Personal essays
Weighing the consequences of our actions
Pinched nerve
Years ago I suddenly had a lot of weakness in my right arm.
It was so bad that I couldn’t lift the arm above my head.
If I rolled over on my right side, I didn’t have the strength in that arm to lift myself into a seated position.
It didn’t hurt in any way and it looked as if I hadn’t lost any muscle.
I went to see my doctor and he knew immediately that I’d pinched a nerve and he sent me to a specialist.
The specialist looked at the imaging and confirmed the pinched nerve and suggested surgery.
He was a surgeon that’s what they do.
The surgery would involve cutting through my throat to access my spine from the front.
No thank you.
“Well,” he said, “we could try Physical Therapy.”
Yeah. Let’s do that.
Making a choice
I went to see a therapist who was amazing. She began each session with some exercises, dry needling (kind of like acupuncture but the needles go into muscles and my insurance covered), and ended with a little bit of neck traction.
At the end of my eight sessions she had a list of exercises for me to continue with and I did.
Until I felt better.
Once I could lift my arm above my head and do the ordinary things I’d done before, I stopped doing the exercises.
My arm wasn’t fully recovered. When I went to the gym I could tell that I couldn’t lift as much weight above my head with that arm as with the other - but I felt better so I stopped doing the exercises.
I’m sure if I’d asked the therapist, the doctor, or the specialist if I could stop they would have said, “You can, but it would be better if you didn’t until you completely have your strength back.”
It doesn’t matter how smart we are. Most of us hear the “you can” and ignore the “but you should” part of the advice.
Four years later I went back to the gym and there is still a marked difference between the abilities of the triceps in my two arms. It still isn’t anything that I see in every day life, but it shows up at the gym.
Consequences
There are seemingly random things that happen at the same time. Perhaps they happen separately all the time and you only notice them when they happen simultaneously.
I was at the gym struggling to get my right arm to keep up with my left while listening to Oliver Burkeman’s “Meditation for Mortals.”
I listened to the entire book but only the quotes from the chapter I listened to while struggling stuck with me.
One was Burkeman’s summary of Sheldon B. Kopp’s observation that, “You’re pretty much free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.”
Hmmm. That sounds right.
Burkeman emphasizes, “Consequences aren’t optional.”
So there are things you can do, but there will be consequences.
As an exercise, read that previous sentence repeatedly while emphasizing different words: “can”, “but”, “will”, and “consequences”. There’s a lot in that.
Is it worth it
If you’re not a football fan, you might have been surprised at how much the Philadelphia Eagles dominated the Kansas City Chiefs this weekend.
Two weeks earlier, Philadelphia had pretty much done the same thing to Washington’s team to earn their spot in the Super Bowl.
There was one sequence where Philadelphia was a few yards away from scoring. They would likely run the ball up the middle. Washington new what was coming and so they braced for that attack.
My brother-in-law turned to me and asked, “what if the Eagles just send someone over the top, avoiding all of the blockers.”
Washington was ready for that. One of their players ran at the line and jumped over the top to meet that possibility.
Unfortunately, you can’t stop yourself in midair. He mistimed his jump and Philadelphia just stood still and let the defender come over the top without moving.
Penalty on Washington.
What was the penalty? Well, there weren’t enough yards to assess the full penalty so the rule is that the ball moves half the distance to the goal line.
As far as consequences go. Not a big deal.
The two teams lined up and the Washington defender did it again.
Half the distance to the goal line.
The two teams lined up and the Washington defender did it a third time.
Half the distance to the goal line wasn’t even half a yard. One friend texted me that this is a Calculus teachers dream - a real life demonstration of Zeno’s paradox.
But this also rounded out Kopp’s point.
You are pretty much free to do what you want.
There will be consequences.
You need to accept those consequences - and sometimes they are worth it.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 255. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe