Noise & Tendency

First, a bit of context –

I think I have mentioned, I rarely post when I am defending into struggle or at its depths. My evolution has been to “move the needle” a bit “backward”.

In the depths of my struggle with cancer, I was forced to listen to my body. When your journey tangles with your own existence, it becomes a requirement. Either one embraces (including a form of submission to complete vulnerability) or one perishes. At least, it felt such to me. My evolution has been to incorporate this “listening” to my body as part of my healthy routine. Mind you, I tend to not go half way with things (think a pendulum swinging wildly to the extreme opposite) and I am so grateful that I have JDT and a specific friend (hi Mike) to call bullshit on me.

Randy (JDT’s youngest cousin) and wife Allison (R&A) visited and stayed with us for a couple of days earlier this week. I LOVE THEM. We do not spend enough time with them. I truly appreciate their perspective on things and the way it challenges my perspective. I hope this is ok (I am after all a “beg for forgiveness” guy). In a specific way, I am Randy’s ying to his yang. Randy is quite noise sensitive. This typically makes cities, or highly urban areas, highly challenging for him. AND both of his wonderful daughters live in NYC. I can only imagine the struggle this created internally for Randy. Yet . . . R&A are great as parents, you can tell by the young women their daughters have become.

I love noise. It gives me energy. My first real remembrance of this was when Joyce and I were on our honeymoon in Paris. We slept with the window wide open and the 24/7 nature of the street noise was soothing for me. While the evidence of this has been around me all along, it is just recently I’ve connected the dots.

The last context? Well, I struggle with breaking tendencies. I love sports and how they are a metaphor for life AND how life and sports inter-connect to teach me so much. You know I am, at my core, a Raider and A’s fan. This emanates from the early to mid 70s. At that time both were almost always favorites in every game they played. As such, it was mostly about creating an environment where those tendencies would prevail. Not complicated. The fun was watching the struggle. Later, the A’s were rarely the favorite. AND in that case, the desire is to create an environment to disrupt those tendencies. This is really what Money Ball was all about. I am a tendency machine! Prop me up in the corner and I am incredibly reliable to exhibit specific tendencies.

Lately, oh I don’t know, a week, a month, maybe a few years? I’ve had this lack of “ease”. Jim Kelley always called it “the ease band”. I’m still not 100% certain I know exactly what this means. Perhaps it correlates with harmony? Perhaps . . .

Listening to my body. It was telling me to get up and move. My tendency was 100% opposite. Struggle. Here is my morning – wake up (hopefully there is at least a 5 in the hour), make myself coffee, get caught up on my sporting interests through the BR app, drink my Citricell (this is an insert encouraged by the same Mike as above, and you are correct Mike, it has helped tremendously), prep my water for the day (hydration has become fundamental for me) and finally log onto this device. All without moving more than 50 feet . . total. Listening to my body! Finally this morning, I got up and moved. I headed (mostly aimlessly) out on a stroll. 7:00 AM. NOLA is mostly asleep at that hour. And my tendency was to go left, so I went right. My tendency was travel familiar streets, I veered to the unknown. I departed at 7:05 and returned at 7:25.

AND MY BODY SMILED!