I was pretty sick as a kid. I mean, you wouldn’t know it to look at me now; even after a 100+ pound weight loss, I’m still what one might describe as “sturdy.” But a good bit of my childhood between the ages of 4 and 7 was spent in the local hospital after a head cold, bronchitis, or other relatively minor ailment settled in my lungs and turned into pneumonia. When I wasn’t hospitalized, I was pumped full of oral steroids and bronchodilators mixed with applesauce so I couldn’t taste the bitter little granules that came from the capsule I couldn’t swallow whole.
I remember spending a week in kindergarten up in Rochester at the Mayo Clinic, undergoing a battery of diagnostic tests and screenings, trying to figure out what, exactly, was wrong with me and what was going to fix it. One fear was that I had cystic fibrosis, which, for a kid in the early ‘80s, would’ve meant a considerably shortened life expectancy. As it turns out, the diagnosis was severe bronchial asthma. My pediatrician recommended to my mother that I get into swimming to help build up my lung strength and capacity.
That may just have been the best thing that ever happened to me as a kid.
Despite her own hatred of getting in the water, my mom literally threw me into the deep end and signed me up for the swim team at the local sports club. I may have resisted it at first, but by the end of my first season, I was hooked – fish in water, duck to water, that kind of thing. Until I had to choose between girls’ swimming and marching band in high school (I chose marching band), swim team was kind of my calling card. By junior high, I’d outgrown my severe asthma, and few prescription medications have ever crossed my lips since.
But my love for swimming never went away. I haven’t been competitive since 1993, but I still lap swim at the local public pool as my preferred form of exercise every summer. And I had a little fun last summer when I did a sprint triathlon, accustomed to swimming middle distances with negative splits when most of the others, admittedly way more athletic than I from cycling and running, suffered through the last 100 meters of the swim. It really isn’t limited to swimming – any water sport appeals to me, from kayaking to water skiing, to just being on a boat. When I’m in or on the water, I just always feel at home.
In the summer of COVID-19, swimming has been the one thing that’s felt normal. And in my quiet suburb, the era of social distancing unwittingly created a lap swimmer’s paradise: mandatory reservations, guaranteed one-person-to-a-lane, even the atypical installation of lane ropes, which have allowed me to drill my backstroke without crashing into the poor 75-year-old lap walker next to me.
There are also things you can’t help but learn about yourself and the world around you when it’s just you and the water.
Recently, I tried stand-up paddle boarding, and like any other water sport, I took to it immediately and found it instantly familiar and soothing. I think women are probably built for stand-up paddle boarding more than men – lower center of gravity, good balance and core strength/stability, and large muscles in the glutes, hips, and thighs that act as shock absorbers when you’re taking some chop on the water.
The concept of shock absorbers is interesting, isn’t it? In the case of a car, the shock absorber takes kinetic energy that comes from, say, hitting a Chicago pothole at 40 mph, and turns it into heat so that it releases through the hydraulic fluid instead of destroying your fine piece of German engineering. Muscles in the body act as shock absorbers, too, taking kinetic forces and converting them on impact to other forms of energy. Think of jumping down to the floor after you’ve been sitting on the kitchen counter (does anybody else do that? No? Just me?). The muscles in your feet and legs contract to absorb the force of meeting the floor before it destroys your knees. On a stand-up paddle board, keeping the muscles in your legs just the right amount of loose is critical to taking those waves – your body absorbs that energy so you can stay upright on the board. Too tight, and the muscles don’t contract enough to absorb that wake energy, and you tip over like a falling tree; too loose, and your legs buckle under the stress of the wake.
Am I seriously talking about physics again?? Honestly. WTF.
Anyway, my dad asked me how I would take wake from a passing boat while on my paddle board. I thought about it for a second, and I said, “well, you just stand still for a second, let your body to absorb the shock, and then start paddling again.” In the timeless space between metronomic strokes of my paddle, it’s occurred to me that there’s probably some kind of profound life lesson in my answer to his fairly technical and discrete question.
I think we need emotional shock absorbers to take the energy from the blows life sends our way and convert it into the energy to put one foot in front of the other. Life’s water is choppy, too. Sometimes life hands you a Chicago-sized pothole that you don’t see and hit at 40 mph. Healthy muscles make for more efficient shock absorbers when we’re jumping down from the kitchen counter; so too do healthy emotional muscles. The more our emotional shock absorbers get used, though, the more they get depleted, and they need to be repaired or replaced every now and then. When they’re worn down, our emotional shock absorbers can’t convert energy as efficiently, and we’re left feeling exhausted by the smallest of ripples on the water. With worn-down emotional shock absorbers, we aren’t capable of absorbing and converting the energy of a bigger blow – and we’ll probably fall off the board or sustain major damage to our vehicles (metaphorically speaking).
I realized after my last posts, On: Rhythm and On: Physics, that I needed to replace my shock absorbers. The era of COVID-19 just delivered too much wake, and my emotional shock absorbers were shot. It was to the point that any little ripple would send me over the edge, and I’d find myself going to pieces over stupid shit that doesn’t matter. God Forbid a big wave would come along when I was in that depleted condition – I don’t think I would’ve had the capacity to absorb a big blow and convert it into the energy to put one foot in front of the other. I would’ve fallen off my board.
Luckily for me, I found a way to recondition my emotional shock absorbers. I was able to take a break; get a change of scenery; find something to look forward to within the parameters of social distancing and contagion-avoidance. Over the last couple of months, and with some pretty hard work to strategize, rebalance, and recondition my emotional muscles, I’ve felt my internal shock absorbers strengthen, and those little ripples are just little ripples again. And the timing of my little journey into Life Lessons from Stand-Up Paddle Boarding couldn’t have been better, as it turns out, because Hubs and I are having to sustain a pretty good-sized swell right now. The details are neither important nor for public consumption at this point. But two months ago? It might have toppled my ship. Now, for the time being, we’re standing still and letting ourselves absorb the shock. After that, we’ll just start paddling again.
What is the status of your emotional shock absorbers, friends? What are the ways you can think of to repair or replace them?
Lawyer At Lunch 