If you read this column last week, you’ll recall the story I told of challenging my then 10 year-old son not to quit. Not to give up just because something was hard and uncomfortable. We must welcome and befriend discomfort. Enduring discomfort in service to becoming more. To learning and growing. To finding courage you didn’t know you had.
Seven years later, my son threw that same teaching right back in to my face. He cajoled me, relentlessly, to get back in the gym.
See, four years ago, I had a meniscus repair surgery. Suddenly, I couldn’t run any more. It just hurt. And, apparently, that was all I needed to just … stop. To become Captain Inertia. Larry the Lardass. To sleep, go to work, eat and watch television. The idea of “getting to an aerobic level” was a vestige of the past. I hadn’t broken a sweat or breathed hard since forever.
“So, you just gonna mail it in, Papa?” Joseph said.
As a parent, it is a holy moment when the hierarchy of authority suddenly juxtaposes. You find yourself, with your children, sitting at their feet, listening, learning, taking direction. It’s a beautiful thing.
Next thing you know, I have a gym membership. But I don’t stop there. I acquire a trainer, Travis the Terrible. A degree from the University of the Spanish Inquisition. The Don of Discomfort. Lots of intimidating tattoos, belying kind eyes and a beautiful smile.
Travis takes me by the hand and leads me to … failure. Over and over again. He doesn’t accommodate my limits, he seeks them. He insists that I find those limits, and then make the counterintuitive move of going one step farther.
How, oh how, did I allow myself to forget how much I love this! That exhaustion is ecstasy. That I’m proud to feel sore. That I’m energized and made more alive when I get down deep into my body … and push.
In any given exercise, I do a set. Then a second set, which of course is harder than the first. Then, maybe halfway through the third set, the muscle group in question says, “Nope, we’re done. We are tired. We don’t want to do anymore.”
And Travis, how shall I say, disagrees. He demands more than I want to do. So I do a few more – grunting desperate, shaking. Until the rep when …
I hit the wall. Now the muscle group says, “It’s not that we don’t want to do another one. We can’t. We literally can’t. We’re at failure.”
Here Travis the Terrible insists I keep going … with his help. With his hand on the bar, giving me just the right amount of assistance, I’m continue the motion of this this exercise right through my muscles’ inability to do so. The feeling is surreal. My muscles cry out to my brain, “What the hell is happening to us?” And my brain, off-balance and confused, explodes with endorphins. I make embarrassing whimpering sounds.
But I do it.
And it hits me: this is how love works, too.
Has it occurred to you that we came here to learn to love? That we’re not very good at it, which is why we have to learn it? That, left to our own instincts for self-preservation, we tend to inertia in love?
You might say, in a struggling marriage, “I have loved that man/woman as much as I can.” And what if there were a Love Trainer right there to say, “You’re wrong about that; you’ve got a couple more reps in there.”
And what if, when you had exhausted yourself trying to love your wayward son or daughter, you reached failure. You came to the limits of your ability to love. What if there was someone or some force in the universe that said, “I will help you. You will continue through the motions of love, past the limits of your ability to love.”
You will do what you did not know you could do. What you certainly could not do alone.
And then you find yourself in another dimension, where love is no longer a feeling, particularly, but an ontic force. Stronger and more powerful than a mere mood or emotion.
Marriages, sooner or later, require this kind of love. Raising children often requires this kind of love. Friendships sometimes require it. Loving your enemies certainly requires it.
Your Love Trainer might be the good friend who talks you out of revenge into a path of peace. It might be the wise elder who provides that crucial perspective saying, in so many words, “Of course it’s hard. It’s marriage!” It might be the right author at the right time encouraging you, telling you not to give up.
It might be the grace of God, ruthlessly insisting that yes, you can love more. Yes, with My help, you can push past failure.
And love even more.
(You may drop a note to Steven Kalas at skalas@marinscope.com. Steven Kalas is a therapist, author and Episcopal priest who writes a regular column for this newspaper. He is the author of the book “Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing.”)
