One Stroke At A Time

Never before have I felt like vomiting like I did in that moment. I had worked so hard that I felt nauseous. Worse yet, I wasn’t proud of my final result. After 2000 meters on the rowing machine, I felt miserable, inadequate. I was humbled beyond belief.

Then I heard the worlds my close friend Lyen offered when talking about training for a marathon. “My personal best.” Those three little words shifted my view and made me reconsider what I had just experienced.

The truth is, for the first three and a half minutes of my body’s trauma on the erg, I was on fire. Not only did I hit a stroke rater of 2:00 minutes per 500 meters (a rate I had never hit before) but my average for that fleeting period was 2:10 (also a rate I had never hit for even ten seconds, let alone a full three minutes!).

Granted, that is when I was about to turn my stomach inside out. And yes, other team members twice my size were flying by me on our hypothetical “boat” race—machines bolted to the boat house floor. And no, I wasn’t happy with my final score.

But when we set aside right and wrong, good and bad, record or not, and look through the lens of compassion rather than competitiveness, the words come: “My personal best.” Whether it’s a new sport, a battle with an unwanted habit or even brief periods of time we spend each day doing something we said we would, it’s good to celebrate life’s victories.

It can also be helpful to enjoy the “rests” life brings, however brief. The fleeting moments between strokes are when we can reflect on wherever it is in our lives we are getting better than we were before. It is in the moments of pause when we can celebrate where we’ve been, regroup, and become energized about where we are going.

What we’ve done for three minutes today, we may be able to do for nine someday. Now, that’s something to celebrate! The best way to get there, of course, is to keep rowing—not all 2000 yards at once, but one stroke at a time.

Love-Hate Relationship

I’m taking a day off from my computer—a sabbatical, you might say. The two of us haven’t been seeing eye-to-eye lately. I think it’s better that I give it a rest than chuck it out the window, which is the only other alternative I can think of.

They say miracles can happen by simply taking a one-day fast, no food or drink, just a little lemon water to feed the soul. Today is my fast. I’ll eat myself silly, but I refuse to open that laptop. My addiction to it has reached a new level. It’s time to stop.

I walk by it, there on the couch and eye it longingly. “But my email!” my inner demon shouts out to me. “I must check my email!”

I walk by, head held high, strong in my conviction.

It’s not that the computer is evil unto itself, although the though did cross my mind yesterday as it garbled 20 emails and refused to send many more. It’s not that I’m not thankful for what this machine does for me, because I am.

Today’s fast is more about what I’m not doing when I’m on it, like cleaning my house, meditating in the sun, playing with my child or well, uh writing! On the computer I perfect, move around, edit, and work on stuff rather than peeking inside me rather than at it to see what’s happening.

So today, that computer will sit. And I will walk by with a sense of pride that I did it with my pen and paper in my hand, as I chose more peaceful ways to create.

Good-bye for today, dear friend. Perhaps tomorrow you can help me publish all this stuff! The time apart will do us good. Let us duke it out then!

The Cactus

There is a cactus flower growing out of the railing on our balcony. When we moved in, I spotted it and, thinking it had crawled up from a potted plant taken away by the previous inhabitant of the space, figured it would not long after shrivel and die. Not so. Not only is the cactus still alive, it has flourished and grown since our arrival.

It’s amazing to me how this simple little flower is growing off only the nutrients it gains from the wood where it is roosting. Another beautiful gift from the balcony cactus is it ties two sections of the balcony together. From a feng shui or symbolic perspective now, instead of being divided, those in this home are united in a beautiful way. Nature has offered a better feng shui adjustment than I could ever have invented.

All this cactus talk makes me think about my own life. What is trying to grow within me, with only a few hairline roots and no soil? There is something about this sweet little, ever expanding yellow-green flower that makes me think of survival. Even though we may not have asked for them, or may neglect them for years, within each of us are talents, dreams and gifts that long to share their blooms with the world.

They wait. And they wait. And they wait, continuing to live off the minute nutrients they can gain from life’s circumstances until we are ready to give them more. If they are anything like this little flower basking in the sun, while they wait, they’re growing and expanding, reaching out to remind us they exist whenever we look their way, eager to show off their beauty and remind us what life can be.