Choose Your Hard

Let’s just get this fact over and done with; life is hard. For some people, it’s hard beyond any imagination, and I don’t say that lightly or flippantly. My first decade of work was spent in prisons and refugee camps as a humanitarian. I saw first-hand just how hard some people have it, and I carry stories within that aren’t appropriate to reel off in a personal blog post. Stories that deserve more respect and care than that. So I’ll just say it’s harder than many of us can imagine.

I returned to blogging last week after a few years of focusing on work. Sparked by frustration that the online world has become artificial and superficial with so few real voices online, I decided to be one person that pushed back. I’m old enough to remember the early days of fitness blogging, the unpolished posts and what a delight they were to read. Simple things like recipes and ordinary people’s stories. They were always heartwarming to read at the end a hard week. Like a water fountain stop and chat with another traveler on this path.

We had the fitness role models, of course, and it was nice to look up to those. Even the message that we could become role models for others was uplifting, if we put in the work, that is. And then, I guess, many of us did put in the work. For me, that meant becoming a yoga teacher and taught up to 6 classes a week on mission. Then I left humanitarian work and became a health coach. When I couldn’t set up professional practice with that certification (legal constraints), I became an executive coach. And when that knowledge base ran out, I became a positive psychology practitioner to better support my clients.

One thing leads to another in education. With an interest in martial arts, fitness, and sport, I went on to become a self-defence instructor, then a personal trainer and fitness instructor. I helped teach self-defence while I re-entered academia to complete a second Masters degree, this time in exercise and sport psychology (the first was violence and conflict). The plan was to stop there and teach psychologically-informed fitness but instead, life led me to teaching positive psychology and a PhD in sport and education with a focus on martial arts.

This journey has been a fascinating one, full of tests and setbacks as well as opportunities and possibilities for character development and growth. There was no plan, just curiosity and a love of learning leading the way. There were pivots when dreams didn’t work out. Moving half-way across the world as I approached 40 to begin the Masters degree, I didn’t realise a hard 8 years lay ahead. My dream to move into fitness didn’t work out. I wanted a life where I would be moving a lot – not unlike my humanitarian years spent on the road. Instead, I wound up teaching and running a company online in a semi-remote area.

What I’ve learned is that life on the other side of 40 changes. Whereas in my 20s and 30s I was able to pivot with relative ease – like when I divorced in my early 30s, or moved from mission to mission – it hasn’t been the case in my 40s. Instead, there has been a gut-wrenching realisation that life isn’t forever. Yes, I’d seen death in my 20s and 30s but there is a deeper realisation that comes with realising everyone you know and love will eventually die. You see that the road we’re all on is heading in the same direction. As a friend once joked with me, none of us are getting out of here alive!

It started with my parents. Their friends began to pop off one by one. To put this in context, my parents have a huge social network. They’ve lived overseas most of their lives and have met people all over, and maintained those connections. They also have strong childhood friendships. Now their social network is getting smaller by the year. Family members and beloved family dogs have all popped off “to the big party on the other side” as I like to call it. “We just haven’t received an invite yet, mom,” my dark humanitarian humour leaks out.

Then a childhood friend popped off last Summer. It came out of the blue and knocked me for six. We hadn’t spoken for a few years after my mid-life move and the regret hit me like a tonne of bricks. I always thought I’d go back home and see her but I moved, then Covid hit, then I was building a business, then my partner had health needs and I was too worried to leave him to travel. I haven’t stepped on a plane in 8 years now. That says it all after a lifetime of travel.

It’s probably taken a full year for me to start processing this loss. A few humanitarians my age have popped off with whom I’ve crossed paths, both to cancer and both in their 40s and far too soon. One, a psychologist, was my mindfulness coach during a tough mission. The other was a bus companion during that mission (we would all take the same bus in and out of the check points on weekends). You could say loss was closing in.

Now, as 50 approaches, I look at the fabric of my life. It is colourful with twists, knots, and a design that has evolved organically. Parts of that design flow nicely but when 40 hit, it’s like the sewing machine I was using starting to jam up. The twists and knots became deeper and denser and the needle kept firing up and down in the same spot. Another analogy that comes to mind is wading into deep waters. I grew up on the beach and remember vividly the moment my toes would leave the sand bed. Sometimes there was a sudden drop. One moment you’re on your tippy toes, head above the water. Next moment the sea bed is gone and you're plunged underwater, hoping the current doesn't sweep you out with the tide.

That’s exactly what the other side of 40 has been like, the loss of a sea bed, the jamming of a sewing machine. And now, as 50 nears, the careful unpicking of the ball of threads and the desire to swim rather than simply keep my head above the water, in tread water, with legs and arms numbing out year after year.

So, what has this fifth decade of my life taught me? (1) Life is hard – philosophers and religious / spiritual figures haven’t shied away from this reality; (2) Life can have moments of ease – and with hardship comes ease, as Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) once said; (3) Choose your hard – we do have some control here. No, we don’t ultimately have control in the end and at this point, if we haven’t done so already, we need to let go and surrender. But until then, we do have more influence over our lives than we might think.

Some of you reading this might have already worked this out, perhaps even long ago. If you have, you might find yourself nodding and knowing what lies ahead in the sixth decade of life and beyond. For me, it’s taken a while to accept these 3 realities; that life is hard, that with hardship comes ease, and that we get to choose (to some extent) our version of hard. Privilege can buffer this process and hold it at bay for a while but even that wears thin over time. The Buddha himself knew that, that suffering comes to us all, even princes like him, and the first noble truth is this; life is suffering.

One of the traps of positive psychology isn’t that it is Pollyanna-ish, as some have assumed (my personal view here is that its first wave was misunderstood; many people were too quick to apply its emerging science and the marketing giants even quicker to pump it out to the masses as quick fixes). Positive psychology is a robust field, scientifically and philosophically, and it gives me much hope and satisfaction to study, research, and practice it as a multidisciplinary field. The trap is the bypassing of its second wave in our rush to address the complexity of its third wave. We can't face this complexity until we accept the existential perspective that life is suffering.

While it was the 2nd wave humanistic thinkers that red flagged the need to heal and process negative emotions and states (“the dark side”), it was the 2nd wave existential thinkers that took it up a notch, building on spiritual and religious perspectives that accepted suffering - including death - is part of life. The Stoics also knew this. In fact, pretty much every great civilisation across time and place got this. You couldn’t hide from the fact that death would reach you, sooner or later. But in today’s world, particularly online, it seems we’re all set to live forever. And in that fallacy, we’re missing the beauty of life, that it is fleeting and that we only get to do this particular life once.

I say “we” but really, I mean myself. If you want to include yourself, you can.

As I look ahead to the last 2.5 years of my 40s, in the hope that I get to live them out, I am like many who have gone before me starting to shed the layers of what is no longer true. The jamming of my sewing machine happened because I had too much thread. I was trying to pump too much out in too short a space of time. That’s what mortality awareness can do to us – or just me. It can create a quiet panic that it can’t all be done in time. And if you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself rushing to get it all done in a day, winding up exhausted, treading water day-in day-out.

So here I am, acknowledging that the Autumn of my life has arrived, and knowing I need to let go. It has started with physical stuff, my belongings and excess weight. In my quiet panic, thinking I was losing control (or my mind), I over-bought and over-ate, stuffing myself up. God knows why, I can only assume it was a survival strategy gone awry.

There is emotional weight to let go of. Although I’ve done quite a bit there over the years, there is still the familiar pattern playing out of taking responsibility for other people’s feelings and wanting to protect them from suffering, be that failure and disappointment or genuine pain. That generates a heavy heart over time as you can’t deprive people of their hard life lessons. We all need to face and learn our lessons for ourselves. That nobody has been able to take mine away from me should be enough of a strong message to stop thinking I can take hard lessons away from others.

There is also mental weight to release – all the masses of knowledge I’ve acquired that I don’t need for this next season of my life. Prudence is needed because efficiency is needed to keep journeying through life. I simply don't have the time or energy to carry the excess weight of knowledge. How can you be sure of that, a younger voice asks me. And a new voice speaks up. Because I just know, it says. I know when I run my eyes over the hundreds of books on my shelves. I know when I’m teaching. I see and feel my human limits when it comes to application and for once, I find that to be solid ground.