Do it for the joy

When our youngest son was 4 years old, we were drawing together. He talked about how much he liked drawing and I told him I liked it too, but I didn’t do it much because I wasn’t good at it. He looked at me and said, “You don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it. You can do it anyways.” I thought that was a pretty profound statement for a preschooler. As a recovering perfectionist, it never occurred to me to do something solely for the joy of it. I always needed a goal, a reason. Everything had to be a means to an end, otherwise, what was the point?

A few days ago I picked up a new book called “Not Too Late: The Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age” by Gwendolyn (Wendy) Bounds. Wendy was a corporate executive who found herself taken aback by the answer a child gave to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” One thing led to another and in her late 40s, she found herself training for Spartan obstacle course races. She was never an athletic person, she was always picked last in gym class and never thought of herself as someone who was capable of climbing ropes or swinging from rings. But she found joy in learning how her body could be athletic in ways she never realized previously.

Reading her book (which is amazing, I highly recommend it!) reminded me of the statement my son had made years ago: that it’s ok to find joy in something even if you don’t know you’ll excel at it. It’s ok to keep trying after you fail. I spent a lot of time in my life only doing things I knew I’d be good at because failure felt foolish. The only way I knew how to avoid that was to set and reach goals, which has worked in many areas of my life. But not in fitness.

I know many runners who have no intention of ever running a race. I know people who rock climb who will never climb El Cap. I know people who paint, write, and take spectacular photos who never sell artwork, publish work, or enter contests. They do it for the joy they get out of it. In this video Matthew McConaughey is giving a graduation speech and says, “Happiness demands a certain outcome. It is result-reliant. Joy, however, is a different thing. It’s not a choice, it’s not a response to some result. It’s a constant. Joy is the feeling that we have from doing what we are passionate to do no matter the outcome.”

As I continue recovering from my hip replacement, I have enjoyed getting back to the fundamentals of fitness. Walking, squats, rows, pushups, and mobility. It has also included mindful – rather than lazy – relaxation. We often think of chilling in front of the tv as being relaxing when it’s really not. It’s not restorative. Consciously choosing to relax is a different thing. While I am excited to get back to higher levels of activity, I am unexpectedly enjoying being right where I am. Surgery has required me to put the brakes on and focus on my body in a different way, a more joyful way.

The combined experience of enjoying the recovery process, reading Wendy’s book, and that statement from my son that keeps playing in my mind has me feeling conflicted, though. My thoughts naturally go to what I want my fitness to look like in the coming years. Backpacking and hiking are my biggest movement-based passions, and I want to train to be ready for those as well as feel capable of tackling other opportunities. But I get caught up in goals and when I am focused on goals I lose the joy of what I am doing. It’s the activity that I love, not reaching the goal. Yet somehow fitness remains the one thing in my life that I struggle to give myself permission to do solely for the joy of it. 

I write because I love it, though 99% of what I write no one will ever see. I hike because I love it, even though I am often the slowest hiker on the trail because I am looking all around me and not focused on arriving at point B. But my mindset around fitness has always been to reach a goal, whether that meant increased mileage, more reps, or achieving a difficult yoga pose. I love moving my body. I love how I feel during and after a hard workout. I love falling asleep knowing I worked hard during the day. These days what I consider a “hard workout” looks considerably different than it did a year ago, but I still feel the same – like I accomplished something that mattered to me. I go to bed at night feeling whole. 

For my entire life fitness has been an interest, back to when I was a 3rd grader who would get out of bed to exercise when I couldn’t sleep. Yet I’ve often fretted over setting the “right” goals and choosing what to focus on. Over the past 40 years, I’ve wondered why I’ve never had that “I googled obstacle course races and it changed the trajectory of my life” moment like author Wendy describes in her book. I craved having a laser-focus on one activity I could develop and excel at the way I watched others do. The problem was making a choice, nothing ever stood out as “Yes, this is it!” rather I wanted to be able to do everything. Yoga, trail running, strength training, climbing ropes, carrying a canoe, biking…everything in the realm of human fitness has been of interest to me and that’s made it impossible to choose a direction which then results in feeling paralyzed by too many options. 

I’ve always loved the idea of taking the time to develop and excel at an endeavor. But nothing ever stood out to me except the fact I love doing stuff hard stuff. I need both structure and novelty which is a hard balance to strike! But maybe it’s fine that what is the most joyful to me is having the choice to do something different every day and enjoying all of it while never excelling at any of it. I might see how many times I can ruck a steep hill before wanting to die, and then not try it again for a year. I’ll spend a month learning a yoga pose only to never do it again once I finally nail it. Despite working a physically intense job, my son goes to the gym every night and has for years. I envy his discipline but I’ve never been that way. I need a lot of variety. Once I achieve a goal, I don’t want to do it anymore and want to do something new. I once spent 2 years working up to half-marathon trail runs, and once I did it, I just stopped running, like Forrest Gump of the Northwoods. I ran exactly 13.1 miles and never aimed for 14. “Just like that, my running days was over.”  It’s as if achieving the goal made the goal not matter anymore. I set goals in a lot of areas of life, but it seems my fitness doesn’t want to be constrained by goals and calendars and only wants to be expressed in whatever brings me joy and a sense of accomplishment that day. Maybe that’s ok. Joy is literally my middle name, so maybe I should listen to myself, haha! And maybe it makes sense for me, because hard workouts offer an immense sense of freedom for me. They are how I get out of my head, which often feels like a cage.

I am likely overthinking. That’s my MO most of the time. I should probably go to my PT so I can get out of my head! But I am curious, League. Are you always chasing a goal that you consistently shift further ahead like the proverbial carrot on a stick? Is it the journey or the carrot that drives you? Did you choose what to focus on, or did it choose you? I’m eager to hear your thoughts!

In wildness,
Kim