Tag Archives: perspective

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The 4,5,6 Challenge

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Having a goal matters.  Every five years, I try to set a goal that seems like a “stretch goal,” or something I will be unlikely to reach without a lot of effort. Further, I find motivation from writing out my goal. It is as if writing it becomes a contract with myself. It is a commitment to attempt to be the person who can aspire to remake myself back into the fit person I was before MS. It is also a challenge, and I hate losing.

Five years ago for my 40th birthday, my wife gave me a gift of a trip to Yellowstone so I could run a half marathon and see Old Faithful that was on my bucket list (things to do before I die).  Of course, running a half marathon there is no joke.  It is a long run at altitude.  So for months before the trip, I trained as hard as I could in the D.C. humidity.  My brother-in-law who went with me asked, “what if you can’t finish the run? Will it still have been worth all the effort?”

I told him the answer I still use when trying something hard, “Failure is not an end point.  It is simply a way of measuring my next attempt.”  I finished the run in the top third of all finishers.  I may have fallen a few times, but I finished thinking “not too shabby for a 40 year-old.”  The effort paid off, and it would have paid off whether I finished or not.  Having the goal gave me a purpose to keep running when I was tired or just didn’t feel like it.

Now as I approach my 45th birthday, the question was what shall I set as my “stretch goal.”  With Covid 19 upending all of our lives, it may seem petty to think I need some physical goal.  Travel is out as three of the six in our family are high risk patients.  I needed something that would stick in my head and keep me moving.  Then my little kids were listening to some old kids music, and I heard “It’s as easy as 1,2,3 baby you and me…” 

The “4,5,6 challenge” is on! In October when I turn 45, I will have 6 pack abs.  That challenge is just what I need to keep working out and even doing the 10 min ab burn at the end of the workouts.  After 28 days with Chloe Ting, I am on to the “Beach Body on Demand” 21 day fit routines.  Dropping  the sodas down to at most 2 per day, eating healthy, and walking/running after our four kids has me well on the way.  If I don’t have the 6 pack abs by the time I am 45, I will certainly have a healthier body than when I started.  However, I plan to reach this target.  I already went from 234 lb in March to 197lb now.

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The Pale Brown Line

I need to find a way to teach productive acceptance of our conditions. I would hate to see A live a life of boulder pushing.
I need to find a way to teach productive acceptance of our conditions. I would hate to see A live a life of boulder pushing.

The author, Richard Cohen, recently described living with MS as akin to living as Sisyphus, condemned forever to roll a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down (http://richardmcohen.com/welcome-to-sisyphusville/). As I think about MS, rather than pondering the deliberately frustrating task of rolling a boulder all day for no result, I picture myself trying to walk the thin pale line barely visible to this color challenged dad.

On one side of the line, I see only today. Every day feels much like the last. The pain is still there to keep my foggy mind company. I take my medications to enable something akin to a normal day’s worth of activity. I do so knowing tomorrow and all of tomorrows’ tomorrows will lead down a path of increasing symptoms. Why bother? As I look at today, it seems so pointless, so like yesterday.

On the other side of the line is the sight of the distant future when I am dead and scattered in the wind somewhere. After all, the opponent on the other side of the line is Father Time, and he has yet to lose.

Somewhere in the middle is the pale brown line, just subtly different from the marble of daily experience on which we all walk. Along this line, it is possible to see the impact of the marginal daily gain. I think of it as the trail of the poo of life. With a 3-year-old, a 7-year-old boy and an eight- year-old girl with bowel issues, the juvenile side of me can’t get poo off the brain. In this case though, it gave me a new perspective.

At first all a baby seems to do is eat, sleep, and poop. Every day seems the same…for months. Then come the little changes which at first are little but annoyances. Why must every kid take off their poo filled diapers? Then comes the endless story telling to occupy a kid’s mind while they sit on the potty. Every day, it is another story, and the only change comes in the form of a different story. It’s mind numbingly exhausting some times, but it is eventually traded in for the often repeated and always ill-timed, “I have to go potty RIGHT NOW!” Some times they make it. At other times, it is back to cleaning up poo.

Still, mired in all of this poo, is the faintest whiff of progress to give hope. From a daily perspective, it often seems pointless to try. In the long-term, we are all fertilizer. It’s along the faint brown line, faded by years of potty use instead of inadvertent dumps, we can see how much we have grown.  It’s only when I can choose a middling perspective between now and the future that I get to enjoy life’s progress.

I try to think of my MS as the need to take a dump. Each day, I hope I deal with it a little better whether it is a dry erase board to remember tasks to be completed or just confidence I can overcome the trials of the day.  To ignore the MS is to create a much browner spot along the line, but to focus too much on it is to fall into the “woe is me” depression and lose sight of the line.

 

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