Thursday, January 22, 2009

Conversation One

Know yourself. Believe in yourself. Deny yourself. Be humble.
I'm fairly certain this came from a book on running marathons and that it is a quote from a well known Irish marathoner — although i don't remember his name.

In it's narrow sense, this is about how to run the marathon, do a triathlon, or any other endurance sport. You have to know yourself when you enter one of these races: your level of fitness, your capabilities at the time of the event, your strong/weak points, and where you stand mentally. Knowing where you stand isn't enough, though. You have to believe in yourself; you have to believe that you really are capable of performing at your best level. Even if you are in better shape than everyone else on the course, if you don't believe you can beat them, you won't. As Henry Ford has been quoted, if you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right. You 'gotta believe.

How do you get to your best level? You have to deny yourself many of the treats and luxuries that most non-athletes give themselves every day of the year. You have to watch your diet, you have to get more sleep, you have to give up a lot of your social life, you have to spend more time training and less time with friends and family, you have less time to read, watch movies, and on and on. Then on top of all this, you have to keep a sense of humility — you have to realize that you don't reach your peak in just a few months. The growth process, the maturation process, takes years; years of hard, dedicated work. Years of watching, talking to, and working with those who have already reached the peak; those who are better than you. You have to be humble and know that with hard work and time, your chance will come.

In a broader sense, however, i think this applies just as well to how to live a 'good' life. A life well lived is a life where you constantly push yourself to grow, to evolve — to transform yourself from what you currently are to something at a higher level. Some do this physically, some do it professionally, some do it spiritually, and some work on combinations of these at the same time. And, moving yourself to a higher level could mean learning to let go, learning to give up, learning to be less. A higher level doesn't always mean being bigger, better, and/or faster.

A great many people have told us that we need to know who we are. Socrates, in his famous statement, said an uninvestigated life is not worth living (i added the part about pulling the trigger later). Yeats, while being a more modern authority but certainly not the best of role models, said it just as well when he said that the only journey worth taking is the one through yourself.

One of my favorite teachers, though, was Lao Tsu, and he put it this way:

Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self needs strength.
He who knows he has enough is rich.
Perseverance is a sign of willpower.
He who stays where he is endures.
To die but not to perish is to be
eternally present.


And, finally, my favorite teacher, bar none. Mr. Zenji himself. Dōgen. He put it this way: "To learn the Buddhist Way is to learn about oneself. To learn about oneself is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to perceive oneself as all things. To realize this is to cast off the body and mind of self and others. When you have reached this stage you will be detached even from enlightenment but will practice it continually without thinking about it."

I love that paragraph. You can read it in a few seconds, but to actually put it into practice takes years. Decades. A lifetime of work. Just for this one paragraph.

Do i know who i am? I'm confident that i have a good idea, yes. Are there blind spots? Certainly, there are entire blind corridors, but i work constantly to clear those up, and when new ones appear, i work on those as well. Professionally, i'm a complete and utter failure. Outside of that i believe that i lead a life of introspection that daily leads me closer to a better understanding of who i am; always looking for my answers on the inside instead of assuming someone 'out there' is going to provide them.

Do i believe in myself? Once again, professionally, no. Unless believing you don't have what it takes to 'get ahead' qualifies — but i doubt it does. Otherwise, absolutely. I truly believe that there is nothing that i can't do, if i want to do it. I won't be the best at it, but as i used to tell people when they asked if i was a good skier, i'm better than some and not as good as others. Physically, intellectually, spiritually — i can't see any limits to what i could accomplish if i chose to apply myself to something. Yes, i do believe in myself. Absolutely. In fact, it shocks me when i meet people who don't believe in themselves and their abilities.

I don't deny myself, really, because i already live a pretty simple life. If i had to guess, i would say i learned this lifestyle when i served on submarines just after high school. We were underwater for three months, back in the States for three months, and then repeat, and repeat, year after year. During this process, you learn to live with just the necessities. You learn to keep yourself entertained with little more than your mind and a book (Unfortunately i read some pretty trashy books back then, but my mind was certainly active when i read them. There was this one about a widow, .... oh, never mind). You learn to sit and think. You learn just to sit still. And this life translated very well and very easily into one of hiking and backpacking after the service. And into life in the Peace Corps in Africa. Outside of books, i don't need much in the material realm. Leave my hiking boots, a few good books, and my mp3 player, and i wouldn't lose a lot of sleep if i lost the rest.

Am i humble? Damn right, probably the most humble person in the US! :-) Sorry, i couldn't resist. I don't know.... i try to always keep in mind that there is something to be learned from each and every person i meet. That any encounter, no matter how badly it goes, offers me the chance to grow in some way, to investigate and improve some aspect of who i am. I don't remember exactly when it was, but it was certainly twenty-five years ago, or more, when i made the decision that in any situation, if either i or someone else had to give way, i would always be the one to do it; even if i thought i was in the right, had the right of way, or had the higher ground. With few major exceptions, i have lived that life all these years. Whether that's humble or not, i'll leave others to decide.

So, where do i stand on the question of "Who is doing the searching?" I have to believe that i'm on the right trail, that looking back and looking forward, the scenery seems to indicate that i'm on the right path and should stick with it. Are there days and situations where someone could look at me and say i'm full of it, that i'm not doing any of the above? Most likely, but i think they are rare. I do have one pebble in my boot that i need to get rid of, i know that, but it doesn't cripple me, it's just a rotten nuisance — one that i know i have to work on to get rid of.

Video of the day: Quest for Life - Discovering Your Human Potential

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