Is This As Good As It Gets?
That’s the question I asked myself this afternoon. I’m laying low to promote healing following my recent heavy crash. A beautiful, sunny spring afternoon, but a sense of emptiness hanging over me too, a feeling of loss. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Life is change and I’m trying to decipher what lays before me.
It’s very clear to me that my primary sporting activity of the last fifty years must go. If it doesn’t, I’m not a considerate man. Neither am I reading the nudge that fate is giving me. Being alone on the bike for countless miles and millions of pedal strokes over the years has helped my physical and mental health immensely. For a dozen or so years, the sport was integral to my work, given the close contact I had with elite cycling. The recent handful of years has seen the sport become a major part of my social life too. It’s natural I would feel a sense of loss.
But now what?
Horizons
It has taken me a lot of inner conversation to understand why I feel this way. It would make sense if the trauma of my accident was part of my mixed emotions. Some people said to me it was a life changing accident. It was. Thankfully, I have no serious injury or impediment. But an activity that has been something I have placed in the middle of my health and wellbeing suddenly disappearing does constitute a life change.
Yet something deeper is bothering me. I don’t fear death. I want to live a productive life and hopefully my end phase is short. Fast, fast, stop. I fear living twenty years with my wellbeing and quality of life degrading. Someone said last week to me, “Give up cycling, you’re going to kill yourself.” Perhaps. But it’s crucial to keep an eye on physical health and the core pillars of wellbeing, or, well, I’m going to kill myself. Just in a slower way.
What are the prospects for my horizons? Life is change, but how to make it positive?
A Life Less Lived
What has been stirring in my unconcious is this. I’m afraid of my life shrinking. I want to physically challenge myself as long as is possible. I would like to be intellectually stimulate until my last day. An active body and mind leads the way when it comes to feeling good and getting the most from one’s fleeting presence on the planet.
I don’t fear death, but I do fear my horizons becoming narrower and narrower and my existence becoming a gussied-up waiting room where the only visitor will be death. If my major activity of recent decades is no longer on my to-do list, then the window of my life narrows. That’s my fear and what has been, for a few days, driving my sense of loss and unease.
So what’s the solution?
No Amount Of …
I do know that no amount of regret or rumination changes the past. And no amount of anxiety or catastrophising affects the future path we travel. The only change we can enact is that which is in front of us right now; this moment.
Cycling is over for me, and it’s the right decision. So let it go. My future anxiety is about my horizons narrowing. Does the path meanders into dark obscurity from here? Screw that, deal with things now. I won’t let my horizons narrow, because I know that isn’t a life I want to enter into. Life is change, lean in.
In the past handful of weeks I have decided to run a marathon. Running can be my new physical and mental health pillar. In the past weeks I have decided I’m going to write a novel. I’ve always wanted to learn to write, and it’s an activity I can partake in until my last breath. So no, I decline to allow my life to narrow.
I accept that change is an inevitable part of life, a constant we must face and turn into a positive. I like the Alvin Toffler quote about change not merely being necessary, but being the very essence of life. New physical, mental, spiritual explorations are the focus.
What’s The Answer?
The answer is it gets better, if we take the golden opportunity this life gives us and we squeeze every pip out of the ripe fruit. That’s my mindset. I am not going to sit around feeling sorry for myself and I am not going to accept a slow decline. No sir, not me.
Tomorrow I will blog about my #runmoonyrun challenge. The negative spirit that has been trying to rent space in my head has been pushing an agenda that I’ve rashly taken on the impossible. My person spirit is saying that a recent negative event has totally fucked my planning up. But that I’m going to adapt and continue to try. I would rather go down in flames trying than being one of those self-sabotaging people. Do not count me out. Check back tomorrow and let’s get into some planning. Life is change, so I’m getting on the front foot.