Introspection

With lockdown and social distance in place, I've been taking very long walks daily.  As some of you may remember, I've been loading up my backpack and rucking along merrily.  Merrily, that was, until one day I decided I'd "attack" this bridge thing with its incline and quick marched up it over to the other side and back.  Four times.  Oh, I felt fine then, but damn if I didn't hurt myself in the process.

Anyway, since brevity is the soul of wit, I've had to lay off these kinds of self-inflicted tortures for a while.  So, I've been lightening the load, now to no more than 20-25 pounds, and on days when I do go to that hilly bridge, I only do it once or twice, and never race up it anymore.

Why am I telling you this?  No clue.  But it does bear some relevance to the topic today.  Introspection.  My walks generally go between 2 and 2.5 hours, so I have tons of time to reflect on things.  And sometimes these thoughts are inspired by a song I happened to hear on my playlist while taking these walks.

This morning I started thinking about younger days.  Older folks do that, in case you're wondering.  And older folks who are alone do that even more.  So there I was, thinking how my life was so different once upon a time.  Good times and bad.  Successes and failures.  And that's when this funny feeling hit me.

Easily, people lament how things were so much better before.  How young and energetic in one's youth.  How life was filled with promises and hope.  And how it has all gone to shit once you got to a certain stage of life.

Easily so.  But it's all bull.

I was having these exact thoughts, as I laboured an hour into my walk, that yes indeed, wasn't I much stronger and fitter then?  Didn't I once have a good career going?  Didn't I experience love and hope?

That's when the bull starts.  It's the frame of reference we choose to use as the base, isn't it?  Shit, I remember yes, once upon a time, I was seriously fit.  But then, hell, once upon a time I was seriously unfit.  When I was 12 years old I weighed 180 pounds.  When I was 15 I hit 230.  My waist was 42 inches.  It's what we choose to compare the present with, isn't it?

Yes, I had a good career at one point.  But I also had shit times.  When I returned to Canada in '85, after a pretty happy time with a multinational, I couldn't find a job for four months.  I was either over-qualified or I didn't have enough Canadian experience.  Great.  So I delivered Chinese food for those four months.  Yes, six years after my MBA I was delivering fucking Chinese food.

You see what I'm getting at?

It's easy to despair and say how bad things are, or why is this shit happening to me, and so on.  Sure, we all have down days.  The world treats us badly, we'd like to think.  I am the most unfortunate person in the world.

That's all bull.

No matter how bad you feel, you probably had it worse before.  And even if you didn't, I'm sure someone else is having it worse.  It's all in perspective.  Think not of how things were better before.  Think about how shitty things were, too.  And perhaps then one might realize that, hey, life ain't so bad.

This is no insight, of course.  I am preaching to any of you.  I just wanted to share with you my thoughts.  I have not been in the best of moods lately, for reasons obvious and some not so obvious.  But today's walk awakened this framing perspective in me, and I feel much better by it.

And the song I was listening to?  "Yesterday when I was young."

Summer is here.  The air con is humming.  I have time.  I have energy.  Life is grand!

See you next time!