I was box jumping at the gym tonight and everything was going well, until I made a jump and the box moved and while I tried to hold on, it tilted backwards and fell, pushing me backwards to where I had jumped from, and flat onto my back. As I was falling, I was thinking about the pain that was soon to arrive after falling from waist height with force. Upon "landing" I paused a moment to see what was going to burst into pain first, but nothing came. So I stood up. A Personal trainer was with a client a few meters on the other side of the large wooden box that came clattering down and she asked if I was okay, and I run the check again and yeah, I was.
But....
My Ego??
While it happened fast, the noise would have made people turn and I assume that it didn't look very graceful. An old man who weighs 90 kilos, tipping uncontrolled backward onto the ground from a height, probably didn't evoke thoughts of James Bond. However, what interested me the the most was that there was almost zero embarrassment. Which makes me wonder, have I go so little self-esteem left that I just don't care?
Now, to say there was no pain was not quite true, because with that kind of impact, for a moment I did see some stars, but I didn't hit my head. And there was a little twinge in my wrist and now I can feel a bit of a stretch in the front of my leg, but nothing lasting. In fact, once up, I picked up the box, and continued on with my workout.
My wife was in a class and I told her about it as we exited the room (I am glad she didn't see it though), and when we got home, I told Smallsteps about it also. She and I have a running joke about how "I never fall over", so I said this was the first time in my life ever (With the Finnish weather, pretty much everyone falls over sometimes). I wanted to tell her because I have been slowly introducing her to the various failures in my own life that she could learn from. Some of them are of the "don't do what I did" kind, but most of them are the "life is messy, shit happens" kind.
Life is filled with uncertainty and risk, and I know of many younger people (some older too) that are so risk averse, so frightened of the unknown, that they can barely do anything. I am not the only to notice this of course, because there is now problems for some people having major anxiety when their phone rings, because they don't want to talk to people. Or others, who run out of fuel in their car because they don't want to look silly trying to work out how to fill the car.
It sounds pathetic, right?
To me it does, but we all are risk averse and dislike uncertainty. The difference isn't in feeling anxious or having a fear of embarrassment - it is the level required to evoke that response. As I see it, we are becoming far more sensitive to our environment across the board, where we feel discomfort at even the slightest bump. We are turning into princesses, who can feel the pea under a dozen mattresses.
No pain, no gain?
That is correct.
This doesn't mean we have to be under high levels of constant stress and force our bodies to breaking point. But in order to build strength and resilience, we have to expose ourselves to a constant stream of challenge which pushes us to the edges of our abilities, at least sometimes. We don't have to live on that edge, and we certainly don't have to start at the extremities, but we can increase the pressure incrementally, getting stronger, learning more, and then repeating with a little more weight.
But like me tonight, we also have to learn when to take a break, rest, recover, and leave the longer jumps for another day. We don't have to push ourselves like we are constantly running from a hungry tiger, but we have to make sure that we push ourselves enough and test occasionally, just in case we chance upon that tiger looking for its next meal.
As I continued on with my workout, a few things were running through my brain. Firstly, I am glad that I didn't get too injured, because I have just started getting into working out regularly and enjoying it, so don't want to stop. But the other thing that I found interesting is, I can still take a hit. It wasn't a punch to the face, but it was definitely an impact that my body hasn't experienced for a very long time. So long, I don't even know the last time I would have landed that hard on flat ground. And for me at least, there is something comforting in the feeling that I "survived" and the discomfort I feel,
Is worth it.
I think most of us "older folk" have become accustomed to avoiding this kind of physical discomfort, especially as we age. We aren't falling off bikes, or jumping from trees or play equipment, or launching meters in the air on a snowboard, or rollerblades. We are playing it pretty safe. But the thing is younger folk are avoiding discomfort and pain also, but it doesn't mean they can actually succeed to avoid it. Instead, they just have different anchors of what kind of pains rate where. What I felt today was nothing compared to some of the mishaps I have had throughout my youth, so really, it was not too bad.
The theory of relativity.
Not Einstein's perhaps, just that our discomfort is relative to our past discomforts. Our experience informs our feelings, and if we haven't experienced a great deal of pressure, our pain threshold is much lower. Small stressors can evoke large responses. And the more we protect our children from the various "growing pains" of life, the less they grow. They become less resilient and less capable, because as they start to push themselves into the unknown, the pain will feel to overwhelming, even though they aren't experiencing much more pressure than they have already known.
Pain is not something to fear, unless it is unbearable pain. But, what is unbearable pain? Do you know? Have you ever experienced that much pain you have been unable to think, unable to move, that you are just frozen, that all your systems were overwhelmed and your body started to shut down to protect itself? What kind of stress level should be required for that kind of response? A phone call?
Perhaps one of the lessons we all need to learn in life, is whether we are able to really take a hit or not. To push ourselves enough that sometimes, we fail big enough that we recognise that failure is okay, and survival still possible.
Ready to jump?
Taraz
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