Simplicity

This week marked the end of an era for me. I found a good home for my 1974 orange Volvo. This car was my most prized possession but I could no longer bear to watch it slowly disintegrate while sitting unused. My sister has always had a passion for that car too so I am hoping she will take care of it and get another ten years out of it.

For me this situation offered an important reinforcement that things are just things. My possessions do not define me, and while they may offer me some comforts, they ultimately do not bring me happiness.

My acceptance of this fact has also allowed me to continue to simplify my life by letting go of other possessions. I sent the first two Apple computers I have ever owned, including my beloved lime flavoured iMac, to the HERO Housing Resource Centre in Alabama. It feels good knowing that there is a use and a need for them and it definitely alleviates a guilt that I never even knew I was feeling over how they were underutilized by me.

While the spiritual side of my development has grown this week through simplifying my life, my physical growth has been struggling as of late. While taking it easy over the past two months in an attempt to eliminate the persistent swelling I still have in my knee from this Spring’s latest surgery, I developed a pain in both of my upper calves. It feels like I have been working them and have the muscle ache that comes with a job well done. However I have not been working out with my legs at all and yet this ache has only worsened over the past eight weeks. The common consensus is that I am suffering from planters fasciitis and my tendons are inflamed all the way up the backs of my legs. Since I have been relatively inactive before and during this development I was at a loss to explain why this would manifest at this point in my training. I was leaning toward my motorcycle riding as the only possible cause when I started to suffer from back spasms and paid a visit to my chiropractor. He took one look at the pronation of my ankles and declared this as an explanation for my inflamed tendons, my past five knee surgeries, and my current back spasms.

So while I have been living the good life where socks and shoes are a rarity, my arches have been slowly collapsing resulting in me developing pronated ankles. This pronation has put constant strain on my knees and lower legs for many years and now I am at the point where a change in lifestyle is in order. From now on shoes should be worn at all times and definitely for all work outs.

Since planters fasciitis has an average recovery time of fifty weeks, it’s a good thing I haven’t done something crazy like enrolling in the UBBT for the next fifty or so weeks. Actually I only see positives coming out of this. I have found the perfect time to complete some of my empathy training and spend a day in a wheel chair. I can also focus on some of the more cerebral parts of my requirements guilt free too. At the end of the fifty weeks I should just about be at my peak for my final performance. Everything is going according to plan, excellent.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
- Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 - 1519)