Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Sunday musings…

1) Anniversary. It literally just occurred to me that Clan bingo moved to Cleveland 25 years ago this month.

2) Birthday. The Man Cub turned 1 yesterday. Massive party complete with the latest trend, the “smash cake.”

Still pulling icing out of his nose, and his ears, and…

3) Pro health. Outside mag has an interesting article on the pursuit of ultimate physical performance. Aside from the obligatory dig at CrossFit (“injury factory”), the author’s visit to the Exos group at the StubHub Center (of all places) was illuminating. My reading of the article is that upwards of 90% of what is happening at places like this is precisely what has been going on in the CF competition world for some 3+ years now. Dynamic W/U, an emphasis on mobility, programmed recovery, tightly managed nutrition. There is much more use of supplements as a primary element than traditional CF; I’m not sure if that is necessary for the masses, those of us who don’t compete. The author saw a real, measureable improvement in not only fitness but also applied fitness.

The mic drop, however obvious, came at the end of the article when the author described his slow, inevitable slide back to average. Why? Easy. While he was “in residence” at Ethos the entirety of each day was filled with nothing other than being a better athlete. Back home it was easy to revert to old habits. A missed workout here; too rushed to work on flexibility there. And beer. Beer is a problem.

Being at your peak physical capacity is a full time endeavor for the pro athlete. That, as much as anything, is what separates you and me from them.

4) Purge. In a couple of days we will be one step closer to completing “The Purge”. No, no…not THAT purge. I’m talking about completing the purge of all of the stuff that filled up our larger home with all of its modern storage spaces. Our new home, a tiny 1947 two-bedroom cottage, is 50% to the inch the size of our old home, but it has only 1/3 as much storage. Our purge has partially furnished at least 3 other homes, and the upcoming delivery to “Lovely Daughter” adds another home to the list.

Clothes, art, tchokes…you name it. We’ve been liberated from our stuff.

Have you ever seen George Carlin’s classic riff on “Stuff”? Truly funny stuff (Huh? Huh?), and easily available on YouTube. An entire cottage industry has grown up around the purging of stuff. That’s kinda funny, actually. The concept that you need someone to come in and tell you how to get rid of your stuff. In addition to a few minutes of belly laughs, Carlin gives you the place to look for low-hanging fruit: other people’s stuff! Set a timer, and if them others don’t pick up their stuff, off it goes.

The harder part, if it’s really all that hard at all, is when you are down to the stuff you think you might need someday. You know, like that really interesting, sure to be useful gadget you just had to buy at Sur La Table 10 years ago that’s still in its original packaging. Or those holiday dishes you’ve forgotten to use every Christmas since you got married 25 years ago. Stuff like that. When you literally don’t have a place to put ‘em, this category becomes not at all different from other people’s stuff: if you never used it, it was never really yours, right?

Before I get too self-congratulatory and get injured by patting myself on the back, I should point out that we DO have an attic, and also a tiny little vestigial cellar. Both are filled with unpacked, lovingly examined, and re-packed memories. Sure, I could digitize the photos and upload them to the Cloud. The 55 year old “Teddy Monkey” that hasn’t been cuddled for 2 decades would certainly fit better in an album than a box. It’s here where the line is drawn in our home, that place where “stuff” intersects with memories. Maybe I’m too old school, or perhaps just plain old, but the memories and the things that trigger the memories are safe from the Purge.

The whole exercise has been a helpful and useful one in my never-ending journey on the “want vs. need” highway. Stuff? Firmly on the “want” side of that equation. Every day in our cottage, more joy from less. Letting go of the stuff has also brought me closer to cherished memories, which in turn is bringing me closer to cherished people. Funny, eh? The less room I have for stuff, the more room I come to have for the people who helped me make the memories I’ve been saving. I’m off at the moment to round up a couple of those people, hopefully to create a few more of those memories.

After all, the size of your heart and soul need not be bounded by the kinds of walls that surround your stuff. There can always be room for your memories and the people who made them with you.

I’ll see you next week…

–bingo

Sunday musings…

1) Birthday 1. Happy 79th Birthday to my Mom. What a great visit last week!

2) Birthday 2. Happy 80th Birthday to my MIL Sandy. When do we get to see you next?

3) Birthday 3. Happy 49th Birthday to my youngest sister, Kerstin. I certainly hope this next year goes easier for you than it did for me. “Turning 50” was terrible.

Maybe just start celebrating anniversaries of your first 49th?

4) Elegance. “Elegance is refusal.” –Diana Vreeland.

I have absolutely no idea what that means.

5) Small. “Bit players don’t feel like bit players in their own lives.” –Richard Russo

Oh man…how good is that? Every life is just huge if it’s you who is living it. Every story suffers or soars depending on the frame of reference of the author. The eyes and ears of the storyteller only catch so much, and some of what is seen or heard never makes it past the “bit player” level in the story that is eventually told. This is what Russo refers to.

There are short stories, but there are no small stories. There are quiet lives lived with little or no acclaim, but there are no small lives. There are people who move as if shadows among giants, but there are no small people.

6) Forward. The whole “pay it forward” thing–you know, buy the guy behind you in line a fancy coffee thing–has always mystified me. The first one in the daisy chain, first one to do that random act of kindness, buy it behind? That I get. That’s the person who gets the karmic boost as far as I can see. Admit it, if you’re downstream from that guy/gal and someone just upstream from you gave you a boost, you’re doing it for the next person out of guilt or obligation. Nothing random about that at all.

Think about that first in, plant the flag opportunity though. The real, spontaneous, random and hopefully anonymous gesture given either in thanks for blessings unknown or as a giant middle finger to a cruel and uncaring world. Here is the tiny seed of true kindness. There’s a visceral pleasure involved when you pull it off, be the first, and get away with it. Especially if there’s no way for the recipient to just tumble down the daisy chain by passing it along, and even better if you pull it off anonymously.

Heck, sometimes it doesn’t involve a penny exchanged in commerce. Perhaps someone is in need of an answer, and you just happen to have it. Or an ear offered in a “judgement-free zone”, one in which you have zero personal gain on the line. Those are awfully cool, too.

My bid? Don’t feel obligated to do any type of “pay it forward” every time it may come up, and don’t feel any sense of failure if you miss even an easy no-brainer. Whether you picked up a check for a young dad out with his toddlers and giving Mom a break, or put down your newspaper when your seat mate on the plane asked a question, do give yourself a tiny pat on the back and allow yourself a little smile of satisfaction.

The only payback for paying it forward is personal. And that’s OK.

I’ll see you next week…

–bingo

Old. Yup. “The Heir” turns 26 today. “Lovely Daughter” is 24 and my doppelgänger “Lil’bingo” is 22. My body is screaming from yesterday’s CrossFit WOD–I ran a mile. I’m answering emails and questions from CrossFit friends about CF in the “Master’s” category. I am closer to 55 than 54, closer in age to my cataract patients than my school-age patients. My Dad had a quadruple bypass at 54. Old.

How do you do this “old thing” anyway? It seems I don’t have an owner’s manual for myself, just like I didn’t have an owner’s manual for the kids. What am I to expect now? What is it that lies just ahead, and what then beyond that? Is this muscle soreness a freak thing, the anomaly, or is it a harbinger of things to come? How about fitness gains? I’m now 9 years into my CrossFit journey. How much longer can I expect to achieve PR’s? As I contemplate these questions how far forward should I allow my gaze to roam?

There are no answers to those questions, of course. Any answers only lead to the next set of the same. To look too far beyond a couple of tomorrows is as dangerous as it is to look back beyond a couple of yesterdays. Looking behind even a little bit risks the indulgence of regret, what has always seemed to me to be a sure recipe for sadness. I have written elsewhere that to go even further back, beyond Creation or the Primordial Soup or the Big Bang is an invitation to madness.

To look too far into the future is to invite desire, to risk the creation of wants that grow into something that feels like need. If or when these fail to materialize a different type of sadness arises, this one born of resentment. If one projects these too far into the future, to retirement, to rest, to redemption and beyond, the risk of madness can arise once again.

I surely do not know the answer to the question of how to age well. There is no map for the journey that lies ahead, no cosmic GPS. I have only the strategies that have served me thus far, and the hope that they will serve me yet. I have faith, and that faith allows me to resist the temptation to look either too far behind or too far ahead. Faith is the vaccine against madness.

And I am happy. I realized it once again in a phone call with a dear friend, met through Crossfit, and once again when I said goodnight to my darling Beth last night. I am happy because I have very little desire and even less regret; I want what I have and this inoculates me against both resentment and regret.

Yes, indeed, I am older, but I have at least one more today. That’s just what I wanted.

Man, turning 50 has not been an easy proposition. I’ve been turning 50 since the day after my 49th birthday and quite frankly I haven’t been doing such a great job of it. The highway between mile markers 49 and 50 seems to be strewn with all manner of psychological speed bumps and potholes, pretty much all of which I’ve placed there myself.

Why is this? Why so much angst about 50? I didn’t really have any issues with 18, 21, 30, or 40, at least not any that I was so keenly aware of. In fact, I don’t recall ever thinking about the process of TURNING any of those milestone ages, not a minute spent thinking about the run-up to any of those birthdays. I suppose 40 might have presented an opportunity for at least a little introspection, or at least a little taking stock, but “turning40” angst was preempted in the course of a single ride on a chair lift in Utah the week prior to my 40th birthday. My chair-mate, noting his own near existential angst at the prospect of turning 40 several years prior shared the wisdom a priest friend had offered. 40 is when your still healthy, strong, and vibrant body meets the experience and wisdom of your now mature mind. That worked for me! 40 made sense after that.

In a dazzling display of prescience and foreshadowing, my lovely bride Beth responded to my epiphany with “wait ’til he turns 50! That’s gonna be a problem!” Shortly thereafter she contracted the mother of all cases of pneumonia and tried to die on me. Any little bit of an issue with turning 40 got pretty much short circuited in the elation that accompanied her recovery.

And yet, here I am. Turning 50.

What’s the big deal you ask? It’s just a number. You’re a January baby. It’s nothing more than another calendar to throw out.  One more tax return. What’s the problem here? Aren’t you the guy always looking forward, wanting what you have? The “no regrets” guy? Cut the crap! Find your balls. Snap out of it.

To which I respond: sure! There you are going all left-brain/left nut on me. Trying to impose logic and rational thought on what is clearly a right-brain, visceral “feel” kinda thing. It’s all about the right nut, the squishy can’t get your hands around it illogical nonsensical unease that resists both explanation and resolution.

My own left-brain gets it. Hari, one of my Crossfit buddies, nailed the rational aspect of turning 50. According to Hari our first 50 years are all about preparing. We spend our lives preparing either ourselves or someone else for something that is yet to come. We grow and get ready for kindergarten, so that we can prepare for grade school. Grade school begets junior high where we get ready for high school. High school prepares us for college which leads to job and adulthood. We then transition to the task of preparing others, our children, and spend the next however many years engrossed and engulfed in that pursuit. 50 is when we are done with the preparing. 50 is when we we exit Route Preparation and begin our journey on Route Me. At 50 we can learn for the sake of learning, not because we need to knock off a pre-req. We exercise and eat for the here and now, for how we are hoping to feel right at the moment. The first 50 years are about preparing; the next 50 are about living.

Why then, if I get that, am I having so much trouble TURNING 50?

As I’m sure you’ve gathered if you’re spending any time here on Random Thoughts, I am a physician by day. I finally think I figured it out one day in the office when one of my patients mentioned that she was having some issues with turning 60. We took a little detour, talked a little while about our “turning” issues rather than her eyes. 60 meant “old” to her, and old was more than a little frightening. She didn’t see “old” in the mirror, and didn’t want to think about any part of “old”. Her tactic? Classic–She simply decided that she was younger and told everyone she’s  55! How about me, she asked. You’ve made it. Successful practice and a wonderful professional reputation, healthy family, a marriage to be envied. Your biggest problem should be deciding how to celebrate! How will you mark this milestone, this success?

And there you have it. There, in that lovely compliment from a patient I barely know, was the issue. How indeed would I mark this milestone? The cartoonist would have put an enormous light bulb over my head, for here was at once the solution and the problem. I couldn’t say how I was going to celebrate turning 50 because I can’t celebrate in the way that it turns out I always thought I would, and that fact lies at the base of all of my angst, all of my discomfort, all of my difficulty in turning 50.

Physicians play a game early in their lives called “delayed gratification”, a game in which they willingly put up with the hardships of training and postpone most of the trappings of success. Tiny apartments and old clunker cars are OK because there is a world of plenty just over the horizon, a reward for both the sacrifice and the success that students of medicine encounter on their journey. Their preparation, as Hari would say. Once out in the real world, out of medical school and finished with residencies and fellowships, both the willingness and the ability to play “delayed gratification” slip away to be replaced by a sense of pride in having played,  not terribly fond memories incentive to never play again.

There’s the rub–I am once again playing “delayed gratification” and I simply can’t even consider doing some of the things I thought I could think about to mark this milestone. You know, classic 50 year old dumb guy birthday stuff like, I dunno, buying a Porsche. I don’t think I’d actually do that, but I DID always think that at 50 I would have been able to decide NOT to buy a Porsche, even though I could have if I really wanted to. Even the more meaningful stuff I’ve talked about to mark turning 50, stuff like climbing Kilimanjaro with my sons or accepting that invitation from Geoff Tabin to teach native surgeons how to do cataract surgery in Nepal, I’m not going to do those things because I CAN’T, because I am once again playing the game of “delayed gratification”. I might never have done any of those things, or any of a number of other things I might have thought of, but I always thought I’d be able to decide, that I COULD if I wanted to.

I can’t, and I find that I resent that. It makes my sad, and both of these feelings make my left-brain more than a little unsettled, for there is no rational response. No solution. No pithy sentence to conclude this particular Random Thought on an up note. At the end of the day there will be nothing other than sucking it up, moving on, and getting over it, getting over myself. There will be nothing other than trying to play the game of “delayed gratification” just as well at 50 as I did as a much younger man, for in the end I really have no other rational choice. I will have to hope, to try to be much better at BEING 50 than I have been at TURNING 50.

Because I’ve really sucked at turning 50.