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Many of you were out on the streets with your signs and chants last weekend. Others were there in spirit, like me, cheering on the protesters from afar. I’ve talked to you, seen your photographs. It must have felt so good to DO SOMETHING, to be with like-minded people who also refuse to acquiesce or to be gaslit into thinking it’s not as bad as you know it to be.
Transformation happens in community. I say this all the time when I’m facilitating group-coaching sessions. Now is the time to band together, to find comfort, strength and power in the collective. We need to be there for each other. It can be tremendously nourishing and invigorating to be part of a community of solidarity.
It can also be exhausting.
When I still worked as an academic, I became caught up in the fight against bullying and corruption in academia. It was not a fight I was looking for, but it was a fight that found me. And of all the things I learned from those months of working with others to try to right intractable wrongs, one that surprised me is how different people have different responses to doing the work of collective organisation and struggle.
For some, the work is fuel. Outrage, righteous anger, action taken with others – this is what keeps them going all day and gets them out of bed the next morning. Every time they have a meeting, plan a strategy, make a poster, speak up, speak out, it fills their tank. Knowing they are on the side of justice gives them energy. Feeling connected to others on that same side is a source of deep satisfaction and joy.
For others, it is poison. The very same things that nourish and enliven others can, in large doses, make them sick inside. The keenly-felt sense of injustice; the rage at cronyism, racism, cruelty, greed, lies; the full-body shock of running into the Orwellian walls of kangaroo courts – for them, these are tapeworms, not espresso shots. Feeling connected to others on the side of justice can make them feel like there is no breathing room to be found, anywhere.
I think, right now, it is helpful to develop an understanding of what kind of person you are at this time in your life and this moment in history. This is probably something best figured out through experimentation. Do you thrive on the shared experience of vocal, collective resistance? Do you prefer to protest quietly, without fanfare, by simply and powerfully refusing to abandon your values and principles as you go about your day-to-day life? Is it a combination of both?
What each of us needs to do is not the same. Fascism is real, it is happening, and it demands a considered response from each of us. A considered response does not mean an identical response. There is more than one right way to resist.
However you choose to engage, I encourage you to give equal thought to how you will disengage. In sports psychology, this is called training recovery. Athletes train stress and train recovery. As Jim Loehr explains in the book that was my bible when I was a competitive rower, “Stress is anything that causes energy to be expended; it occurs physically, mentally, and emotionally. Recovery is anything that causes energy to be recaptured; it occurs physically, mentally, and emotionally.”
We know what training stress looks like. It’s the video montage of suicide sprints and pushups and beads of sweat glistening in dawn light. It’s every sports movie you’ve ever seen. It’s pushing past limits. It’s seriously great arms.
Training recovery does not get as much air time. A montage of naps and protein shakes is not compelling viewing, but that’s not all there is to recovery. Recovery, Loehr tells us, is a combination of five things: sleep/naps; diet; active and passive rest; seizing recovery opportunities; and emotional catharsis. It is as essential to athletic performance as stress. Recovery is training.
First, get enough sleep. Second, eat well. So far, so predictable. But let’s give the other three a closer look.
Third is rest. Rest is movement or non-movement that breaks cycles of mental, physical, or emotional stress. Active rest is activities like walking, yoga, stretching, swimming, hiking – as long as they are done in a non-competitive way. Passive rest is laughing, meditation, watching tv, etc – things done with the body in relative stillness. Both kinds of rest encourage pleasure, relaxation and joy.
What we do when we are not engaging in whatever fights we are fighting matters. As Loehr writes, “How you spend your time and with whom — when you’re not competing or practicing — can make all the difference in the world in terms of how well you manage periods of intense competitive stress.” A skier can play frisbee. A swimmer can kick a soccer ball around. A sprinter can watch cat videos. And a person committed to the struggle against injustice? Something altogether different.
The fourth kind of recovery is seizing recovery opportunities. For athletes, this means learning to find the moments during competitive play when it is possible to recover. Between points in tennis is a great example of this. There is a natural break in play when a player can stand up straight, relax the shoulders, breathe and recalibrate. Just like, as we all know by now, there are moments in our own daily lives when we can do the same: stand tall, relax, breathe. Brief windows of opportunity to reset are just as valuable as longer periods of rest, and they are often easier to find.
The fifth kind of recovery is emotional catharsis. This one does usually make it into the sports movies. Talking about your feelings, writing about your feelings, simply feeling your feelings. Competitive athletes have a Performer Self and a Real Self. (This is not something limited to competitive athletes; I would wager that most reading this can relate.) Usually, the Performer Self needs to push down negative emotions in order to perform well. It is the Real Self’s job to pick those feelings up later and deal with them. Addressing emotional needs is recovery.
“Work hard. Recover equally hard.” This is how Loehr summarizes it, and I can’t do better. Do the work of resistance that best suits you, and the experimentation necessary to figure out what that is. AND do the work of recovery that best suits you, and the experimentation necessary to figure out what that is. Sleep, eat well, rest in action, rest in stillness, rest alone and in community, find the tiniest windows, air out the difficult feelings. All of these things are essential to the work of continuing to resist, however you choose to do it. And, in this time of uncertainty, if we know one thing, it’s that we will continue to need to resist.
Postcard from my garden
