Personal essays
Don’t wait until it hurts
Too late
I landed in Amsterdam and limped to Passport Control and Baggage Claim.
Man it hurt.
A year ago I finally asked my doctor about the pain in my foot. I’d thought it was plantar facietis but the pain would move to my ankle and sometimes as high as my knee.
He told me it was sciatica and recommended some stretching exercises.
For the last decade I’ve been pretty good about getting up frequently on a long plane ride to stretch and move a bit - but often it’s too late by then.
Ignoring the obvious
The week before I travel I usually have a ton of things to do.
This trip I’m presenting two workshops and a conference session. The workshops are based on books I’m writing.
All that is to say that for the last two weeks I’ve been sitting a lot with my computer in my lap.
If I had started stretching then, I would likely have had no pain at all.
Two nights ago I noticed that all of a sudden my foot hurt.
Too late.
Grrr.
You’d think I would learn.
I started to stretch but that only reduces the severity of the pain and sometimes shortens the course of it. With travel where I’d have to sit for long periods, I was only going to compound things and sure enough I landed in Amsterdam moving like a man many years older.
Don’t wait
Anyway, it was a reminder to me about not waiting until other things happen.
We have to get politically active now - before it hurts.
We have to give money to people who may not be the absolute best because it will avoid the pain that is absolutely promised by the people they run against.
There are things we can do once awful people are appointed but at best that reduces the severity of the pain they are determined to cause and possibly shorten the course of it.
In the Republican response to the State of the Union, we heard a story that was supposed to highlight the problem with Biden’s treatment of the border crisis.
The story sounded like a story of a woman who crossed the border into the US during the Biden administration.
It didn’t take long to find out that the horribly, unimaginable things that happened to the woman happened in Mexico during the Bush administration.
One side started stretching.
The other side didn’t. They doubled down. They want their people to feel the pain. They want their people hobbling around in November, and they want their people to believe their pain is Biden’s fault.
I don’t know what to do about that.
The most painful thing about my condition is getting up or down and taking the first few steps. After I’ve been walking a while I look ridiculous but I can get around.
In so many areas of my life, I don’t stretch until it hurts.
I really need to learn to change that.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 207. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe