Fighting Fevers, Winning Medals and Getting Choked to Sleep. (Part Two)

This is part two of a series I started a few weeks back which took Immanuel Kant’s “perception is reality” and likened it to what is going on during the writing process.

You can reread part one here.

For a Philosophy as Modified by Hamish Kavanagh To Align With The Point He’s Trying To Make 101 refresher on what that quote is referring to: consider the gap between objective reality and the version our mind and senses feed us depending on the context. i.e. the world you see during the moments before an important job interview is coloured in a different—likely narrower—manner to the one you’ll see three weeks later sitting in the very same office, cracking a beer at the end of your first work week in that brand new role.

In both cases, the brick and mortar of the world you’re seeing is identical—office chairs, modular carpet panels— but the mind that interacts with the first example is shot through a very different lens than the second. The first version may as well be in black and white, there is a violin playing short, rapid notes and every pause in your interviewer’s questions are stretched well beyond the actual seconds contained within them. Whereas in the second example, the whole room’s opened up, there’s likely ukulele going on, your word choice doesn’t feel like it might send you off a cliff if you’re not careful. Granted you’re still within the bounds of your corporate setting, but the milieu may as well be an entirely different genre of movie.

I’m not breaking any philosophical ground with this idea, but in this series I’m suggested that the choices an author makes on how to best render this world in word form is a reflection of this translation process already taking part in our minds.

While I’m not disputing that the world contains concrete elements that we can all agree are features of our shared landscape. To attempt to write something 100% objective is to write flat drawl of the kind you’ll find in instruction manuals and the worst kind of text book. Even when dealing in cold fact, this writing can’t help but remain bound by the presence of a filter whether its aware of that filter or not.

The frame can’t be escaped so you may as well punch it up with a bit of style.

In the first article of this two part series I demonstrated these varied states of perception by tracking the lead up to my recent Jiu Jitsu competition where I caught the flu a few weeks out from competition day. I’ll pick it up after I’d recovered and was weighing up whether I still wanted to compete with only two weeks left till the competition.

Ticking Timeline:

While a throaty cough stuck around to remind me of my flu’s long tail. I tentatively returned to training. My goals were on the same competition though tempered now. Don’t dive back in too quickly and risk getting even sicker. (Last year I did exactly this and ended up catching shingles!)

As far as my training was concerned, I was two weeks poorer and my fitness had taken a hard shin to the stomach. Though on the plus side I’d eaten mostly soup and smoothies during those two weeks so my concerns about being able to weigh in at the 77kg limit for my division were less than they might have been.

I’d love to say I was hungry to get back in. But the truth is, outside of the physical impact those two weeks of illness had, my bedbound state meant I went through a secondary challenge of two weeks without socialising properly.

The mind alone is a scary prospect. A mind weakened by illness is scarier.

I hadn’t paid the entry fee for the competition yet so nothing was stopping me from backing out if I wanted to. I had “good” reason. I’d be “justified” in backing out. It was a terrible flu, an unfortunate thing “outside of my control.” Dangerous.

Training Again

First training session back I arrived with a pocket full of qualifiers. I’ll just test the waters. I won’t push too hard. “Sensible.”

The first session went as planned. A lunchtime class, mainly white and blue belt business men. One I could cruise through. The lungs were a bit shaky but the body held up.

Session two. Sergio one of the coaches, a brown belt from Moldova, mentioned he couldn’t find my name among the bracket of the upcoming competition.

“Haven’t signed up yet,” I said. Face red.

No one likes an excuse maker so I didn’t mention I’d had the flu to him. Didn’t see any cause to.

Maybe there was a convo in between, maybe not. But next session, Juniao, the head coach started telling the rest of the class about my upcoming competition, how I hadn’t been training much, how I had to catch up, how everyone needed to give me hard sparring rounds to get ready.

Now, this is another juncture where you could choose to see peer pressure, you could choose to see “toxic masculinity” or you could choose to see the positive intent behind this sudden spotlight on my absence.

Pressure sure.

Awkward yes, and suddenly it was a lot harder to bring up the flu excuse.

Above all it allowed a clear moment to decide, are you going to do this or not?

All those qualifiers I’d come equipped with had seemed much more credible under the shade of my bedroom. If I feel up to it I might compete. If my body is telling me no, I won’t. All tied to that elusive “objective” reality we’ve talked so much about.

Under gym lights, I suddenly noticed all the cowardly demons that I’d fed during my time off who’d snuck in to wear down on my will. Without me knowing it, they’d placed a black fingernail on the scales and convinced the better part of my mind that, “no, I can’t do it. It’s unfortunate I got sick, but what can I do about it?"

Juniao’s holding me to my word pulled the veil off all that bullshit.

That training session was hard. But I was suddenly fired up. The moment turned a cowering mental and physical posture into one on offence. I had two weeks till the competition date. My body was a bit behind the mark, but largely fine. The first week would likely be a case of getting back to baseline. The second would be about getting the mind competition ready.

Before I move on I want to ground this in the point. Do you see it?

The mind is fucking wonderful at making a case for what is objective truth.

The stacked excuses. The justifications.

If you let them pile up, they can legitimately turn your psychosomatic symptoms into real ones.¹ Sometimes an external voice is required to snap you back to the here and now and realise what you’re seeing is not the real world.

Even in that weakened state of sickness, should a psychopathic dictator kick down your door and demand you fight in that Jiu Jitsu competition or be fed to wolves. By god you would be tying your belt faster than a cheating man who’s heard a car pull into the driveway!

So its usually not a physical thing. It’s all in the mind.

Okay lets move on from psuedo-spiritual new age bullshit and get back to the here and now.

Entering

It wasn’t until after I told everyone that I was committing to compete that I actually looked at the entry fees. $115 USD. Ouch. Then…a $25 USD “membership fee,” on top to follow the competition tour if I wanted to (I didn’t want to, but had no choice but to pay that fee all the same).

At the best of times such a high cost for the “honour to compete” would sting. But when you’ve been moving other people’s houses and walking dogs every day just to keep the lights on. It hits a little bit harder.

Again, there’s another “sensible” equation here. If I was considering buying a fancy new coat, there would be no calculation to make. No you can’t afford it. Don’t spend that money.

But in this case, there’s a big picture consideration to make. It’s a challenge, a mental hurdle, a memory to be made and one where you’ve got other people’s time invested. Not to mention the verbal commitment I’d already made inside the gym.

Besides what was my remaining month in the gym going to look like if I didn’t have this comp to prepare for? Just training for training sake? That’s fine for periods, sure. But there are other times where it’s very clear what you “should” do. When you know, you know.

In two year’s time I won’t remember the piano I had to lift down a flight of stairs, but I probably will draw on the experience gained by wading through competition pressure.

Simple then. Sure, I was about to pay an outsized entry fee, but the residual benefits were also outsized. So I ate the fee and put my name in the bracket.

If observed by a camera over my shoulder however, all the above would have looked something like this. A person who is sick in bed, getting better, going to the gym, sluggish at first, but less so later, maybe being a little slow to click pay now on the sign up. But paying all the same.

To render it that way wouldn’t be nonfactual, but it also wouldn’t be accurate. Perception is reality.

To be continued….

(sorry I didn’t intend to make this into a three part series, but these articles keep running long, so better to break them up).

1. There are studies to outline how 80% of back pain is in the sufferers mind, yet they feel it as a physical injury.