Seriously though, this is a rough time to stick to any kind of program that requires discipline. By 5pm it's dark, at 5am it's COLD, and various holidays and visiting friends/relatives means huge social pressure to eat, preferable unhealthy and/or sweet and/or in serious quantities.
What can I say besides some corny, canned platitudes? We all do what we gotta do.
I certainly know I have no excuses; I know exactly how eating / not eating various foods will affect me. Likewise for exercise.
Yeah, my discipline slacked this weekend, too; had some awesome sushi by the ocean, killer traditional meals at the resort, grandma's home cookin' with veggies fresh from the backyard. Although I did skip most of the dinner carbs and snacked mostly on all the awesome apples and persimmons...and instead of a couple of the workout routines, I made do with carrying 15 kilos of child around as we checked out the waterfall, picked 60 kilos of apples (!), and explored the aquarium (dolphin shows rock!)
But after all that fun, I dragged my lazy ass outta bed this morning and did too many damn leg swings and smacked around ball-on-a-string and knocked out some pull-ups and kung-fu sits until the pull-up bar calluses on my hands (yes, I have them; hard lines of skin at the base of each finger, on the palm) were cracked and sore.
And then I had way, way too much awesome vegetarian Indian curry for lunch, and skipped all my snacks because it was just work-work-work, and then I did sword at night for two hours with my boy and it was awesome.
And now I have hard-boiled some eggs and sliced a bunch of fruit and ate two small carrots with spicy rayuu sauce.
Tomorrow 5am will be here in...well in about five hours actually. It will be cold, and possibly even overcast, and I have all these OTHER things to do, like dry out the stinky compost pile, boil and prep veggies, fold the laundry, put away the washed dishes, take out the trash, check a bunch of emails and update facebook and contact the Salvation Army about donating all those old clothes and asking the landlord to fix the paper screens in the guest bedroom...and then the kids are up and it's time to feed them breakfast, diaper changes, pajamas off, clothes on, teeth brushed, hair combed, shoes found, toys fought over, to school, to work, work work work...
Then again, I think I like the messiness of life. The busy-ness. The crazy big-city-livin' hustle and bustle. And I especially like taking 10 minutes to sit on the cushion and do some zazen after a gnarly workout.
I like it when my youngest son stands in the doorway starting at me as I stare at the wall. Then he silently comes in, stands right next to me for a moment, sits down on my legs, delicately balances his toy car on my knee, reaches up, and shoves his adorable little finger deep, deep into my nose.
Well, I don't really like the finger-in-the-nose part. But talk about being in the moment. He then invariably poops and I have to change his diaper, or daughter is having a crisis because her favorite blue princess t-shirt isn't clean and she can't find her princess tiara headband and is simply not in the mood for oatmeal until it's been sitting on the table for 20 minutes. At which point she declares that it is too cold to eat, completely missing the snide mockery when I respond "It was plenty warm when I made it!" and simply says to me: "Make it again, warm."
I won't belittle anyones choices in life. Just reminding me/us that it IS all choices we make. Some of the choices suck utterly, but still we get to, we GOT to, choose. "Doing nothing" is a choice, too. Often the biggest one, but also a great excuse to blame fate or God or whom/whatever.
Can choose to fight for every inch; clawing every little success no matter now ugly and hard it is. Can choose to be totally apathetic, not actively DO anything, and just let life slide by. Can choose and combination, any variation or gradation. Actively pursue that which we enjoy, are engaged in, curious about; hobbies, friends, Glee. Ignore and dismiss that which is beyond reasonable influence or scope; taxes, North Korea, Glee.
Finding that balance, that's kung-fu, methinks.
I guess this is MY kung-fu life; alternating between freestyle punch sets and microwaving oatmeal.
Yoga stretches with morning cartoons on the TV.
Working 12 hour days at my desk, then hitting the dojo to swing swords.
Sitting zazen with son's finger in my nose.
I love this post. You sound like a happy guy. (And I understand about the oatmeal -- says the woman who scraped butter off a toddler's toast only to reapply it 2 minutes later.)
ReplyDeleteFantastic post, Ren. You live a kung-fu life.
ReplyDeleteAwesome.
ReplyDeleteJust as I planned it!
ReplyDeleteLove,
Papa