Pushing through it

Readers of this blog will recall that El Cabrero, aside from being someone who would never refer to himself in third person, is into endurance sports and martial arts, even though he is not very good at either. But one thing they can teach is the importance of hanging on even in difficult situations. 

Like the one that prevails in WV these days...

Recently, I came across this quote by one of my favorite philosophers and psychologists, the great American pragmatist William James:

The existence of reservoirs of energy that habitually are not tapped is most familiar to us in the phenomenon of ‘second wind.’ Ordinarily we stop when we meet the first effective layer, so to call it, of fatigue. We have then walked, played, or worked ‘enough,’ and desist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious obstruction, on this side of which our usual life is cast.

But if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before. We have evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed. There may be layer after layer of this experience. A third and a fourth ‘wind’ may supervene.

Mental activity shows the phenomenon as well as physical, and in exceptional cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those early critical points.

This reminds me of something Shorin Ryu karate master Minoru Higa said after an exhausting training session in Naha, Okinawa. During his session, we performed thousands of repetitions of basic techniques in a very short time. Then, through a translator, he explained that if one trains beyond the point of fatigue, extraneous thoughts and wasted motion fall away and correct technique is achieved.

In other words, just deal.

Feeling good is optional

I have always felt that there is a lot to be learned from physical exertion. An example of that occurred to me after I started training for and running (or limping) in races again after knee surgery this summer.

Here is the life lesson I learned: there is absolutely no necessary connection between feeling good and doing OK. By that I mean that one can feel totally miserable and still meet or exceed goals. In one recent 5 mile race, my legs felt like broken dead sticks, my lungs burned and my feet hurt with every step. But I finished a few minutes ahead of my goal (though admittedly way behind most other people).

It would be nice to feel good when you're up against a challenge. It may even have happened to me at some point in the distant past, although I can't recall it. But it's not required. What is required is to keep going.

OPTIMISM, ANYONE? Paul Krugman seems to see sun shining through the economic clouds.

FEEDING THE TROLLS. Here's an op-ed by yours truly on why WV needs an office of minority affairs to address racial disparities.

AN UNFORTUNATE MEME: the welfare queen.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED