Tag Archives: Daily Something

Are we ever really done?

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Are we ever really done?

My semester ended yesterday.  I finished it with a self-satisfied feeling of having completed something.  Last night, in a celebration of sorts, I used my free evening time to bask in the glory of evening television, hanging (and arguing) with my family, cooking dinner (well, sort of, because it meant ordering in Indian for my husband, cooking mac and cheese with peas for my daughter and reheating Tuesday’s eggplant parm for me), wrestling with our very ornery cat and starting in on the list of chores in the run-up to Christmas.

I actually wrote Christmas cards, ordered Christmas presents online (including a double of something — oops), hauled out last year’s wrapping paper, talked with my husband about how neither of us felt very Christmasy this year, and then dug through our very overstuffed closet to find the bag of ornaments for the tree we have to get one of these days.  It all got me to thinking that the crush of too much to do all the time means that simple moments tend to fall by the wayside in favor of a forced march of “have-to-get-this-done.”

In essence, my night off wasn’t a night off at all, least ways not until I figured out that I really didn’t have to get everything done in one night.  And even though my list of things to do is still pretty huge, I’ve resolved to slow down over these next few weeks; to take the moments as they are and enjoy the journey too, not just the destination.

I see the application to my boxing too.  I get in a rush and go mad for the gym and then find that I lose the knack for even getting there.  So I’m calling a moratorium on needing to overachieve everything.  Merely achieving is okay, just as being done is okay.  That means that today, even though I have a lot of chores, I’m going to give each thing its due and if something doesn’t get finished, well, that’s okay too.  It can have its own arc; its own round, and while it’s nice to fit things neatly into the equivalent of three-minute intervals, not everything in life can be experienced in that way.

 

 

I want to live

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I want to live

A dear young friend of Girlboxing has been diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer.  Barely 30 she is facing the kinds of challenges and life or death decisions that no one should ever have to face, never mind a person as vital and full of life as she.

It reminds me that all of us face deeply troubling and difficult problems that can be as debilitating emotionally as they are physically or quite frankly, the other way around, wherein feeling crippled by loss or depression can lead to a physical manifestation of suffering.

Cure alls for these sorts of troubles are near-on impossible, but there are ways of coping that can help find a place for laughter and smiles along side the hugely daunting task of getting through a difficult time.

So of course you know where I’m going with this in the sense of “working it out on the bag,” but more so, finding the “daily something,” the space that’s yours and yours alone can be a source of inspiration and hope to keep you going.

My Aunt was just such a person.  She had every serious and debilitating disease one can have including four different cancers (one breast each and two lung cancers), two heart attacks, three strokes and kidneys that managed to function despite no registry on her blood tests, oh and the diabetes she managed to “cure” through changes to her diet.

Her philosophy for coping was simple.  She’d wake up everyday and tell herself “I want to live.”   This became her mantra:  “I want to live.”  She said this often and always, and most particularly to her doctors who got to thinking that she must have inherited the spirit of several cat colonies because she kept using up lives and coming back.

With each new diagnosis, she’d yell it louder:  “I want to live.”   And the same with each day after radiation treatments, chemo treatments, blood transfusions, midnight schleps to the hospital, or day-long waits in the ER.  “I want to live,” she’d call me and say as we worked through the choices she had to face – all the while never missing a hair appointment or her weekly manicure.  And taking care of those details, walking into her doctor’s as decked out as she could muster gave her something to twinkle about – and that made it infectious.  Her doctors took on her mantra saying, “She wants to live,” thus rallying around her and giving it their best to ensure that she’d have that chance.

When she did finally pass I felt a deep and abiding sadness, but knowing that she had pushed herself to the limit of what her body could take and then some gave me a peaceful sense that she was ready to be where she needed to be.  I also understood that her “daily something” was her effort to stay alive; to give herself the energy and pluck to fight each and every round to its fullest.

As well, I know that we all have that in us.  It’s just a matter of finding that one space that helps us work things through no matter if it’s a potter’s wheel a double-ended bag or a simple one line statement.  So whatever it is: writing a journal entry, walking a mile, learning something new or throwing nothing but lefts at a punching bag getting ready for the Golden Gloves; while your daily something won’t cure you, it sure will help to see you through.

 

Feeling the cold

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Feeling the cold
Maybe it’s the sudden onset of cold temperatures in Brooklyn (albeit still above freezing), but I don’t feel like going anywhere or doing anything, even though I’ve got a huge list of chores to take care of.  On those sorts of days, the only thing to do is to give myself permission to spend some extra minutes under the covers before putting the steel rod in my spine and lots of layers on my body as I head outside for a brisk walk.

I have to admit those first chilly intakes of breath make me want to run back inside, but after the first few minutes, I really do feel a whole lot better.

There’s a great new park only the Brooklyn waterfront just south of the Brooklyn Bridge.  The wind can be a bit bone-chilling, but there is nothing prettier especially as the city begins to wake-up on a Sunday morning.
By the time I get home from these sorts of brief walks, I’m ready to face the day, knowing that whatever else happens, I’ve already accomplished at least one thing, and believe me, that can really help oneself get through the rest of the day.

The gym is closed?!?

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The gym is closed?!?

What?!? I’m off from work and the gym is closed?!?

How often have you asked yourself *that* question on a holiday when you’re itching to get out of the house and you’re overcome by the sudden onset of your exercise “mojo”?

Funny how that always seems to happen at 8:00 AM on Thanksgiving morning or better yet, at sometime around 2:00 PM on Christmas day.  And oh the shock and surprise when you remember that the gym is closed!  You’d think that there had been a murder with all the carrying-on that happens.  The “oh man, it’s closed? But I *really* want to work out *now*!”

It reminds me of speaking with Rabbi Richard Chapin formerly of New York’s Temple Emanuel about the meaning of faith.  He talked about the religious experience as more than what one often feels are mandated appearances on High Holy days.  Rather, it is the sum total of all of those Friday night services and the attendant repetition of ritual that can give one the chance to glean meaning.  And so with boxing or running or yoga or aikido or any of the host of activities one does at a gym or dojo or on a running track.  It is not the ritual “appearance” on a holiday that give meaning to work and sweat, it’s the every day.  The daily something.  The things we repeat over and over as a mantra to the places we want to go and the person we want to become.

As an advocate for boxing, I’ll always talk about the ring as a place to take care of those sorts of longings, but really it doesn’t matter.  The point is to find those things have meaning to you and to give it a whirl in a way that makes sense and is achievable.  And no, you don’t have to go 15 rounds your first day or promise to run 12 miles or do 200 sit-ups or 10 sets each on every apparatus in the gym.  Nor do you have to suddenly remember that you haven’t been to the gym in a while (shall we say weeks or months?) and figure the best day to start is at 7:30 AM on New Year’s Day.

So enjoy your Thanksgiving Day — and if you really feed the need to move around, I’d suggest dancing the Superbad Slide (and because it’s James Brown it’ll link you back to You Tube).

Happy Birthday

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Happy Birthday

Today would have been my mother’s 75th birthday.  As one of those landmark birthdays we figured on having some sort of party to mark the event.  That was not meant to be, but in reflecting on the woulda, shoulda, coulda’s of life, the mother of my imagination would surely have been a spry warrior with an undiminished twinkle leading everyone in song at her birthday bash.  She’d also have been happier, healthier and more certain of herself at the pivotal decision points in her life when making choices that made sense counted for something.

All of us have those moments where the fork in the road leads left or right.  Sometimes we don’t choose per se, but rather stay stationary in the hopes that the wind (“fate”)  will nudge us along in one direction or another.  Generally we make the choice that feels best at the moment and it turns out to be the “right” choice.  Sometimes we don’t.   Whether those decisions impact us positively or negatively they ultimately lead us on to more choices, more decisions and so on.

Our lives are thus a series of these points on the line.  And the decisions are ones we live with for good or for ill.   Strength of character, faith and moxy carry us through the tough ones plus a lot of humor — something my mother had an abundance of.  It did not, however, stop her from smoking, a decision point that lead to lung cancer and from our point of view her death, way too soon.

Having smoked myself, I feel as if I’ve played roulette with a wheel of awful outcomes.  My hope of course is that I quit soon enough, and having had a family later in life, that the decision to quit (albeit late in “pack years”) will not mean that I’ve robbed my daughter of her mother too soon.  In my case — I had my mother for a long time; in my daughter’s case she’d still be awfully young.

As decisions go, quitting smoking was a great one; as is exercising, keeping your weight trim enough not to cause health problems and as my favorite internist espouses, playing the numbers game meaning getting annual physicals, taking the big tests at the scheduled times and doing *everything* in moderation, including in his mind exercise.

My own health scare 14 years ago is what brought me to boxing in the first place — a decision I cherish even as I struggle to keep it as a part of my daily life.  The point is to be mindful of how things go and not to be afraid of the decisions that will ultimately have deep and perhaps painful effects.

As a women in her fifties I’m mindful of mortality and time in ways I never, ever imagined.  Coupled with losing my mother this year, I’m cognizant of how one can go along and forget that life really is short.  In that vein, I shall toast my mother with my daily something, a good cry and the biggest smile I can muster to greet the day.

Happy birthday Mom, you were one in a million.