Friday Tri: Thoughts on Concussions

So, last week I did something really stupid. I was showing off flipping up into a handstand to a wall, but I did it against a door, and the door opened on me. I fell backward rather hard and hit my head and back on a concrete floor. At the time, I was mostly embarrassed. It hurt, yes, but I jumped up and took a bow and everyone laughed at my antics. Someone even joked that she wanted me to do it again so she could capture it on her camera.

Then I drove home for several hours in a blizzard and by the time I got home, I was pretty sure I had a concussion. I've had one before, and it isn't exactly painful, but it feels like my brain is swollen inside my head and it pounds a bit. Worse than that is the lack of acuity that I expect of myself, leading to me not being able to do much of anything because I can't think straight. And then there was the exhaustion. So I spent most of the next five days pretty much flat in bed. When I didn't do that, I regretted it.

Also, anyone I talked to in the next several days told me pretty much to go see a doctor. So those of you who are still worried about me, I did see a doctor. A little late, and not about a concussion, but she did see me and she told me some things to watch for just in case and then said that at this stage, I was probably fine.

So, this leads me to think a bit about injuries and how they make us feel, not physically, but about ourselves and about our bodies and athletic endeavors. I know a number of people who have tried to change their lives and become more active. They went out and overdid it and then they gave up. They told themselves a story about not being athletic, and this injury was proof of that. Or sometimes I hear people telling themselves that they've reached a certain age and so can't do certain things anymore.

I'm not saying that everyone SHOULD ignore all common sense and do crazy stuff. But getting an injury isn't the end of the world. You deal with it. You try to make sure that it doesn't happen again. And then you keep going. There's not really a need to make an injury the end of everything. It doesn't mean you are bad or incapable of pushing yourself. It doesn't mean that you should quit or give up.

And the same thing is true when we get psychic hurts. If you're a writer and you get a rejection, you can feel like you should just give up. That pain is telling you that you weren't meant to be a writer, that all of this is useless and you're just going to keep hurting yourself. But that's not really what the pain is telling you. The pain is just saying, hey, not this one little thing. Maybe not this manuscript, maybe not this agent, maybe not this editor.

But the reality is that if we do not push ourselves a little bit, we go backwards. It's true in athletics and it's true in any other part of our life. We are meant to try crazy stuff. We are meant to keep thinking we're younger than we are. We're meant to hope for more than we have right now. Sometimes we get hit with hard stuff, like a concrete floor. But it doesn't mean give up. It just means not that door, not a handstand against it.

When people tell themselves the story that they can't do this or that, it is always true. It becomes true in their telling of the story. When we tell the opposite story, it often becomes true in the telling, as well. When we stop and give up, we make defeat true. I'm not saying that we should ignore common sense or that we should do dangerous things. Or maybe I am. Maybe just a little.

What is it they say, better to aim for the stars and land on the roof than to aim for the cowpie and make it? Today, I'm revising that to say, better to aim for a handstand and fall on your head than to never try to land that handstand. Better to write a book that doesn't work than to tell yourself that you aren't a good enough writer to try that book. Better to get a rejection than to keep your book safe where no one ever sees it.

And me, I'm going out to Cross-Fit today and then swimming. And of course, I'm writing.