In the next several weeks I have three significant events occurring in my life. Each is very different, exciting, challenging, gives me reason to pause and reflect, and yes, feel anxious.
In just ten days I will race my first Ironman in Lake Placid, New York. Ten days after IMLP, I leave the condominium that I have called home for the last 12 years to move into an apartment adjacent to downtown Burlington. And then, 10 days after that, I will fly across the country to my hometown of Hemet, California to attend my 30th high school reunion.
I have been a triathlete for about 7 years now. What started as something new to try became a way to stay in shape. From there it's fair to say that it became a passion, as well as a lifestyle (Editorial Note: to be fair to those so inclined in their opinions, you can replace "passion" with "obsession"). As I matured in the sport, so too did my interest in the triathlon world beyond safe, friendly, small Vermont. I started watching the bigger races and became fascinated with the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii. At some point that fascination spawned a dream of making it to Kona myself. Not since childhood had I been bold enough to dream such a dream.
I never thought I would do a full Ironman, but I also said that about half-Ironman races and I have raced 6 of those now and become fairly competitive in my age group. That success, and the fitness that enabled it, surprised me enough to consider that my Kona Dreams might actually be possible. So last year I talked with my coach about it and decided to go for it.
When I decided to do this race last November it seemed like I had more than enough time to prepare. Now the race is next weekend and all I can do is hope I am ready. My training has gone well....I have stretched my swim distances to be able to make the 2.4 miles without difficulty. I have learned to ride Ironman watts for 5 to 6 hours, practicing patience and metering out my effort to be able to finish 112 miles of riding with enough energy to complete a marathon, and I have built up my run durability so I can run off the bike and hold my pace for a long time. I have created within my body and my mind the pieces of the puzzle necessary to complete a 140.6 mile race.
But with all the hay in the barn, as my good friend Chris Coffey says, I am left with 10 days to go and plenty of time to think. Mostly I try to think positive thoughts, to visualize the race and my success. But sometimes the mass start of the swim presents images that are less, shall we say, reinforcing. I have never started a triathlon with 2500 other athletes. All of my races have had wave starts and they are benign compared with the melee of an Ironman race start.
I know on race day when the gun goes off I'll start racing and I will enjoy the experience even as I push to make my Kona Dreams come true. It won't be easy, but 10 to 11 hours after the cannon fires, I am certain that I will cross the line and become an Ironman. It will be a proud moment for me.
I'll have 10 days to recover and pack before moving at the beginning of August. I came to South Burlington when my daughters were entering middle school and I had accepted a job at IBM. I rented a three bedroom condominium in an area close to the girl's school and an easy commute to work. A couple of years later I bought it and it has been home ever since for my girls and I. Both Marissa and Nicole are now grown and in graduate school. I don't need a three bedroom place and I decided that I'm ready to make some changes in my life. So I rented a nice top floor flat in a spot close to downtown Burlington. I have never lived in "the city" and expect it to be interesting......especially as I rented a place too expensive for me alone, requiring that I find a roommate with which to share the apartment.
I've lived with my daughters and I shared a home with my last girl friend for about 3 years. But the last time I actually had a roommate was 1986 I think. Moving is going to be hard and so is sharing space with another person I'm not related to or involved with. I lie in my bed today and look out at the trees swaying in the wind, the moon peeking between them and wonder, why am I doing this again? And I have to remind myself that it's time for a change, time for new experiences and surroundings. Like the Ironman, I don't know how it will turn out, but it's the journey that really matters, at least for me.
Assuming I succeed in dragging all of my furniture, kitchen stuff, clothing, and triathlon gear (yes, I have enough of it to include it as its own category) then I should be able to enjoy my new home until August 9th, when I will trust the airlines to fly me across the country to San Diego. From there it's a short hop to where I was born, went through grade school, and graduated from high school......Hemet High Bulldog, Class of 1982, We Stand Proud.
I don't make it back to Southern California very often, but I always enjoy going home and seeing my family. My mom is there, as well as a brother and two sisters, along with their families. Somehow the centrifuge of family dynamics flung me just a bit farther afoot. However, while I enjoy going back to Hemet to visit and see my family, this time I will be going to attend my 30th reunion. I have not gone to any of the previous reunions, so I will be seeing most of my high school classmates for the first time since the year we graduated. I can't believe it has been that long and I'll be honest, I'm terrified. I guess I always assumed I'd be successful, happy, rich, with a good wife, a loving family. It didn't really turn out that way, so going back after so long carries with it more trepidation than I expected.
I have been in touch with a few other people from my class and they have reassured me that it will be fine, that everybody has gone through life's sorrows, disappointments, and frustrations. I'm sure they are right and I thank them for being good friends; as they were then, so they are now.
Worry, fear, trepidation, angst, self doubt - these are all normal parts of life, especially when we reach to accomplish, when we go through change, and when we face our past. But for every negative thought, for every fear, for every doubt, we can recognize the feeling yet refuse to succumb to it.....we can replace those thoughts with positive images, reinforcing messages. As I embark upon the next several weeks, that is what I am going to do. I'll let you know how it all turns out.
You're a good person.
ReplyDeleteAnd your movin' to Boston! Okay Burlington.. but close enough.
Do you have a roommate yet or do you still need to find one?
See you in a week! I get up there Thursday..... need to swim friday? Do you have a swim on the schedule for Friday too?
Past, present and future. The reunion acknowledges the past, while the move speaks to the future. I imagine the Ironman, as with all athletic endeavors, braids past, present, and future--the challenge of the moment is buttressed by the preparation of the past, while the realization of the present inspires the possibilities of the future.
ReplyDeleteI really like this way of looking at what I wrote and tying the three themes (events) together.
DeleteAnonymous, you are a wise person. When you get a chance, please send me a private e-mail...I'd like to know you better.
Pain may beget knowledge; wisdom is seeing the pattern in a thousand cuts.
ReplyDeleteSo you accuse me of being wise. I fear I am as a general rule very fallible. If (when) I am foolish enough to think otherwise, Life soon provides evidence to the contrary. The thought occurs to me that to the extent that I am wise, it is in the awareness and acceptance of my human-ness and humanity; to think myself wise is to elevate myself above general human foolishness, which is folly itself. A paradox, perhaps.
On the other hand, I am drinking it in. . . .
You are a romantic--have you read Cyrano by Rostand? Or in the interests of time, watched the movie Roxanne with Steve Martin? You do sometimes watch "chick flicks", do you not?
Wisdom does not imply infallibility, nor do I mean it in the sense of becoming an oracle, somehow above and no longer a full participant in the humnan experience. Rather, I mean wise in the sense of having lived an experiencial and examined life, with the ability to share those learnings as well as recognize patterns in others.
ReplyDeleteI am a romantic, but I am suffering a crisis of faith in my romanticism. I am also a humanist, but recently find my existential tendencies reinforced. I am a Giacometti sculpture, a frail man rooted to a pedestal as life and time flow past me, surrounded by human emotion and actvity, yet isolated from it by my own individuality and limitations.
And yet I look in the mirror and see not the frail man I feel inside but a Michelangelo or Signorelli creation, a figure with the energy and proportions that suggest David. Where is my Goliath today? Literal of figurative?
I am guilty as charged in that I indulge in chick flicks. I have read Cyrano and also very much like Roxanne. My issue is that I cannot figure out if I identify more with C.D. Bales or Roxanne? Am I Cyrano or am I Roxanne? Can I be both?
That the unexamined life is not worth living is a philosophy touted by many but shared by few. I generally spend my moments of self-examination muttering inside my own head. I would not wish my experiences on others, but wouldn't wish them away from myself--I have become who I am and understand what I do (such as it is) because of the road I have traveled. My existentialist self finds meaning in my experiences by using my awareness to recognize patterns and perhaps lead others to some insight and change. That is my ideal, anyway. Doing so requires an openness and vulnerability to pain, an unwillingness to turn away, but to accept and absorb, and to perform the alchemy of turning pain to--I want to say "purpose", but is that just because of the alliteration? To some precious ineffable intangible--substance, construct, concept, experience, characteristic, "aura", aspect of being. . . .
ReplyDeleteTo remain a romantic in the face of painful experience, to remain vulnerable and forgo protective walls of insensitivity and willful ignorance, is an act of courage. One wishes to take the existentialist "leap of faith", but to what? in what direction? to whom? One hopes, in the words of Alton Brown, that "your patience will be rewarded", but one yearns for certainty, for a promise rather than a possibility. The faint of heart seize the practical and rationalize their choice by denigrating romanticism. Where have the great crises of faith led us? I want to say Martin Luther, Galileo, Kierkegaard, Jung. And, by the way, are humanism and existentialism mutually exclusive?
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=luca+signorelli+resurrection+of+the+body+flesh&num=10&hl=en&biw=1024&bih=667&tbm=isch&tbnid=jHlys20zwFVSrM:&imgrefurl=http://sites.google.com/site/pilgrimscatechism/humanity-3&docid=niU_wsottOneIM&imgurl=https://sites.google.com/site/pilgrimscatechism/lucasignorellitheresurrectionofthebo.jpg&w=685&h=940&ei=Qr8KULDCHYbS2AWH_s3xDw&zoom=1
Existentialism and humanism are not directly exclusive, but they don't necessarily support one another either. To be a humanist in some sense is to see and place value in the essence of human being and human nature, to glorify, explore, document, revel in who and what we are. There can be an element to the idea that being human is an essence, it is innate.
DeleteExistentialism suggests that we are not any particular essence naturally, rather it is we who define our essence through our actions, creations, work, choices.....through how we live. This does not make existentialism and humanism mutually exclusive, but only along certain lines of thought do the two superimpose, or agree supportively.
I am a humanist in how I see myself, in my belief that my form should be celebrated but also that what I do matters and defines me. Like you I feel artisitc creation in what I am both physical, psychological, and spiritual. Another brush stroke, and another, is exactly right. But the pain ans suffering. the darkness, isolation, and loneliness that accomnpanies some of those brush strokes, some of those chiseled features never ceases to amaze me, even as I am crushed by it.
The existentialist in me appreciates this process and regards it as the process by which I become what I am....not what I am supposed to be, because that does not exist, but just what I am to be as made by my own vision, or lack thereof.
Courage. I love the word. Do I have courage? In some ways most certainly yes. I am in the 2nd half of life and yet persist in chasing dreams, in being a romantic thinker. Lately it seems harder to hold on to the positive energy that can from being a romantic....I often feel more stoic than creatively alive, but still, I cling to my ideals and I work, some days more than others, to turn those ideals into values.
Please understand that I am not presenting myself as a scholar of existentialism. In existentialist psychotherapies, however, four elements are fundamental to the self: the awareness of the finiteness of death, and the desire to transcend it in some way (I am a little liberal with the concept of death anxiety); freedom, responsibility,and choice; isolation, and the desire to connect; and meaninglessness and the drive to create meaning. Existential orientations are coupled with humanistic orientations. I don't see that existentialism says we are not any essence essentially, but that the intent and meaning of that essence is not dictated by external sources, ie., religion, society, politics, etc. There is an innate humanistic drive to maximize potential, yet how to do that is not a predetermined formula--hence the existential process of creating the self.
DeleteI love the art of Rembrandt, the light made more luminous by the atmospheric and psychological depths. You say you are crushed by the pain, suffering darkness, isolation, and loneliness--the marble of Michelangelo's David is limestone subjected to extreme pressure. Perhaps you are more a geode whose crystalline brilliance is revealed only after the mundane shell is shattered. Perhaps you are a wine whose depth of flavor and heady intoxication are possible only after the grape is crushed and the residue left to age and reflect upon what had once seemed the misfortune of being plucked and pressed.
Did the cut-off link above work? I was not familiar with Signorelli, so I looked him up and found this "Detail 3" of Resurrection of the Body. While probably not what Signorelli intended, the skeletons to the right seem to be laughing at the physical perfection of the humans in the flesh. Giacometti reflects your internal self while Michaelangelo's David reflects your external self. And yet these are metaphors for the self, and like all analogies must ultimately fall short. Analogies are based on a limited number of variable that can be compared while human beings are composed of a marvelously infinite number of facets. Where is your Goliath? Perhaps it is the integrating of the Giacometti and the David, not to mention the Rodin sculptures of Adam and Eve and of the varied somber expressions of angst in the Burghers of Calais. And the list goes on. Perhaps the existential Goliath lies not in defeating an external antagonist, but in coming to peace with the self, a far more challenging and dangerous undertaking. I like that you use art as metaphors for self--I feel my conscious evolution of my own awareness and being as a process of artistic creation, myself as the always unfinished masterpiece. I find satisfaction and joy in adding here, defining there, adapting and refining, like the artist who never finishes the painting because he (or she) always finds an area that can use just one more brushstroke, and one more. . . .
ReplyDeletePart three, due to limits on characters.
ReplyDeleteYes, Roxanne and Cyrano both. Roxanne doesn't recognize the words of Cyrano because she is blinded by the fantasy of Christian. Perhaps Cyrano's insecurities keep him from revealing himself as the author of the letters and the words behind Christian's voice. In the play, Cyrano doesn't reveal himself out of respect for Christian and his death, or is it really that he feels rejected by Roxanne's lack of interest in the Cyrano with whom she is acquainted? Do you not relate to Christian? I used to think him a cipher, a plot device, but I have come to appreciate him as the embodiment of simplicity and innocence. Yeah, I don't relate to him either.
I understand Christian, but I don't relate to him. I do have my moments where I wish I had a larger dose of simplicity and innocence in my personality....I have an "old" soul, weathered and time worn that I cherish and nurture, but I am always intrigued by those with fresh souls.
DeleteI do relate to Cyrano feeling rejected, dismayed, dumb founded at Roxanne's interest in his words, his character, his essence, but not in him because she is so captivated by the appearance and probably idealized character of another. Who among us has not been on either side of that equation?
Have you read Voltaire's "The Story of a Good Brahmin"? It's about two pages long.
DeleteI think of Adam and Eve before the fall living in simplicity and innocence. Except for the task of naming the animals, they lived a life devoid of interest, passion, endeavor--a pretty superficial life. Depth came after eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge--pain, loss, struggle, achievement, interdependence, children--which suggests something else. . . hmmmmm. To embrace each other as protection and solace from the travails of the hostile environment, to feel joy as the counterpoint to despair. You have just finished a quest that plumbed your physical, emotional, and spiritual depths--an extreme pilgrimage you undertook by choice. What transcendent understanding did you gain through the anguish of the flesh? How were you tempered by the fire? The antithesis of simplicity and innocence, no?
And yet, I wonder, did Adam and Eve revisit Eden now and again in the quiet of the day's end, the shelter of each other's arms, the quiet, rhythmic breathing of blissful sleep? Simplicity and innocence, depth and experience--woof and warp.
With you, I don't know if I am Cyrano or not--
Good luck on your Lake Placid quest, friend.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the well wishes; I had a good (not great) race and am proud to be an Ironman.
DeleteMarc Meredyth--you ARE an ironman. I am sure you will be sharing the experience soon. I have been known to say marathon is a metaphor for life--I am looking forward to reading the "king size" analogies for marathon plus swim plus bike. Congratulations!
DeleteThank you.
DeleteIt was incredible to start the day right next to Mike Reilly in Transition as I aired up my bike tires and made sure everything was ready, then to finish to his iconic you ARE an ironman, and to return to the finish line later in the night to see and listen to him bring home the last finishers of the day, including the youngest in the race at 18 years old, and the eldest at 76. A truly remarkable day.
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ReplyDeleteIf, after reading all my (heartfelt) blather, the offer is still good, let me know.
Within the brackets should have pasted the following--<>
DeleteDang! The words in brackets keep disappearing. I hope it isn't a sign of some kind. I am trying to remind you of your words that, "Anonymous, you are a wise person (I like that part). When you get a chance, please send me a private e-mail...I'd like to know you better."
ReplyDeleteI am intrigued.
It is. I can't (and won't) stop writing heartfelt blather, and I enjoy reading it as well.
ReplyDeletemeredyth@together.net