Memorial Day Musings: The Things That Hurt

Hi Everyone,

It’s Memorial Day, the day we honor and mourn the military personnel who have died while serving in the US military. It’s important to remember those who have fallen protecting our freedoms. Bless them, and all who have served. 

Now we seem to be in a different kind of war, under a different kind of attack. From a virus. Perhaps it doesn’t fit the exact definition of Memorial Day, but it is still a battle. One that has come to the homeland, fought on our shores, like few we have engaged in before. And each person is soldier, in a sense. So, what of battles? 

Some things “hurt,” but are so good for us. Like exercise. Now I don’t mean sharp pain, that is never good, but pushing ourselves a bit so that we “feel the burn,” get an endorphin rush, or get stronger, is good. 

Strength is of course, the result of stress. But stress that helps us build up. Stress does break us down, but as long as it isn’t overwhelming (the “perfect storm”), it is the stress that cause us to build back up. Like if you are lifting some things, and your arm gets fatigued, then muscles break down, but with proper recovery, when the muscle builds back up, it builds back up stronger. It is through managed stress that we get stronger. 

If we don’t exercise, humans were made to move, we get weaker. I really saw this with my mom in her later years. She just wanted to sit on the couch, she had worked so hard her whole life, and the problem is, she got so weak eventually her heart gave out. 

So we move. For health, for life, for taking care of ourselves. 

I was riding my Peloton the other day, minding my own business, sweating like a pig, and the instructor, Robin Arzon, woven into all the cheerleading things that spin instructors say to keep us motivated and on the bike, came out with this:

“The two biggest thieves in our lives are fear and regret.

Regret for the past, and fear for the future.”

OK, wow. No regrets, no fears. That would be nice. And not very realistic. But there are lessons, and we can work on that. We can get a bit better, eh? 

***

Wearing masks hurts. But it also makes us stronger. No one likes to wear masks. I’m up to 7-8 hours a day, some days. I’m sure you have your number, and your tolerance. Maybe more, maybe less. I’m not a hero, that is just my job. 

And I’m sure you love taking it off. I do. 

I hear some tennis places don’t require masks. And then there is the free for all of the public courts. No masks. Even for doubles. And doubles where doubles isn’t allowed. 

The CDC research is beginning to show that to catch the virus, you need a certain viral load delivered into your lungs. It can build up over time, like if you are in the same enclosed space with someone for hours on end (not the case in tennis). Or it can be delivered all at once, by a sneeze, a cough, or someone breathing hard from exercise. 

But if the sick person (who might not have symptoms yet) is wearing a mask, this is very rare to happen, the mask blocks most of the viral load. And the other person, the healthy one, doesn’t get enough virus to get sick. 

So some places don’t require masks. Some of your “friends” don’t wear masks. 

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 

You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? 

Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.

A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire

Therefore by their fruits you will know them. 

For singles, and play within the same household, we don’t need to wear masks. Or when we are practicing by ourselves, like serves, or on the backboard. If there is the chance of someone getting within 6-10 feet of us during exercise (doubles) then we wear masks. Everywhere on the property, with its narrow paths and entrances, we wear masks. 

Those are the rules at Orindawoods. And that is why. 

Personally, I have my reasons, and I wear the mask. I have fears about getting COVID-19, which rob me of moments of life. That sucks, and I attempt to minimize that. 

The fear is for putting the mask on, then just live. Fear is not a way of life. It is a wakeup call. That is what the fear is for, for the warning.

And regrets: I don’t want to have regrets about giving COVID-19 to someone else because I didn’t wear that mask. No thanks. 

Momentary discomfort makes us stronger, stronger in our beliefs, stronger in our resistance to fear, and to regrets. Stronger in living what we believe. Discomfort can build faith. 

“Out of life’s school of war -- what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

 – Friedrich Nietzsche

So, does each moment of discomfort make you stronger or weaker? Depends on your reason, your beliefs, about wearing the mask. If you do it for yourself, your friends, your loved ones, then you get stronger with each muted breath. Each moment in the mask. Each empowering moment. 

If you do it because you “have to,” or “don’t want to get caught,” they you get weaker with each breath. Each frustration breaks your will. 

Life is a choice, you are the chooser.

Your beliefs determine your actions, your emotions, your results.

Do you lift the weights to get stronger? If so, then you don’t leave off the last few reps. You need to fatigue the muscles to get them to break down and rebuild stronger. 

If you are lifting the weights because your trainer says so, and if they are not there, you don’t do the last reps, you are getting weaker. Physically for sure, but also mentally, emotionally, spiritually. You’re giving in to temptation to take it easy. 

Those last few reps are for you. For what you are becoming. Cross the finish line hard, not for anyone else, but for you. This kind of stress makes you stronger. 

We work out with trainers and friends, because they help keep us accountable. Nothing wrong with that either. Stay accountable. We always are, anyway. Accountable to ourselves. 

We are either getting stronger or weaker. No one stays the same. 

Who are you kidding? 

We need to work together as a Club to get us through the pandemic safe and still be able to do the things we love, like tennis. 

Ford Maddox Ford wrote four novels about World War One called Parades End. The third one was called A Man Could Stand Up. The reference was to a soldier coming back from trench warfare, home on leave, finally able to stand up. In the trenches, you had to keep your head down. Trenches were not always that deep, and snipers on the other side would look for people’s heads above the ground and shoot them. One of the reasons trench warfare was so deadly, was that many of the wounds were head wounds because of this. You literally had to keep your head down. No doubt where the phrase came from all those years ago. (another example of what happened 100 years ago still affects us today, like the Spanish Flu, or all the wars). 

Our wounds in this battle seem to be primarily from breathing. This too can be a very deadly wound, because we need to breathe. And we don’t like to have our breathing constricted. Yet we need to keep our faces covered when we are out in public. 

The challenge is, as I wrote about last week, after months of this, we get battle fatigue, we tire of being careful and we just want to stand up; or take our mask off. When the war is over, or we are away from the front, we can stand up. Not when we are in battle. 

One of the really sad things for me in this pandemic is that I have always thought of the Club as being different from the real world. Based on Disneyland, the happiest place on earth. A place where we can relax and leave the world’s troubles behind. It has been a conscious choice on my part to create this kind of environment. 

But not this trouble. This trouble has come to Orindawoods as well. We are not immune. We are not “out of this world.” And that is sad. I wish I could change it for you, and I can’t. 

A good reminder for me, and us all, that, 

“God laughs at our plans.”

Not because we aren’t loved, but because we dare to play god. Not our pay grade. 

There is a great scene at the beginning of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov where a couple of intellectuals sit down on a park bench with a stranger and discuss philosophy. The intellectuals claim they control their own lives, their own destiny, that there is no god in 1930s communist Russia. The stranger begs to differ. The stranger asks what the leader is going to do tonight, and the intellectual tells him with absolute certainty that he is going to a meeting of the writer’s guild, of which he is the president. The stranger predicts that will not happen, and foretells of the intellectual’s death that very evening as his proof that man doesn’t not control anything. The intellectual laughs at him and leaves, to be run over by the very streetcar the stranger predicted. The other intellectual, who witnesses it all, realizes the stranger is the evil one, the devil. And tries to warn the city, which doesn’t believe in such things, completing the second prophecy, that the other intellectual will be committed to an insane asylum. 

So, if it is true, we are not in control, what can we do? Do our actions have any impact? Do we leave it all to fate? 

While we do not have ultimate control, our ways of living do have impacts. Huge impacts. And our actions are part of the results we can’t completely control. We don't know for certain what will have a positive, or negative effect. 

But more than that, our actions are what make us who we are. They are the fruit of our trees of life. Good fruit or bad fruit? 

I love the phrase, popular now concerning everyone wearing masks in crowded places:

“I take care of you, you take care of me.”

In public, we wear the mask, we social distance. For each other. For our mates. It is what club members do, what friends do, what families do.  

I always appreciated the joke,