Confessions From The Underground: Greeting Feast & Famine With Equal Enthusiasm

''We Rise By Lifting Others'' - R.G. Ingersoll

This morning's three pages of stream of consciousness writing was done on a mac for a change and so I am able to share. Why? Well, I have some shit to let go of and, if anything, if this Brene Brownian vulnerability purge helps one other person, then it's worth it. The process itself helps me defrag the cpu in my head, literally filing stuff away and cleaning out the folders of my head. It's pretty cathartic.

Part of what motivates me to focus on helping others is deeply rooted in my own archetypal desire to have a more meaningful impact in this world. Maybe this stems from a Jungian desire to be validated in society. To belong, to feel connected, and feel worthy. Taking risks, going big, being courageous, remaining in the tension, holding one’s nerve, much like that moment in a hot yoga studio, when you’re bundled up like a bunch of elasticated pretzels, and your face shapeshifts from a smile to an expression of sheer pain and discomfort. Worse even, is if you hold that tension for a minute longer than the first 10 seconds of hell you’ve been experiencing. The yogi’s and stoics alike will tell you to hold the tension, stay in the moment, becoming acutely aware of what you’re grappling with, play with it, almost as if it’s playdough, relying on breath to anchor you through the discomfort. In the word’s of Ryan Holiday, ‘’the only way is through it’’.

Every strike brings me closer to the next home run. –Babe Ruth

Another part of me clings to the side of a mountain, I’m not sure how far up, it’s cloudy right now and has been for bit, but I know the top is somewhere up there; turning around is simply not an option. I have everything I need to get through this. Just dig. Going back down is much more painful, especially if you’ve not had a hit of that sweet, addictive, if momentary, but life affirming taste of 'the win'. Sometimes days, months even years of grind end up in less than 5 minutes of celebration; that exhilaration of achievement and success is what keeps you in the game. Maybe 5 minutes is over-calling it. But you need that little moment. Once you’ve had it, you can endure the heavy lifting on the way down, as your knees and super fine networks of supportive facia in your legs wobble, your mind floating blissfully on your way to the next magnificent challenge.

Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. –Vince Lombardi

I know the top is up there, and I want to stay in the game. There will always be another. The only way is up; there’s no real alternative. I guess there is an alternative, but not for me. I’m not built that way. So no, from where I am standing the only option is to shut down this inner critic and smash through the next big lift. There will be other mountains and whatever happens is a part of the necessary ‘process’. Beasting’s - or as we knew them in the South African military, opfok's - when reframed, have provided me with something that was not obvious in the moment, and that only became obvious looking back, connecting-the-dots along the way. There was something I needed to learn to move on. The existential loss and momentary pain softens and translates into hard earned learning. Zigging and zagging, sometimes big steps, sometimes only moving millimetres within the tension, but always knowing that when the cloud breaks your approach is sound. The runway lights begin to appear through the thick fog of night. Trusting. Believing. Despite being partially blind in these moments. And if the approach is sound, you only need to make small adjustments, marginal strokes, and the right attitude will bring it home. But this is one is not going to beat me. Hard landings are still landings. I’ve come too far and have learnt too much. My experiences in life, love, existential loss and living within the tension gives me the confidence I need to keep on keeping on. My self-talk and breath work is what fuels the cadence. I am my own best coach. I tell myself, in a kind loving friendly voice, ‘'Come on dude, you’ve got this. Everything that came before prepared you for this very moment. You have everything you need to do this. Go out there and ‘be awesome’. And if today sucks, tomorrow brings a new sunrise, a new sunset, and magical moments in between, if you look with the right eyes.

If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. –Latin Proverb

I’ve learnt that in life, we don’t get given any second chances. Well, most of us at least. We have to grab them. We get to grab another chance every single day. ''Each day provides its own gifts’’ said Marcus Aurelius. Adopting this mindset has helped me on the days that my body battles my mind. The days when you’re unable to move an inch. When getting out of bed feels harder than climbing with 40 kg’s on your back for 5 days. They’re very rare and in some cases, depending on the loss, will last from 1-2 days to at most a week. I compress, and then decompress. I allow myself the emotions, I observe these thoughts and feelings with curiosity, and remember that this is but a moment. I tell myself, out loud if I have to, that my mind is in command. My body will do as it is told. And when the mind, body and heart work as one, that’s when the fire starts. Life thrives where hope springs. I search with childlike, mindful eyes, itching for sparks of inspiration. In words, in nature, in humankind. Watching others struggle through adversity, particularly those with less in life, helps in indescribable ways. Perspective helps me shut down the pity party in my head. Some falls leave people with life-changing scars or perhaps even sends them into incipient spins, and if they’re lucky, a quick painless death. I want to deny that this can happen but as night follows day, we all share the human condition. We’re only here for a brief moment. I focus on the things I can control, practice daily acceptance and gratitude. I talk if asked, but say nothing when it comes to grinding it out. In fact, I enjoy the meditative dance of the grind. It gets me out of my head. Instead, I put my mind to process, routine, discipline, structure, the backbone of creation. I literally see the word ‘create’ and resist the hard-wired desire to ‘consume’, be it media, art, news, and material things. They can provide safety and security and cosy sleep-filled nights, but I know to focus on finding flow. Movement. Rythm and hum. When these very rare and precious elements are in place, things begin to happen.

My path has given me more gifts than I could ever have dreamed of. Life itself is a gift. More than anything, I want to hold onto the precious meaningful, life-affirming angels who help us become better versions of ourselves. Our parents, coaches, teachers, competitors, fellow troglodytes waking up to another day of slaying predators in order to put supper on the table. If you’re lucky, you get to build your own family in the way your family sculpted you, only with tweaks and improvements here and there, a natural consequence of societal progress and generational lift.

A good tribe means a long, healthy, happy life. This is what I have come to know.

My parting thought is a guiding light when it gets dark. On April 23, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt gave what would become one of the most widely quoted speeches of his career. The former president—who left office in 1909—had spent a year hunting in Central Africa before embarking on a tour of Northern Africa and Europe in 1910, attending events and giving speeches in Cairo, Berlin, Naples, and Oxford, among others. He stopped in Paris on April 23, and, at 3 p.m. at the Sorbonne, before a crowd that included, according to the Edmund Morris biography,Colonel Roosevelt, “ministers in court dress, army and navy officers in full uniform, nine hundred students, and an audience of two thousand ticket holders,” Roosevelt delivered a speech called “Citizenship in a Republic,” which would come to be known as “The Man in the Arena.”

''It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strived valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.’'Confessions From The Underground: Greeting Feast & Famine With Equal Enthusiasm

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