Pushups, Apologies & Poetry

Form Matters

How you do a pushup matters. Just doing them, even lots of them, is NOT enough. This is fairly obvious, and yet I discovered this week I’ve been doing them wrong for quite some time.

I discovered this, because despite ample stretching and occasional massages, I can never seem to ease the tension in my neck, shoulders and upper back.

So I asked one of the gym instructors for advice.

He watched me do a push-up, and said, “No amount of stretching will help because you keep re-stressing the muscles by pushing up with your shoulders instead of your chest.”

He showed me how to do one properly.

It felt radically different.

Odd, but better. Awkward, yet correct.

Somewhere along the line of my nearly three-decade workout life, I began using my stronger muscles to compensate for my weaker ones.

But, muscling through pain is NOT the point.

Using the wrong muscle for a particular exercise is not tough or resilient. It’s hurtful.

Without awareness, it’s simply an unfortunate mistake. But once you know how to do it correctly, to do it improperly is lazy. And stupid.

Life works in metaphor.

Herein lies my point.

The pushup epiphany was helpful but what it really made me think is perhaps I have ben using the altogether wrong “muscle” to tackle the overwhelming feeling that something needs to change.

My cognitive, organizational mind is sumo-wrestler strong.

My heart too, but lately it has felt somewhat weaker. Not in terms of my capacity to love but more so in my ability to tolerate personal failure.

My failures have been of the worst possible kind.

Failure to know what we will fulfill me, to know what my spirit needs to feel rested, spacious– at peace. I keep attempting new directions but they fall short.

My intuition has been dead nuts wrong lately. And it makes me distrust myself.

Yikes, so where the heck-fire do you go from there?

Excellent question. I’m not sure yet.

BUT, I DO know as I was trying (and not totally succeeding) to do my push-ups correctly this morning, a small but powerful idea came to me.

Form matters.

Form in everything.

The form with which you accept someone else’s genuine apology, matters. I have been a reluctant apology accepter.

This is bad form and I will apologize, because it feels stingy to only sort of let someone off the hook when they have owned up to a wrongdoing.

And why matters.

Why matters because otherwise you repeat the same defeating behavior over and over again.

Why have I been doing push-ups wrong?

Because I want to get through them. I want them to be over. I want to be done working out. They play the music at triple time and I can’t do them that fast. Because I am tired.

Why does knowing this matter?

Because my master plan is not to “get through” life. It’s to experience it. So maybe I need to focus less on keeping up and more on keeping true.

Why have I been a disgruntled, half-ass apology-accepter? Because I am frustrated, troubled and unable to see where I am going.

Why does knowing this matter?

Because now I can try and react more kindly toward my own frustration, and in so doing act more generously toward those I love. I will take responsibility for my disappointment rather than offload it.

There’s a saying in writing that form follows content. I’m sure the same holds true for visual art and music– any art form.

What you want to say informs the shape and form you say it in.

Take poetry. Want to take an idea and meander through your mind and imagination? Write lyrical free verse.

Want to passionately argue a point in metaphor? Write a sonnet.

What about if you want to explore that inexplicably foggy, stagnant feeling that something essential in your life is missing or wrong or simply off?

I am coming to believe emotional content works the same way.

But how do you find form for fog?

Typically I tackle emotional challenges head-on.

The thinking goes something like this: This will not get the better of me! (though right now it is) This will not get me down! (though right now it is) This will all be resolved if I just figure out the right questions to ask!

Usually this philosophy works.

Usually the answers or at least redirection emanate from my active, focused attention. Not this time. I have been tackling this off-ness for many weeks and have made no forward progress, which results in a low-grade despair.

But last night the fog lifted.

Joe and I talked and talked and talked until we were completely exhausted and defeated again as to what form this new chapter in our lives should take.

Then we went to a poetry reading of our dear friend and master poet, Baron Wormser. The first shift in our energy happened simply by leaving the house to engage in something completely unrelated to our situation.

It was a relief to just be out with each other.

We sat in the front row and listened, with love and a kind of wide openness we’d not had in a while.

Toward the end he read several lines from his poem,”An Island Romance (Maine)”, about a couple very much in love who moved to an island off the coast of Maine and lived out there days, in love.

These were the opening lines:

“Imagine everything being in place.

I don’t mean only the pins in the drawers

Though I mean that too but I mean

Your feelings– not squashed or pruned–

But right in place and everything around

You in place too. That’s what

An island is, that kind of chance.”

My eyes filled instantly with pools of recognition. That fourth line and then the last. It was like seeing a room inside myself I knew was there but somehow could not access.

He said in one phrase exactly what I had been unable to articulate.

I thought we needed a change. Move houses? Change career directions? We had been brainstorming nonstop in search of answers. With none of those forthcoming we’d switched over to try and figure out what exactly the question was.

Barons’ poem didn’t provide the answer. Nor even a possible question.

It clarified the heart of the matter.

I did not want my feelings squashed or pruned. And I did want to take that kind of a chance. Whatever that meant.

We have become so problem-solution in our lives that there is little room for quieter rumblings of the heart and soul.

The form of our offness was foggy because it could not be relocated, repurposed, rejiggered, reorganized or resolved.

It had to be felt.