Reaching Cruising Altitude

My bright red 30th reunion "Anniversary Report" came in the mail yesterday, a harbinger of many 1993 classmates preparing to gather in Cambridge this June. I withdrew it gingerly from the cardboard envelope as if the crimson binding would bite my fingers - in a Hogwarts cum Harvard sci-fi move - for not contributing this go-round. Rob asked me why I didn't submit anything, and I didn't have a quick answer. I remember writing something for the 25th reunion and given that the pandemic created a time-lapse in my brain between 2018 and today, it feels like yesterday that I contributed.

Classmate life summaries have always been tricky for me. Tenured professors, award-winning authors, heads of hospitals, life-saving doctors, judges, cabinet posts, etc. etc. rise out of the page to threaten my small narrative and self-confidence. I hesitated to open the book but once the list of names was opened, I couldn't help skimming through, looking for old friends and roommates.

Far fewer people wrote this year, perhaps for the same reason, perhaps because the 30th reunion is not one of the "big" ones. I was startled by the tone of the entries that do exist - prior emphasis on career triumphs and goals has been replaced by a major focus on relationships with friends and families, the loss of connection during COVID, illness, divorce, addiction. While not startled that these life changes impacted my college companions, I am blown away by the vulnerability, the desire to help people going through similar struggles. When I say that my classmates never revealed weakness in college, it would be an understatement. Everyone was on top of things, everyone busy, driven, outwardly confident and intimidating. How the wheel of life has turned for us all.

I'm grateful for the openness of people that used to scare me with their intelligence and brazen confidence. I'm warmed by love for parents, children, significant others that was expressed beautifully in many entries, and saddened by the additional deaths that transpired in the last five years. Real life priorities have emerged in the anniversary report and they shockingly align with mine.

One regret - I didn't come up with the most trenchant line in the whole report, a perfect summary of life in our 50's expressed in three words:  "reaching cruising altitude." Leave it to one nameless classmate to put me in my place with delicious writing.

Exercise - selfish obsession or healthy habit?

“ I also don’t understand the attitude that who you are on the inside is all that matters. Obviously our interior landscape is profoundly important, but we are integrated beings; we don’t have to make a choice between interior and exterior. One has a lot to do with the other.” Patti Davis in More Magazine, http://www.more.com/patti-davis-naked-body?page=3. May 30, 2011.

Matthew 6:25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?"

My life has been always a bit defined by physical achievement but recently even more so as the pendulum swings from habit to obsession with training for our October marathon. My conscience was pricked when I randomly heard Matthew 6:25 twice in two days and the line 'do not worry about your body' leapt out at me. I had not heard the word 'body' emphasized that way before. I think the author means that we should not worry about our clothing, but the literal warning made me ponder a bit. Do I concern myself with conditioning and fitness beyond what is necessary for good health, thereby robbing my children or my other pursuits of attention and energy?

Oddly, also, there was an article in the Denver Post that same morning about an ultramarathoner who had been crazily pursuing goals and records across the country. He still trains and runs but says he has calmed down a bit, and that he would warn folks to watch their exercising if they feel that they HAVE TO work out, or are obsessing. Balance in everything, of couse. Which led me to think again about my pursuit of athletic fitness and achievement – is it too much?

Have I gone too far? With the running, swimming, triathlon (only one this summer, but still) and strength training? I actually think it is possible, yes. I think I need to relax about it – stay away from the gym this summer – and enjoy myself more while prioritizing the absence of injury. On the other hand, bringing some intensity and risk to my workouts reminds me how much I can achieve – should achieve – in other areas of my life. Prayer, meditation, Spanish, volunteering, WRITING. If I could pursue these things with the dedication with which I pursue running, stretching, swimming, then I could get much farther than I have done.

I was telling my friend during our long run on Saturday (lots of time to talk on a ten-mile run) that I finally feel it would be possible to keep the athletics AND bring intensity to other areas of my life . . .something I have not been able to do in ten years, since Aden was born. I have worked out (with or without intensity, depending on the stage, number of children, health, etc.) but I have never had enough energy to do childrearing / parenting, training, AND . . . I am REALLY looking forward to continuing this training, but to maintaining / bringing about greater balance in my life by focusing that same intensity in other areas. Athletics are now, as they have always been, more a metaphor for real life than actual real life . . . they have teaching power as metaphor and value for shaping our exterior landscape. As long as I maintain the interior with equal dedication, I can face my training routine without too much guilt.