what exactly? Multiple times I sat down to write something, anything, and just could not get started, or, if I got started I could not finish. Like everyone else, I have an ever shrinking attention span courtesy of our sound bite age, and exacerbated by the idea that acquiring one last piece of riveting information will make a huge difference in everything? or nothing?
Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life by Susan David is the book I am reading right now. First off, I’d like to know why authors, or perhaps it is editors, insist on putting the thesis of the book, preceded by a colon, after a pleasingly short and pithy title: which is where the title should stop. Leave some mystery for the reader.
If you have any emotional agility, certainly not a guarantee, there won’t be much new in the book, but it is an easy and engaging read. Surprisingly, as I have got older, I have got more agile in my thinking. As a youth, I found it very hard to change gears if things were not turning out exactly as I had planned. Waking up to a full on blizzard on a day I had planned to go climb the South Ridge of Gimli Peak would send me into a tizzy of indecision: obviously a 12 pitch alpine climb was out of the question, but should I head out skiing? Or to the climbing gym? Perhaps get on my home wall? Hours could pass while I dithered about.
Today it is really blowing a gale. The gale that the weather office has been threatening for a few days. It warmed up dramatically overnight but apparently, a cold front is crossing the southern part of NSW, hence the near 100 km/hour winds. I got out onto the trails before the wind got too strong.
The tweak is really improving. On Thursday we went climbing and Saturday we went paddling. Of course, I wanted to train on Friday, but I was tired and sore from climbing, and wanted a solid training day in the kayak on Saturday; so I had to settle for a half dozen kilometres out on the bush tracks doing easy endurance work, instead of circuits in the gym and on my climbing wall. The most important physical skill that age has robbed me of is the ability to stack up high intensity days back to back. Some days, it feels like the person who climbed or skied 6 or 7 days in a row was another being entirely.
We all feel immortal when young, but age comes quickly, far too quickly. One day, we wake up and, even if we have been lucky enough to hang on to the mental drive – and few do – the body does not keep it’s end of the bargain, requiring more time, more care, more rehab and prehab, better nutrition, more sleep, less frequent intensity, more frequent recovery. In essence, the body becomes a petulant child who will only accede to the mind’s desires if coddled and cossetted.
As age propels me onward, I realise how one dimensional most of my life has been. While not a gifted athlete, I have been, and continue to be a driven athlete, apart from a few select people, my life has been entirely about the next climb, ski trip, kayak trip, bushwalk, off-track adventure. Most other people I know have something else, some other hobby or interest. Art, music, volunteering, gardening, something else that takes up the space in life that is not associated with pushing farther, faster, harder. This must be a comfort when pushing farther, faster, harder is no longer possible and just treading water becomes a victory. Next year I turn 60 and it certainly feels as if the crossing of the Rubicon will come too soon.
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