Here I am, 62 years old and a good old fashioned “no brainer” finally dropped. I felt a lot like an old mentor of mine who told me once, tongue in cheek, when he was, well, right about my age now, “I really thought I’d be a better Christian by this time.”
I was on my treadmill – that seemingly ever present AI coach guiding me along. As she (is that right? – at least it has a female voice) was guiding me into one of the target zones before me on the screen I found myself wanting to push a bit beyond its upper limit. Just a bit more. Well, maybe just a bit more still.
With that unnerving undercurrent of digital encouragement and robotic flattery that I truly was doing well and such an amazing treadmiller, the advice also came for me to ease up a bit. I was overreaching the zone and needed to pull back. I found myself resisting internally with an “I can do this” grunt and started to ignore the prompt.
Then “she” said something to the effect of, “ease up David so you’ll have ‘enough in the tank’ to face the more challenging zones that were still ahead. It continued to inform me that interval training that I was engaging in would increase my metabolism significantly and that it would stay elevated for hours past this session and well into the day ahead. Honestly, this didn’t make much sense to me.
Through this eerily digitized mentoring though, something hit me in a way I hadn’t thought about before. A question came to mind, “why do I push so hard at times?” Why don’t I simply trust that the prescribed, tried and true rhythms of life and health apply to me? That this is actually healthy and much more sustainable. Why do I feel that I need to push just a little bit harder in each interval than the norm?
I’d always thought this was a good trait. But what if I pushed past the prescribed limits because I felt like I was somehow just a bit inferior to everyone else and that to achieve what was excellent or good for others, I needed to push just a bit harder to truly “make it” and be effective.
I’m adopted.
I’ve always embraced that and learned to lean into the sense of being chosen and taken in, which pressed me into music, athletics and the social space in a way that had me well outside my introverted comfort zone and eventually even ignoring aspects of self-care. What if at times, rather than me just accepting with gratitude being taken into a loving and wonderful family, I was embracing this identity to cover my sense of being an orphan – other?
I’m short.
I would spend hour after hour practicing my vertical jump so that I could at least get my palm half way up the basketball rim. I’d never be able to fully dunk the ball but boy could I jump. What if some of that drive was not just a good work ethic and a willingness to do what it took to make the varsity team in High School, but a lack of contentment with my height?
I was a choir boy. Tenor. And yes, short.
I loved to sing classical music and the more theatrical genres of song, but that could also put me at odds with my football buds. So, I straddled both the jock and artsy coteries and eventually had them intersecting. In my senior year of high school I had succeeded in convincing some of the football team, including one of the star running backs, to join the choir. We went to Toronto that year from Calgary and actually won the national high school choir competition. What if – although that was pretty freakin’ awesome – there was also something in me that was unhealthy compelling me to do this?
Yes, yes, we all know that your strengths are also your weaknesses, but I think I’m learning something different than that. There is a level of contentment and a comforting self-awareness that I have yet to attain and I feel the Holy Spirit inviting me deeper into.
“God plays no favorites! It makes no difference who you are or where you’re from – if you want God and are ready to do what he says, the door is open.” (Acts 10:34-35)
Different than simply being a driveness that arises out of a sense of needing God’s, or others approval and favour, there can be a compulsion to achieve that simply is rooted in an unnecessary sense of impairment stemming from who you are and where you’re from that subtly convinces you that you must excel in overcoming just to catch up with everyone else.
What if the door is open already?
Step by step.