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Stepping Up
This entry was posted on 8/13/2006 12:01 AM and is filed under General Musings.
A "journally", internally-focused entry today, in a period of personal growth.Call it a public therapy session...
I believe in the sun even when it does not shine.
I have been thinking a lot about swimming lately, thanks to a message that came to me amidst my week at the beautiful Option Institute,
from which I returned Friday (and have not [yet?] blogged about).
Swimming consumed many of my formative years, and, as such, reflects
much of my emotional growth and the ways in which I think of myself in
other areas as well. When this friend mentioned a swim
meet he was competing in, I started thinking of the hundreds of meets I
swam in between the age of 6 and 20. I had the memory of how competitive I
was once upon a time, the looks exchanged with other swimmers in the
warm-up pool, the adrenaline that would pump while waiting for a big
event, smelling chlorine and the "motion lotion" (a weird Bengay-based rubdown concoction our coach used on us), stretching or shaking out in front of the blocks and feeling that yes, I am going to kick your ass, lane three.
I believe that competitiveness is a willingness to step up to the
blocks (pun intended) and say that you count and are willing to gamble
on yourself. It's a willingness to say, "watch out, because I am
something to be reckoned with. I'm in this game too". And I also
remembered two events where I sort of lost that belief. The first was when
the swim team board paid for a trip I made to Florida to compete in a
national meet I had (finally) made the time standard for. I was
expected to do well there, and I did not. In fact, I swam almost a full
second slower than my qualifying time. My coach was really pissed, and
when I returned, one of the board members expressed some disappointment
in me. I remember that moment as realizing that I no longer wanted to
gamble on myself if other people were also counting on me and I might
fail them. The second incident involved a record I had wanted to break
for a few years, and after training extra hard in my last possible
season to do so, and having psyched myself up to believe that there
would be no other possible outcome than breaking the record, I fell
short by a few hundredths of a second. I decided then that you cannot,
in fact, achieve whatever you set your mind to. I swam for a few more
years out of habit after that, but never put my heart into it again.
I'm re-evaluating the beliefs I created there and taking corrective measures.
I have a desire now to track down my trophies and medals, because I
always threw them into cardboard boxes in my closet. I think I found it
somewhat embarrassing and unacceptable to display them. I don't need to
dig too deeply to understand the significance or contradiction of
throwing a Most Valuable Player trophy into a cardboard box, or what it
means to reclaim that now and decide it's OK to acknowledge it. Yeah,
I'm fucking valuable. I'm awesome  .
I think it's an interesting synchronicity that swimming seems to be
popping up as a topic, and as a symbol for me, just as I am
reacquainting myself with the beliefs I had in life before I ever failed,
before my heart ever broke, before anyone ever said something nasty to
me, before I was ignored by anyone, before these kinds of universal events we
all experience that we decide
(or at least some of us) means we might as well not step
up to the blocks. I suspect that you may find commonality in this.
Interesting human trait. Someone asked me last week, "When are you
going to
stop thinking other people's thoughts?" Er...now.
I believe in the sun even when it does not shine. I don’t need others
to convince me it’s there. So yes, even if it pisses down rain, I still
believe in the sun. Even when I don't win, even when everyone else thinks I suck, I can step up to the blocks.
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