Acquiesce To Ignorance

Today is Sunday and I'm off from work today. Yesterday, I resolved that today would be an off day from the gym as well. However, I had enough idle time to mull this and take stock of the fact that I was not particularly sore, so I fancied a fasting window and stuck to it. I worked out today at noon after a 17 hour fast, performing five sets of squats at five reps - 210# x3, 230#, 240#. I followed that up with weighted chin ups. Five sets at five reps. BW + 25# x 3, BW + 30#, BW + 35#.

Throughout my gym session, music blaring in my headphones, I began to consider my own efforts as well as my own fitness beliefs. If I put the past decade and a half into perspective, my perception of fitness has changed a lot. Has it had anything to do with fitness actually becoming more sophisticated? Or is it that we as humans endeavor tirelessly to overcomplicate our very existence? I pose this question when I consider Arnold Schwarzenegger's routine growing up which was the basic lifts, heavy weight, high reps, offloading weight until failure. Nothing complex. No metabolic conditioning, no intervals, no BCAAs or fasting schedule. 

I then began to consider this tendency to overcomplicate things on a much more grand scale: life itself. For every person toiling away into oblivion you have another example of someone adhering to what they believe to be true. With so many avenues to take toward what we individually consider to be "the truth", it may be easy to feel crushed under the weight of it. How in the universe can I be doing what's right when the whole concept of right is subjective? How can I know the path I'm traveling is the one true way when there are multitudes of ways - and within those multitudes, multitudes - to go about being human?

Yet I don't feel a crushing weight of any kind. There is a time when I may have really considered this acknowledgement with some severity of mind. Now, I can only laugh. Now I can only take solace in my own infinite ignorance. It took me some hard life lessons and many volumes of many books to realize I'm incredibly, irredeemably ignorant. It is to my reckoning that we all are, because as humans there are so many things we cannot fathom. Alas, on a day to day basis, there we are: going about our routines, as if it is all figured out and there's nothing else to consider. In my less aware moments, my less mindful days, I am no different. For that reason, I am unfathomably ignorant.

Unfathomably ignorant. Just as we gaze upon children in their folly and remark to one another as adults, "Ah, they don't even know any better.", I can't help but feel the same for all of us. Why wouldn't that be comforting? We live in a subjective reality that we know none percent of. 

We exist in a city in a country on a continent on a planet in a solar system in a galaxy in a universe housed within a possible multiverse with potentially no concept of what time really is and no scope whatsoever for the borders of existence. Whereas we as humans see the colors around us and can easily presume those to be every color there is to see, the truth is we're equipped with three different types of cone cells prepared to perceive incoming light in three different wavelengths: red, violet, and green. What we cannot fathom, the mantis shrimp readily can: ultraviolet light levels we can't perceive, as well as depths and hues of colors we've never experienced. At every moment we are seeing the world a particular way, but it's not the only way, and it's apparently a dialed-down way.

The point is, we simply don't know. I will never stop trying to educate myself, but if the trends I have encountered remain the same, then I will only discover just how ignorant I am with every new lesson learned. I can embrace this fact. I can covet the fact that I'm fasting, lifting heavy, eating at particular times and hell, it may not even work, and it assuredly doesn't matter. I acquiesce that I'm frenetically pinging about this planet doing irrational things for an undisclosed amount of time until my death and I can accept that it isn't going to change the eventual course of history. I can do all of this and still live with my own ignorant purpose and my own sense of novelty. 

Getting to this point was difficult at times, but now that I am here, I can live unapologetically and I can exalt the very menial aspects of my existence. I can worship scotch and tout deadlifts and never tire of looking at funny cat videos on the internet. Contrarily I can engage myself in challenging literature and experience deeper states of being accompanied by higher thoughts. It is all accessible to me and therefore I'll have a little of everything. Stuck somewhere between "everything in moderation" and "life is a buffet."

Speaking of existence: there is no reason to be alive if you don't do deadlift! Such was the conclusion of Icelandic power lifter Jon Pall Sigmarsson (RIP).

Philosophic blog entry regresses to reiterating the majesty of deadlifts, as displayed by the below graphic. Seriously, do deadlifts.

Click above pic to enlargificate.

This concludes this entry. I will now focus on turning my macbook into an arcade.

H/T to Rob Pugh and his blog content at Relaxed Focus for the deadlift infographic. If you enjoy anything I post you may enjoy his content, so check it out.

Doin' Time.

Working in Iraq means different things to different people. With each person, working in Iraq elicits a truly amorphous opinion which can vary wildly depending on so many things. For all the ink spilled about this country, I doubt few literary efforts have recently spoke of its stability. It goes without saying, then, that unstable locale makes for an unstable life - or does it?

What Iraq meant to me during the months of May and June was captivity. It's a feeling not unfamiliar to anyone who has done as I am doing. I work in captivity, in a very real way. Walls all around. No parks, no concerts, no trails, no winding roads to drive too fast down. Just beige and mauve and mocha hues abound, and within those, more beige and mauve and mocha hues. Lifeless, hot, dire. Inescapable. All of this of my own choosing! I sparred with this all greatly.

I allowed my perception of my Iraqi setting to be a headwind that knocked me down just a little bit more every day. If you're wise and you're reading this, perhaps you've already picked up on where I'm going wrong.

The truth is, I yearned for what I didn't have. I would peruse Facebook and see my friends doing things and I'd want to be there. I'd look at concert schedules at my favorite venues and want to be there. I'd gaze at the stars at night and want to be there. Anywhere but here.

The truth beneath that truth is that life is and always will be what I make of it. Certain non-negotiable factors are in place: I am in Iraq, I am alive. It is up to me to make of it what I will. So while I struggled with the idea that I was doing time in prison with this headwind of burden always knocking me down, the truth is that a headwind turns into a tailwind just as soon as you turn around and have the wind to your back.

So that is what I've done. Now this wind I resented is a wind that propels me. I am here, and I can't change that. Yet, I am HERE! I have been allotted this time, with which I can do a lot of very worthwhile things. I can read as many books as I'd like, because I have time to do these things. I don't have parks or concerts or trails or winding roads to take up my time. I can get in the best shape of my life. I can write in this blog and I can write in general - something I've always yearned to do but always found reasons why I couldn't.

I understand that to be human means to adapt quickly and to adapt quickly means there is a latent capacity to take things for granted. True, we can take anything for granted, given prolonged exposure to it. This remains true whether I am in Iraq or I am at home or I am traveling the world. 

The "grass is greener" perspective is an easy one to fall into when you're not employing some modicum of wisdom or mindfulness. The truth is, at this very moment in my life, with myriad considerations for how I want things to be in the future (I won't bore you with the extensive details), this is where I need to be. On many levels, it makes sense, and in many ways, it will present me with a foothold to change the course of the rest of my life.

There, that isn't so bad.

Tension of Opposites - On Loop

The month of July was spent traveling here and there, highlighted by engaging conversation with old friends and the intoxicating thrill of discovering the like minds of new friends. With my old friends, one topic continued to avail itself as a worthwhile talking point, and although we did not declare it as such at the time, the topic hovered in close proximity to the "tension of opposites" theory contained in the book Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom.*

The tension of opposites theory is stated thusly, within the aforementioned novel:

"Have I told you about the tension of opposites?" [Morrie] says.
The tension of opposites?
"Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.
"A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle."
Sounds like a wrestling match, I say.
"A wrestling match." He laughs. "Yes, you could describe life that way.

Someone has probably called life a beautiful struggle before - yet maybe not as poignantly as Mitch Albom did in Tuesdays With Morrie - and to this point in my own life, it's always been true. My mind is here and there but mostly it resides somewhere in between. Below are some examples of this:

Gripping with force gives way to grasping with nuanced understanding.

Resenting everything unlike yourself only to later embrace the strange.

Becoming completely at peace with a situation in which you once found yourself restless.

Days of isolation with only books and music invariably leads to memorable social outings.

Typically it isn't so apparent. There is an absolute ebb and flow to being alive. Some days are better than others. You can fret for the fact that bad times will visit you again or you can take solace in the fact that this, too, shall pass. Fully enjoy those moments of high command and momentary mastery but try to acquiesce to future events of unknowing and ignorance. 

Being human means being ineffable - capable of anything within the broad spectrum of experience. While we slowly play out this montage, we can't elude suffering indefinitely just as we can't apprehend pleasure permanently. To the best of my understanding at this point in life, the very best we can do is understand that we're locked in the beautiful struggle and employ this wisdom as frequently as possible. It is, after all, reassuring indeed to know that the bad times don't last. Likewise, acknowledging that you are in the midst of a very good moment will make it that much more valuable when you fully understand that it can't and won't last.

Alan Watts alludes to life being a game in The Book. I can't disagree, because there are inherent rules. Adhere to them or don't. I've found myself thriving when I treat life like a game and play it well. I'm not the main character nor am I ever continually a protagonist. I'm a player in the game and at any given time I may be any given thing. I'm incomplete, I'm always learning, and that won't ever stop. The moments in which I do feel complete are ephemeral, intoxicating, but finally misleading.

For now, the pendulum will continue to swing, ranging from darkness to light and back again. It will go on and on and on until it doesn't anymore. I can only resolve to appreciate the struggle for what it is, and understand it all with some semblance of grace.

* If you truly haven't read Tuesdays with Morrie, then I think you should. But then, what do I know?