Dealing With Fragility
A year ago I wrote something. This is a reflection of the other side.
About a year ago, I wrote a post about fragility and how we have to fight against it (1 min read).
The one-sentence summary is this:
Things are harder to build than they are to break, so we have to work hard to make sure they’re built right.
I focused most of the post on preventing something from breaking.
The thing is, things break.
So in this post, I’d like to talk about how we build things up again.
***
A few years ago, one of my best friends (Steve) and I had a great rhythm of playing squash on Saturdays in the winter.
Our typical season would start off with both of us complaining about how out of shape we were, and after a few weeks, we would still be complaining.
Eventually, our shape would kick in and our games would get very, very competitive.
One particular time, I was reaching for a ball that was diagonally behind me—think four o’clock on a clock face—and I felt a sharp and very intense pain in my lower back.
I fell over from the pain and lay there hurting.
We had always joked that this was inevitable. That one of us would eventually break and need to be carted out by the other, or in the best case scenario, it would happen to both of us simultaneously and we’d be roommates in the local hospital.
Steve came over, we did a few basic checks like wiggling my toes, and he helped me up.
We were able to do some laps around the court, and then I was able to gingerly take my shoes off, put my winter boots on, get into my car, and eventually get home.
For the next three straight days, even brushing my teeth hurt—you don’t realize how much stretching your neck does in the motion of brushing your teeth.
I had been building up to our squash season all year, doing some training to prepare—though in fairness, you can never be prepared for that kind of cardio—and then, in a single step, everything changed.
***
There’s a really unfortunate trap that we have fallen into as humans in the modern age.
The immediate gratification trap.
When an app or a website on your phone last took more than a few seconds to load, what did you actually do?
Did you wait? That would be ludicrous.
I’m guessing you either:
1. Gave up on the search/caring about the thing you were looking for;
2. Made some judgements about the brand/app/whatever you were looking for;
3. Questioned whether the wifi was working; or
4. Threw your phone across the room.
If waiting were a disease, I’d be curious to know how many people suffer from it annually.
I’d also be curious to know how much money major companies like Amazon are pouring into curing this disease each year.
***
When something that was building up over time suddenly breaks, the first dose of reality we’re hit with is simple and extremely frustrating:
Time is the most powerful force of repair, and the least in our control.
So, how do we deal with time?
I remember when I started recovering from my back injury, I would gauge my progress by how easy it was for me to roll over and get out of bed each morning.
When I was able, I would combine this with how painful a 15-minute walk around the block felt each day.
As the days turned into weeks, both of these things got easier.
Three weeks after falling down on the court in pain, I was back on it. It was slow at first, tentative for sure, and a week or two after that, it was good again.
When things break, they take time to build.
We can’t make time move faster, we can only mark its passage.
