Cruise
Control
“I was
on cruise control from '85 to '95, and it was my fault. There were a
lot of self-inflicted wounds, when I was not doing any original
material. I wasn't directing. I wasn't writing. That's not who I
am.”
Sylvester
Stallone
Speaking of
self-inflicted wounds, I fell yesterday for the first time in a
couple of years. The story is always the same—I'm outside, usually
walking the dog, though yesterday, I was on my own. I had already
walked Liza, but felt that was not sufficient exercise. I didn't want
to go to the gym across town, so I went to a nearby street that is
flat and started a brisk walk, congratulating myself for being in the
out of doors for the first time in a while. The temperature the day
before—October 3rd—had been 103* and today's temperature was
already in the high 80's. I walked for about a mile, then turned
around and headed back to the car. Within a block of it, I felt tired
and over-heated, so I paid attention to the distance, rather than to
my feet. Voila! Out of nowhere, the sidewalk rose up and tripped me,
and down I went, hyper-extending my right arm and shoulder—the very
one that was already giving me trouble. I bruised my hands and knees
and likely tore some tendons in my shoulder. Boy-o-boy, I am sore and
bruised and hurting—and I have no one to blame but myself.
Some of us are simply
born to test our boundaries—to push to do more, to disrespect our
age and its limitations. And we pay the price for this stubbornness.
Unlike Sylvester Stallone, I cannot say, “That's not who I am,”
because that is exactly who I am. I wonder if you are that way, too. Do
you constantly push the envelope? Do you overdo and then wonder why
you hurt? These are self-inflicted wounds, which beg the question,
“What makes us this way?”
Stallone explains his
lapsed decade as having been “on cruise control,” meaning he was
non-productive. That is something we Americans rarely allow ourselves
to be, or see as normal. He, and we, characterize it as
non-productive if we are not on production overload all the time.
Now, I don't know about Sylvester Stallone—perhaps he was doing
something different—but for most of us with the blind,
produce-or-die mentality, we simply feel useless if we aren't
constantly turning out a product of some kind. We're shocked and
disoriented when something happens to slow us down or stop us in our
tracks. We walk around, at least I do, with our heads in one place,
and our bodies in another. We are not careful simply because we are
not conscious of our physical selves. That's when accidents happen—we
don't have to be on our phones to be distracted. We can just as
easily be in our heads.
Self-inflicted wounds
come in all forms. Sometimes, our psyche forces us to slow down and
smell the roses by giving us writer's block, or depression, or
creates a blank space within so that we can't get our bearings.
Instead of stepping on the gas, perhaps these are times to hit the
breaks and come to a full stop. Allow time and space and quiet and
rest to heal the frantic hamster wheel we've put ourselves on. Maybe
auto-pilot, or cruise control, is just exactly what we need.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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