This Ain't no Party...This Ain't no Disco

This is going to be a very disjointed post. If you are uncomfortable with nonlinear stories, then please stop reading.

Below is an excerpt from an email response I sent to a friend (a wise friend, at that) who wanted to know how I was doing in the wake of Ironman Brazil. While I was writing it, I realized that I had been paraphrasing some thoughts I had shared earlier in the day with a truly dear friend of mine who happens to be a life coach, and is extremely wise herself. So my first “point” (if, in fact, I am making points here) is that seemingly serendipitously throughout my life I have cultivated friends and acquaintances who are on similar spiritual (I use the word “spiritual” not to mean religion; but rather the cultivation of oneness with the self and the universe, which I believe to be one and the same) paths.

Some of you may know that I trained in mathematics in college, to the extent that if I had known that would be my major when I started, I would have had a Masters degree in 4 years, but regardless, I had the opportunity to study all kinds of neat math stuff at the same time, and I crammed in as much as I could in 4 years. It was during my sophomore year that I sensed that all the different branches of math I was studying appeared to be the same to me—that they were just variations on a theme. The same way that I intrinsically understood the mathematical underpinnings of J. S. Bach’s Inventions, with their twists and turns on an essentially simple theme. This led to me reading the book, “Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.” If you are ever feeling like you know everything, read this book.

Anyway, here is the email from yesterday:

I can't even process all that happened, both in the lead up to, and during the race. My enlightened mind knows that there are all kinds of things I will learn from this; my physical mind is in pain reliving the experience; and of course, try as I do to let go of it, my ego is having a rough time of it. Sometimes I think it would be better to not know that this is all part of the great lessons of life--spiritual growth and all that. As I said to a dear friend today, I know that I am pointed in the right direction, and I know that I'm closer to the destination than I was a year ago, but I don't yet know how far I have to go to get there, and I don't yet understand all the signs along the way.

This really can be a tough sport to do while trying to have no ego!

Part of me wants to beat myself up over having expectations of outcomes and then the inevitable disappointment that results when they do not occur. But I can't listen too hard to that voice just yet. I thought I had the expectation thing licked, but I found myself getting wrapped up in measurements and hopes and all that. I haven't yet discovered the magical way to be both improvement oriented and excellence seeking yet without the interference of the ego.

In fact, I can't even believe I wrote the above. Why can't I just say, "IT SUCKED" and let it be at that? Because that is not who I now am. Makes me wonder what's happened in the last year. I am SO different.

But I have had some great stuff, too, so eventually this will all come around and I will know what it all means.

You can’t really hide from a tornado. Weather forecasters tell you to go to a safe, reinforced corner of your basement, but tornados don’t know reinforced from unreinforced, and they don’t care whether you are prepared, they just show up. And they clear everything in their paths! Just like lessons in life are presented to us, and while we may try to hide from them or dismiss or discount them, they’re there all the same, and they can force you to clear things out of your life or at least look for such things. When I was very small and somewhat continuing to this day, tornado warnings would scare the life out of me, and I was the first one down in the basement cowering in a corner until the all clear (ironic how tornados clear everything out, and the “OK” sign is called “all clear”) was sounded. I wanted to face the tornado on my own terms, and if that involved fear and respect, so be it.

I can think of 6 significant events in my life where the tornado came through, and yet I survived. While I didn’t appreciate lessons from each of these things right away, the pattern I am seeing is that the time it takes for me to hear my “all clear” has compressed. Reread that email I sent yesterday. Now, every life experience is different, and we should never berate ourselves for failing to learn lessons immediately; nor should we expect to be so enlightened that we can learn the lesson precisely while it’s being delivered! But it is something to ascribe to. The thing I have learned is that I have been presented with opportunities for spiritual growth and mental toughness all throughout my life, and that if I had known it earlier, I would have pointed myself in the right direction many years ago. Or perhaps I WAS pointed in that direction but didn’t know it.

What are my 6 big life events? Here they are in chronological order:

1. Being accused of plagiarism in college.
2. Being raped for 3 hours while held at gun and knife point, and then for added emphasis, being robbed.
3. Experiencing the destruction of my marriage and the subsequent divorce.
4. Experiencing sexual harassment and subsequently being put on performance probation at work.
5. Dealing with the death of my mother (a work in progress).
6. Ironman Brazil (also a work in progress).
   

What do I think are/were the questions generated by each that I would need to answer?

1. Why was I being singled out for something that I knew in my heart that I hadn’t done (false accusation)?
2. How strong is my self-esteem, and how true am I to my ethics and morals, even in the face of death?
3. Is this a sign that I have failed to make another person happy, or is it a sign that I failed to make myself happy in the context of a relationship? Or am I just bad at relationships?
4. How sure am I of my own integrity and how will I survive the glances of others who may buy into the attempted false attack on my work ethics and accomplishments?
5. Why was I chosen to be the strong child, the one who would help lead my mother into the next world, and then ensure that those left in this world would be OK?
6. Did I let my ego get too much in the way during training? Did I become so full of myself that the goal grew larger than just to finish? Did I deserve to be tested, yet again, to see what my limits are in the face of true pain? Am I really a poser, who claims to be talented at this game, yet when put to the test I fail miserably? Have I neglected other aspects of my life so much and was this all worthwhile? Also see the email above; I think that pretty much covers it.
   

Did I know what these questions were (and feel free to think of others) right away after the events occurred? Hell no. That is the beauty of tornados, fires, earthquakes and other forms of destruction. The positive effects or lessons are not revealed right away.

I have a history of mild to moderate depressive episodes. I have a theory that a big cause of depression is the failure of our minds to integrate the lessons from events such as the above (but also the much smaller ones; I do not wish suffering on anyone, and one of the cosmic questions I have is why do some of us get “bigger” tests than others? The universe seems to single out some people to be tested severely, and sometimes, unfortunately, finally. It also recognizes whether we are pointed in that right direction or not and adjusts the “strength” of the lessons accordingly.). I came to this realization in the fall of 2005, when I was struggling with a series of smaller events: choosing to DNF at Ironman Wisconsin; euthanizing my cats; concern for a dear friend who had a triple bypass; confusion over the ongoing value of a close friendship; and berating myself over making a bad decision to engage in some level of reasonable expectation with a man that was incapable of providing it.

These things occurred more or less within the space of 30 days. I was reeling from the stress, yet I couldn’t see the additive effects of all these things being thrown at me seemingly at once, until a friend (the one who had the triple bypass) pointed out to me that, “That’s a lot of shit all at once.” I am typically slow on the uptake to recognize my own signs of stress. The only thing I know for sure is that if I develop a stomach ache, then I am in deep shit. I found myself wanting to slip into the typical depression; in fact, I knew I was already there. Yet, curiously enough, I found myself somehow able to look at myself, observe myself somewhat objectively, and knew there was something different about this “depression.”

So I effectively went into some seclusion (I am a natural recluse and need to work very hard to cultivate friendships, so this was not very difficult) to try and find my way through this. I picked up a book that I had bought months earlier and couldn’t really understand, and started reading it again. Suddenly, it made sense. I reread another book that I had bought and read soon after my divorce. When I first read it, the message I received was one to comfort me in my depression. When I reread it last fall, the message was completely different! This is why you need to read Gödel, Escher, Bach—one of its messages is that the messages are different depending on how you look at them, which is the crux of what I was struggling with! If all I could get out of this latest depression was that shit happens and you feel bad, what good would that be to me in the future? Thus would continue the cycle of depressive episodes.

Back to that second book I reread—the message I received this time was that I needed to be able to look at myself and my reactions to things, and while that could be a forced activity during a time of self questioning or depression, it was a very healthy thing to do on a regular basis. This prompted me to draw up a list (I am a big fan of lists, saying that my pea brain can’t possibly store all the minute details that I need to remember on a daily basis) of beliefs and actions I have/do. On one side were the things that I thought were working well for me in my life—emotionally, spiritually, physically and intellectually (sure you see Stephen Covey in this), and on the other side were things that I didn’t think were working. How was I able to draw up such a list by myself, you ask? It had to be the cumulative effect of lessons learned over the years and a realization that at some level I needed to be able to intellectualize my own depression.

The next logical step, of course, was to look at the list of things that don’t work, and ask myself why the fuck would I keep up these things? I realized that immediate changes weren’t possible. So I looked to an advisor on how to conquer some of these things, did some more reading, and slowly awakened to the possibilities.

Where all this has left me now is with something that you might call “mental toughness” or “self-awareness” or whatever. As I said earlier, I don’t claim to “be there.” All I know is that I am pointed in the right direction now. Has all my personal suffering been eliminated? No. In some ways, as each of the major events I talked about earlier unfolded, I would think that the current one was worse than anything else I had ever experienced. My sense of “worse” is now something that requires a higher level of self-awareness, presence in the moment and letting go of the ego to move forward. I can’t even begin to fathom what the next test might be!

What more difficult test could I have had then for my physical health to be in such a deleterious state during Ironman Brazil—the body that I have so carefully trained, nourished, and for the most part treated like a temple—and yet ask it to do something where my ego had such a tremendous investment to achieve a certain time, to finish, to keep going, to ignore obstacle upon obstacle? As I said to a friend yesterday, Ironman training and racing is a very strange way to open you up to such challenges and lessons.

Am I trying to teach you something by writing this down? Perhaps. More so, though, I am writing this to help me work out what will be the lessons I take from this most recent experience. My ego, self-esteem and sense of direction all are under attack right now. Even my sense that I love training and racing. I have tremendous respect for my physical body; yet I know that I am not my physical body. I have tremendous respect for my accomplishments; yet I am not those things. A few days ago I felt that I’ve been shortchanged in the love department; yet I can feel the love of so many friends and family around me.

All we can do is look at ourselves and ask whether we are here right now and acting mindfully in a way that removes as much suffering from our daily lives so that we can help others do the same. All with a lack of ego! I suppose at some level we choose our own life tests, which is an act of ego, right? So one of the things I am looking to achieve is the simultaneous presence of, recognition of, and acceptance of, ego, while at the same time limiting its power over me. That is one of the lessons from Ironman Brazil. I think that is why it is so emotionally painful for me to think about it. It really was not what I wanted; but it was what I needed.

I said earlier that I feel I am pointed in the right direction, but that I don’t always recognize or understand the signs along the way. Life isn’t like Driver’s Ed, where you are given a manual with pictures of every sign you might encounter and what they mean, and then you just obey the instructions. But I have found that it is important to be able to recognize when a sign has YOUR name on it. Perhaps because as a small child I learned to be self-sufficient and independent and curious and question things, and I learned how to comfort myself while I was cowering in the corner during tornado warnings, gave me a head start on seeing some signs that say “ATTENTION SHEILA.” It can be very scary to see those signs and not understand what you are being asked to do. Ironman Brazil was like that. It was like seeing a series of signs saying:

• You have a virus
• You have a headache
• You are allergic to strange bugs biting you
• You are dizzy
• You are being stung by jellyfish
• You have lost your usual energy
• You are being kicked in the face
• You want to quit
• You feel sadness over your mother’s death
• Your entire face hurts
• You can’t depend on your physical body to get you through things
• You need to let go of your expectations
• You need to encourage others to move on even as you want to stop

Each of those signs seemed to prompt a “CHECK” from my control center, yet none of them said, “STOP RIGHT NOW.” I’m waiting for the punch line—you know, like sometimes out in the country you see a series of signs that comprise a joke or a message, that you have to keep reading to find out what it is? Stay tuned.

Namaste!