Heavy-Lifting and My To-do List

He’s gone. So now I’m back to lifting weights. It got to the point where I was ashamed to wave--these arms. I used to have the slightest of muscles, but then I gave up on anything having to do with strength for awhile, so the arms, and the wave, atrophied. Gives new meaning to the term “hang loose.”

It is such a concrete, behavioral adjustment--this heavy-lifting--the discipline, the slow progress, and finally, strength and tone enlarge and enhance. It is a way of becoming fit, among all the ways we might choose to do that. It starts out as a desire to be a better person--where to begin--and look, those arms need some work. So you begin. But then the desire must turn into a commitment, to firmness and vitality in this case. Then it has to become a habit. When I first thought about strength conditioning, or lifting, I got all excited about the idea, and then forgot to do the actual exercises for over a week. I finally wrote it down on my to-do list: Arms. Make my bed; lift dumbbells, in that order.
It is such an in-the-moment activity. You just focus and breathe. I don’t put the weights down and look in the mirror to see if it worked, in part because I have avoided mirrors, also for years. I just know I have to do the work and wait. It requires some discernment as well. Oftentimes, the neck, or the thighs, or your lower back get involved. You have to scan and see, am I clenching any other body part that has nothing to do with stronger biceps? Sometimes it’s even the face, as if you could lift more pounds by sheer lip and teeth power. Grimacing takes it’s toll, and your cheeks might be sore in the morning. Just stick to the arms--the biceps, the triceps, and the brachialis and the brachioradialis, for now, one breath, one rep, one day at a time.

And humility is required. It’s been awhile so I’m ashamed to say, I had to start with girlie push-ups. That was in the spirit of rigorous honesty. But again, you just have to start where you are. Yesterday, I mentioned the bodybuilding mantra, “No pain, no gain,” in a post that was about what to do with the pain, emotional pain, in this case. I do believe that strengthening my arms will increase my overall endurance. It is the intent and the perseverance that matter. It creates a successful mindset just as surely as the inverse is true--when I gave up on life, my whole body was involved, or not involved, as it were. The abandonment was complete, every muscle, bone, and joint was impacted, even my smile.

David B. Morris wrote in The Scientist in 2005, "'No pain, no gain' is an American modern mini-narrative: it compresses the story of a protagonist who understands that the road to achievement runs only through hardship."

I’d take out the words “runs only through” in this quote and replace them with “is the promise of." I don’t believe you always have to suffer to succeed, but it sure makes it sweeter, and it makes the hardship easier to bear, less like drudgery and more like recognition and acknowledgment, honor, even. I like the idea of the protagonist though, as in your efforts, your actions, your choices, and your story.

Writing this post was a strenuous lift for me today. I’m not depressed, not defeated, definitely not broken. I’m just afraid nobody is listening. Having lost my Voice for over a decade, the horror of hearing only an echo is an artifact, a relic, of that persistent, twilight state of invisibility.

My To-do list: (with intention)

1. Arms (I want to wave with abandon.)
2. Post (Somebody is out there, also concerned about their slack arms.)
3. Thank you notes (You changed my life with your gift.)
4. Begin compiling my Surviving, Thriving CD (1st song, Thank You, by Alanis Morissette)
5. Don't take anything personally (It's worth a try...)

I’ll leave you with Dickens, from A Tale of Two Cities:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."