Weekly Plunder: Week 22 - Snow and Ice

A winter storm hit Saint Louis this week. What started as a light rain on Tuesday soon froze the ground with a sheet of ice as the temperature dropped. Then several inches of snow and sleet piled over this icy blanket over Wednesday and Thursday.

After doing my standard rehab exercises for my right foot, I went for an outdoor run on Wednesday through the snowy downtown landscape. The foot kept stable and I found that the snow actually provided a soft layer of cushioning. Contrary to what most might think, I believe outdoor exercise is the best possible remedy for my foot. Allowing the foot’s muscles to adapt to the angles, crevices, and curvatures of nature will give it more stability, not less, provided I’m reasonable with what I put the foot through.

I largely downplayed the injury to most people, but it was severe. It was several weeks before I could move all of the foot’s toes and several months before I could bend the foot for a “squat” type pattern of movement. My podiatrist and physical therapist told me this is because the muscle damage and inflammation interfered with the bone’s natural movement pattern.

I’m doing squats now. I’m also jumping. I have minor aches, but the aches, like so many material things, are fading with time.

Most people I encounter do not prefer to exercise outside, especially not in a winter storm. Many don’t go outside at all.

In fact, adapting yourself to uncomfortable conditions is good for both the body and the mind.

Note the ana, a group of Japanese female deep sea divers. They spend up to four hours a day at sea and often plunge into freezing water that would be intolerable to a Westerner (and possibly give a Westerner hypothermia). They complete up to 150 dives each day.

“We found that Japanese pearl divers have significantly less arterial stiffening,” says Hirumi Tanaka, director of UT’s Cardiovascular Aging Research Laboratory. This means they have less risk of health issues including hypertension, stroke, and kidney disease.

The average age of the ana is now a whopping 65. 65! Compared to westerners, what I’ve read is that diseases and cancers are much less prevalent in this group of divers. How many 65-year-old Americans do you know that can dive at all?

Numerous studies show that exercising outside improves brain function and mental health (and conversely, staying inside exacerbates mental health). It makes sense. Not only does fresh air and sunshine give a natural sense of peace and quietude, but the added challenge of navigating terrain gives the brain something further to focus on (and constant focus is required). In a gym, there is nothing but screens and machines. The mind can revert to “autopilot” mode. Trail running, in contrast, gives the brain a new stimulus to consider and calculate with every step and every turn.

There is good reason why most people in gyms need headphones—their routines are dull and predictable. Nothing is learned or gained but the linear movement patterns that metal objects and their pulley systems provide. The gym is often (not always, but often) a dull and diluted mimicry of what our ancestors once did naturally.

Nature, in contrast, is a constant zigzag. I prefer the zigzag, even on park rides that make me vomit.

What I’m watching: All of Us are Dead on Netflix. A zombie show with some fun twists and turns. What is it about zombies that fascinates us enough to keep them embedded in popular culture for generations? There is a certain horror in the possibility of living without a mind, in being powerless to a simple bite or an airborne pathogen, and in being stripped of the soul so that only an animal remains.

What I’m reading: The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. This book celebrates the slow life and enforces its principles with Christian philosophy, which is often profound and underrated in the posh modern world of TikTok, SnapShit, and trend-seeking urban yogis.

What I’m listening to: “Call Me Little Sunshine” by Ghost. I really can’t get enough of this band and I’m seeing them live in two weeks.

What I’m doing: I bought a flip phone, a Punkt MP02. I specifically bought this because it has an installable version of Signal (Pigeon), an encrypted messaging app that I’m more comfortable using than the other messaging apps out there. I still have a smartphone for some tools. They do have their uses.

And, I’m running in the snow.

Too Many Gurus, Not Enough Students

“I adhere to a guru-free philosophy, I don’t claim to have all the answers.” - Chris Guillebeau

Social media is inundated with gurus. Beneath the facade of most wisdom-givers is a product to sell, or a subscription, or a “like” button. If you do not pay the gurus with money, which you usually do, you pay them with your time. Interspersed with the time you spend reading or listening to them are advertisements that remind you of the core of the guru’s wisdom. Your current life is lacking, and this product is the key to improvement.

“Time is money,” Benjamin Franklin claimed. I do not wholly agree because I see time as a more valuable commodity than money. Franklin measured time as a cost in dollars per hour when in fact one cannot put such a number on something so intangible. Money can only satisfy the flesh, whereas time can satisfy the soul. We have too precious little time to spend and our sense of time accelerates as we age. Giving our time to fake gurus, or to anyone in a wasteful manner, is a higher cost, in my opinion, than adding credit card debt to our bank accounts. Time has been sold to them, and if the guru succeeds, credit card debt will accumulate anyways. Adding credit card debt, by the way, can be very damaging to the human spirit.

It seems like these days it is the gurus themselves that are often the commodities. Companies buy them in exchange for the act of flaunting their products on YouTube or Instagram or whereever the hell they taut their grandeur. Gurus are often nothing more than vessels for selling things to people. They are interchangeable in the eyes of a corporation. They are bodies for t-shirts, mouths for online programs. They are essentially McDonald’s stores, and we, the readers and viewers, are often sitting in the drive-through lines, “engaged” with social media, for something that earns someone else profit.

It is a fine line when blogging between giving advice and sharing things I’ve learned. Sometimes I have to catch myself and backtrack. The last thing I want to be is a guru, and the last thing I want as a measurement of a writer’s success is an engagement metric. To me it’s more about finding things that go well or wrong in your life and thinking, “If this is resonating with me, maybe it will with someone else too,” and then putting those thoughts to words.

Life is about connection, not subscription.

Shop ‘Til You Drop

“By parading a stream of other people’s lives in front of us, screens remove the responsibility to create our own lives. This makes us radically powerless, and powerlessness leads to anxiety. And Anxiety leads to shopping. Shopping leads to debt. Debt leads to more anxiety. The cycle ends with death.” - Tom Hodgkinson

I attempted a return to Instagram recently. I know intrinsically that Instagram is mostly toxic, but I intellectualized a justification to return. I want to connect, I told myself. I want to show people what I’m doing! If I ride down the world’s tallest waterfall but no one is there to see it, did it really happen? Besides, I thought, Instagram can be a potential aid to my blog readership!

And as the bright, dopamine-inducing flashing colors that embroider new Instagram stories and notifications rushed over me, I felt some sense of elation. It felt like belonging. I was genuinely sharing with a community.

The first few days upon creating an IG account, I was able to log out of Instagram pretty easily. This doesn’t seem so toxic, I thought. Besides, people want to see what I’m up to!

But as days went by I found my thoughts increasingly turning to Instagram. The updates to my newsfeed were constant, and this platform seemed to lead down a rabbit hole of possibilities. I can peak into the lives of famous people, catch glimpses of new company products, and show the world my latest jacket. Isn’t that great? I have a lens into anyone and everyone I want to see.

But are we meant to see anyone and everyone? Does it remove us too much from where we are today?

Before I knew it, Instagram was invading far too much of my time. And my thoughts were no longer on writing, or cycling, or traveling. They were on Instagram.

So what if Instagram aids in blog viewership? I write this blog for myself. And so what if no one can witness me ride down the world’s tallest waterfall, or swim with great white sharks (I have done neither of these by the way). If I saw and felt the experiences, and I still have two hands and a page to type or write on, I can try to put my recollections to words. If my camera captured anything, all the better.

It’s more meaningful when you write on your own platform.

I feel better having deleted Instagram again. I don’t envy young people who are given such apps and “tools” at a young age. If someone gives a 12 year old cocaine but slaps a warning on the bag that states, “Don’t take too much because it’s actually kinda harmful,” I’m not sure if the 12 year old is going to remain sober for most of his or her waking hours.

These days my main goal is to escape compulsive consumption. Yet there are few tools more effective than Instagram at making us want more. Better clothes, bigger homes, fancier furniture, better vacations. We’re introduced to millions of people seemingly living better lives than us, and we spend increasingly amounts of time living vicariously through their fake world.

But the real world is here and now, in the silence of the present, in the clothes we have on today, on the couch that currently rests in our living room. And if we are ok with this silence, if we are healthy, if we are not suffering… how do we tell ourselves that it’s enough?

Edit: I’m back on Instagram.