Lessons forgotten and wisdom long-gone

In the summer of 2009, while climbing Africa’s highest mountain, I learned a valuable life lesson: Don’t think about trying to reach the summit ahead. Just think about putting that left foot, in this moment, in front of your right foot. “Can you do that?” I’d ask myself. “Yes. I can,” I’d reply. “Then just do that for now,” I’d say. That’s how I eventually got myself to the summit, 5,895 metres above sea level (with A LOT of encouragement from the very kind people in our group).

Somewhere along the line, I seem to have forgotten that valuable lesson of being in the moment and not worrying about what lies far ahead.

My 30s were a really difficult time in my life, with lots of personal and career turmoil. I became determined to change things and, as what I thought was the ultimate result, I became a wise woman sometime in my 40s. I thought I had figured things out. I knew what needed to be done to get myself out of a bad place and into a good one. I had learned so many valuable lessons. I could even pass those lessons onto others.

Where that all went by the time I reached the end of my 40s I have absolutely no idea. I seem to have regressed an infinite amount of regression. I’m back to living in turmoil, not really because my personal or career lives have any issues in them. They are both very stable at the moment. But in my head, a tornado is happening. A huge, earth-shattering, ear-splitting tornado.

Odd questions of identity

I have always thought that I don’t have any real identity issues. Now I’m thinking otherwise.

I don’t like being placed into boxes of identity. Or so I thought until yesterday, when things I said in my session with my therapist—who I’m seeing to find ways to deal with anxiety— made me wonder.

I was telling her how I’ve been struggling with myself this year to calm down rising anxieties that I need to get everything done in a day: my work, my sport, and my house-related errands. These anxieties are not why I decided to see a therapist. I have much more complicated things happening in my life. But I’ve found it surprising how these seemingly unimportant things, things I know I can put off if I need or want to, are making me feel anxious. I know that the world won’t end if I don’t do that run today. So why is there something inside of me telling me that it absolutely will end?

My therapist said something about how I might be using my activities, such as work or sport, to displace my real feelings about other things happening in life.

What she said made me look back at various phases in my life. 

Sport and my mental health

I have suffered from anxiety for years. It’s the kind of anxiety that I can usually keep at

Feeling happy and relaxed after a day out on the bike.

bay. Most people won’t realize I have it because I hide it relatively well. Instead of thinking: Oh, she’s anxious; people probably just think: Huh. She’s a bit of an odd one.

Sport has played a huge role in helping me manage my anxiety. No matter how bad I’m feeling, if I can just get myself out that door and go on a run, for example, I know that my anxiety or stress will almost immediately dissipate.

I have found that the rhythm of sport—of running, of cycling, of hiking, of swimming—puts my mind almost magically at ease. Sport and my daily prayers are my form of meditation. They are how I cut myself off from the daily grind and tear myself away from one screen or the other, if even for a few minutes, to clear my head and start anew.

There’s a “but” coming up.

But, recently, as I’ve felt myself less and less able to manage my stress and anxiety as successfully as I have at times in the past, I’ve been reviewing my lifestyle choices to try to find ways to improve things.

Politics and Religion: Be Gone With You

I write today while in a serious state of stress. This particular stressful state stems from a gradually increasing anger and frustration with the goings-on in Egypt, the

I'm telling you. It's driving me crazy!

Arab/Islamic regions, and the world in general that have anything to do with religion and/or politics. And too frequently the two have been mixing to give me a double dose of stress.

I’ve reached my saturation level. I cannot take it anymore.