Take the Hard Road

‘The only true wisdom lives far from mankind, out in the great loneliness, and can be reached only through suffering. Privation and suffering alone opens the mind to all that is hidden to others.’?

WHY DO IT?

Why go through all that training, put yourself through the late nights, the early mornings, the pain, the fatigue, the sacrifice. And to what end? So you can put yourself in a position where you will be tested to your limits, potentially come home empty handed, broken and battered and have what to show for it? As if that wasn’t incomprehensible enough, you’re doing all of this out of choice – it’s not even out of necessity.?

And that’s the crux of it right there. Choice. For professional athletes, first responders, military, that choice makes sense. But for the rest of us, the ‘everyday humans’, why choose the hard road?

‘…Can you hear the wind Father? Remember what Mother used to say about the wind? The wind cannot defeat the tree with strong roots…’?

I bought a copy of Michael Punke’s The Revenant and after an aborted attempt to get stuck into it, the relatively thin paperback took up silent residence on my bedside table amongst the growing pile of ‘to be read’. Almost two years later, for no apparent reason, I decided to give it another go – and I simply couldn’t put it down. I devoured the two-hundred-odd pages depicting the true story of frontiersman Hugh Glass in the 1830s American wilderness in a matter of days. I then wrestled our Netflix account out of ‘kids’ mode so I could track down the film adaptation – regardless of your opinion of the acting (or Tom Hardy’s accent) the landscape and cinematography is nothing short of jaw dropping.?

But enough of the literary and film review – two themes struck home hard for me – let’s address the first one, Hardship.

HARDSHIP?

Back to our frontiersmen – they operated in working conditions that would send an occupational health and safety officer into total apoplexy. Months on end, tracking, trapping and trying to prove the viability of a fur trade along the untamed Mississippi. If the bears, wolves, cold exposure or starvation didn’t kill you, there’s a good chance the indigenous Indian tribes would. That’s if you didn’t get completely lost in the totally uncharted wilderness, working your way from fort to fort in the desperate hope that when/if you arrive, the fort hasn’t been raided, burnt to the ground or just plain abandoned for the winter. These were hard men in every sense of the word. But that very hardship gave them a hauntingly clear metric by which to measure something that many of us today struggle with – a sense of personal value.?

Cast a long line back from before the Industrial Age, all the way back to homo sapiens neanderthelensis – either you fought, hunted and provided, stayed healthy and strong or you were out of the tribe. Literally. You were a savage. Not because you chose to be, or thought it was cool or were trying to impress someone – you were a functioning and productive savage because nature demanded it. Between stimulus and response there lies choice (according to Victor Frankel). Sometimes that choice is a conscious one, other times, like our savage forebears, it was driven by our environment and early social construct. You survived and worked together or you died.?

‘Specific Adaptation though Imposed Demand’– unless you work in the strength and conditioning industry, that’s probably not a term you’re familiar with. But the reality is, it’s not so much a training methodology as it is an undeniable rule of nature. Pressure drives development. Predation, conflict, scarcity of resources, searing heat, bone-cracking cold, drought, flood, fire, plague. You adapted and you survived. Not because it was what you wanted to do but because it was what you had to do.?

Stimulus, choice, response.

Some rules are indefatigable even in the face of evolutionary sized timescales. The rule applies whether it is our savage ancestors fighting for survival or our modern sedentary bodies driving the indentation of our gluteus maximus into the couch, cocooned in a temperature controlled environment, safe from the ravages of weather, marauding hordes, scarcity of food or sabre-tooth tigers. Pressure drives adaptation – and the adaptation will express itself regardless of whether we perceive it to be net positive or negative. For all your deep soul-searching, the reality is you are simply a high-functioning organism that happens to be extremely cognisant of its own existence. Impose the stimulus and the organism will respond and adapt.?

Live a ‘comfortable’ life and your body and your mind will reflect that. The environment for our pre-historic savage was geared towards what I would argue are more positive adaptations – strength, resilience, adaptability – a state of readiness, a recognition of needing to pull your weight.?

Now, the modern environment we find ourselves in is also geared towards driving adaptation – just perhaps not the ones we truly need. I would even argue that we have been knowingly and purposely robbed of our capacity for conscious choice and instead had our subconscious quietly caressed and cajoled into making the ‘easier’ choice. We can have food delivered without getting off the couch, social media apps have entire teams working to ensure that the slavery of psychological addiction keeps us on the screen and out of the sun.

As long as it costs more to buy a bottle of water than it does to buy a bottle of soft drink, you can be assured that big business does not have your best interests at heart.?

Don’t like the cold – stay out of it.

Don’t like going out, have it delivered.

Don’t want to deny yourself, then don’t.

It’s the fallacy of believing we are blessed with such a wide array of options when in reality we have been subjugated to comply with the comfortable option. A life that comes with the default ‘choice’ of comfort is dangerous enough, but now we couple it with both a lack of consequence and a lack of accountability. It’s the ultimate triple threat – we are complacently pushed into compliance, we do it because it’s easy, there are no obvious consequences and finally, no one is calling us out on it.?

It’s easy, it doesn’t matter and no one cares.?

So what?

What’s the consequence of a life of comfort, gratification and indulgence?

So what if I have a #dadbod and I’m happy on the couch eating take out, downing a few beers at night to help me sleep and slamming coffees in the afternoon to keep me awake.

If we get unhealthy we see a health professional and take a pill. Heart disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes – this is just the modern condition is it not? That’s what the health system is for isn’t it – to bail me out at the expense of the taxpayer? Rather than address the behaviour, we simply aim to mask the consequence. It’s ok, we have a pill for that. Before the pitchforks and burning torches appear outside my door – yes I realise that not every case of these ‘metabolic syndrome’ diseases are due to a life of poor choices and indulgence…but a significant number are.?

As a pharmacist I have never seen a prescription for exercise, for yoga, meditation, breath-work, for counselling, or that says, ‘Make a better choice – make one per day and call me in two weeks.’ Societal safety nets are fundamentally an essential part of a functioning democracy that seeks to lift the standard of living of its citizens. But for many, those safety nets have become hammocks in which we can reside, held aloft by the fallacy of never ending prosperity, the illusion of my unalienable right to comfort and the endemic rewarding of short-termism.?

Where are the consequences of the easy life?

Normally it comes in the form of accountability – surely someone, somewhere is going to turn up with the big stick. Where has all the accountability gone??

The ‘good news’ is that the accountability hasn’t left. It’s been waiting. Biding its time. Assembling. Stalking. And when it does arrive you can rest assured that it will not be a time of your choosing nor in a manner of your liking. I’m not talking about some great biblical judgement – I’m talking about the fundamental laws of nature, of the market, of the human race.?

As a father to young boys, I often give this example in workshops – picture yourself at home with family/friends, enjoying a cold beverage on a hot day, ensconced in your favourite outdoor chair and watching the kids zoom around the yard as if energy was an infinite resource to them. An errant kick sends the football down the driveway and out onto the road – your three-year-old decides that this is his time to shine and takes off after it with great gusto and laser-like focus. The driver of the car is, like so many of us, multi-tasking. Tired, situationally unaware, thinking about everything and anything. Your capacity to get out of that chair, to get your body from a dead start to maximum speed and intervene in the nick of time – that capacity and ability is the very manifestation of all those years of ‘comfortable choices’. And the bill for those choices is due. Now. If you are unable to pay – your three-year-old will pay the price on your behalf. But it will be paid.?

That story doesn’t elicit a lot of applause and it certainly doesn’t win me any friends. It is usually followed by an uncomfortable silence.

Good.

Be uncomfortable.

Occasionally there might be a brave soul that counters with the argument of, ‘You’d rise to the occasion’. Sadly, this isn’t an episode of CSI, or Rocky 3. The missing piece of crucial evidence won’t appear in the nick of time, Bill Conti’s epic theme music won’t rise up in the background and suddenly bestow upon you the pace of a leopard and athleticism of a gazelle. Ask any professional athlete – you are only as good as your training. Period. Relying on mystical intervention is simply an excuse. Hope is not a strategy. You’re metaphorically kicking the can down the road and saying you’ll deal with that when the time comes.

Problem is, when the time does come it’s more likely to ‘arrive’ by unexpectedly tearing the front door of your life clean off with all the subtlety of a predator drone strike. Maybe take a less emotive example – how about just quality of life. Loss of mobility is one of the primary drivers for an ageing population moving out of independent living into assisted care or nursing homes. It’s not their mental acuity or metabolic health, they simply can no longer get up off the toilet, or avoid a fall. You were designed to move and move well – ignore that at your peril. Use it or lose it. Watch young children squat, it’s a lesson in anatomical proficiency. Great ankle range of motion, neutral spine position, full depth. It looks natural because it is, they can reside in that position ad infinitum and hop straight up and toddle off. Try getting everyone in your office to execute the same squat – and even if they can reach the position, see how long they last. I get that we aren’t infants anymore – my femurs are ‘marginally’ longer now I’ve put my hips and ankles through all manner of torture on the trails and in the mountains – but I still actively work to maintain movement and function. Why? Because the alternative is to lose it and suffer the consequences.

Last but not least there is the ‘Plan B’ imperative – a little more on the darker side but what happens when disaster strikes. Bushfire, flood, the internet goes down for an hour. You may laugh at the last one but a few years ago in my home town, the exchange building for the national telecommunication provider burned down in a freak accident. It knocked out all cellular phone coverage and the internet access for most of the town for almost a week. We may joke about ‘what if I can’t check ‘the socials’ or see what my fav insta-celeb is doing?’ but this was a lesson in our total dependence. Businesses were suddenly cash only, except that not many people carry enough cash to cover everything for a week, but the ATMs don’t work and the banks are struggling as their computer systems don’t work either. All of a sudden getting groceries is not as easy as it once was. This was a small fire, in a single building, which inconvenienced a town for a few days. What happens if something far more major occurs. How long can you live out of a backpack for? Sleep on a dirt floor? If the world shifts and petrol is suddenly $10 per litre for six months, can you walk/ride/jog to work? ‘Seriously mate, that’s not going to happen. We’ll know if things are going that far south and I’ll get it sorted.’ Oh will you? I spent the first few years of my life in the small coastal town of Narooma. During the horrendous wildfires of the Australian summer of 2019/2020 swept along that coast and in the space of 48 hours the town went from modern day normal city to being completely cut off without food, water, power or fuel. No way in and no way out.?

You get the point.

Enough of the dark and heavy stuff.

I get it, all manner of deprivation and incomprehensible disasters lurk in alleyways and under the floorboards, waiting to pounce. Let’s flip the coin for a moment. Let’s say I decide to embrace some ‘healthy hardship’. Sacrifice some comfort and luxuries. To test the mettle a little, hold the feet to the flames. Is all this just an insurance policy against disaster and decline or does this investment actually deliver in good times as well as bad? Well I’m glad you asked.?

We are going to break it down like this. You have to make a choice. And to many it will seem like a counter-intuitive choice. Like deciding to swim upstream (works out ok for spawning salmon). Much of the machinations of the modern world will try to drag you back in but you must, as Yeats put it, remain ‘captain of your soul’. To truly choose the harder road, because you want it, is a most powerful and liberating act.?

You must be disciplined?

This is the greatest and most underrated superpower of all. It doesn’t require monastic level control, or the sacrificing of all your worldly possessions, you just need to be held accountable by no one other than yourself to do what should be done. Motivational speakers abound – because it is transient. The art of discipline is what burns long after the bunting has been taken down and the refrains of ‘Kumbaya’ from around the campfire have melted away. I am proof that motivation helps you sign up but discipline puts you on the podium.?

You must commit to the long game.?

Reject the short-termism that pervades every aspect of your life.

Look out beyond the now and realise that anything of true value takes time. And to do that demands perspective. Look up and out.?

You’ve regained some control, you’ve started to develop mental and emotional discipline and started to think beyond the next five minutes. So before you have logged some kilometres or worried about the weights, you are already reaping benefits, crafting skills and behaviours that will literally serve you every minute of every day.?

All because in a society where strength and discipline are no longer a necessity, you chose them anyway.

A powerful act of quiet rebellion.