Seeking an Integrated Life
Created .The Body Is One Piece
If you're at all interested in fitness, you've probably heard of Dan John. Dan John is a coach, athlete, author, and podcaster. You won't see Dan on Instagram with his shirt off, but he's been an elite athlete and coach for at least twice as long as most fitness influencers have been alive, and in that time he's gained some wisdom.
If you listen to Dan on podcasts, or read his books, you'll hear him say, "The body is one piece". This bit of wisdom warns us not to think of the body as a bunch of body parts, but as one thing that all works together.
Listen to Dan long enough and you'll hear him talk about his warmup. This usually has a bunch of stuff in it that doesn't have anything to do with fitness: a bit of meditation, taking stock of your life from several different vantage points, looking at your goals, maybe some journaling, then maybe a minute or two of movement. You see, though I haven't heard him say this, to Dan life is one piece.
Life is One Piece
When I think of my life, I think of a bunch of different pieces:
- Faith, Family, Community
- Work
- Health, Fitness, Running, Hiking
- Reading, Math, Programming, Learning
- Leisure, Games, TV watching, Sitting around doing nothing
- etc.
Then I try to prioritize them, give attention to each of them, make sure I'm not spending too much time on less important things, and giving enough attention to important things. Sometimes I go down a rabbit hole with some aspect of my life and realize I'm giving it too much priority, or I notice that an important area of my life is weak, or my relationships are suffering, and "Oops! Time to back off".
But, as I get older, I'm realizing more and more that life isn't a bunch of different things, goals, or whatever, but rather it's all just one thing. It's life. All of the things in my life have a common source and a common end, which is God.
Simple Ain't Easy
So it should be simple, right? Just always remember to consider everything in my life as it relates to God, the source and end of all Creation, and I'll be living the integrated, one-piece life I've been looking for, right?
It's not that easy, at least not for me. I get distracted, I have competing priorities, sometimes I feel resentment when one part of my life demands more time than I'm willing to give it, I'm filled with resistance to all sorts of things. It's like my life is constantly flying apart at the seams, and I need to fight and work to hold it all together in one piece. When you add in all the surprises that life throws at you, health issues (winter always gives me a hard time, other than that I'm very lucky with my mental and physical health), and trying to provide for and lead a family, it's not easy, even though it seems like it should be simple.
So What's the Answer?
In Chris McDougal's "Born to Run", Caballo Blanco advises McDougal to think, "Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast". Start with easy, and if that's all you get that day, well, that's not too bad. As a runner myself, I know that "easy" isn't always easy to maintain. My body wants to settle into a rhythm that's often just a little too fast on days that are supposed to be easy recovery runs. It takes constant attention (and sometimes the help of a heartrate monitor) to maintain an easy effort. It also means taking a hit to the ego, since I'm running a lot slower than I want to. However, sticking to the plan on easy days allows the body to recover enough to go hard in workouts.
When applied to life in general, we need to find an analog to "constant attention while sometimes checking heartrate". This means checking in on your organizing principle regularly to make sure that your life is being built around it.
Depending on who you are, that might mean daily prayer, meditation, or some other daily practice that touches base with what is most important in your own life. The Bible stresses the Sabbath, a weekly day of rest, and my own experience confirms that rhythm of human life requires some kind of bigger weekly reset as well. I've been re-reading Exodus and Leviticus lately, and there is also a yearly rhythm of observances, as well as a 7-year cycle, with the end of the 7th 7-year cycle being a jubilee year, which is an idea that I want to explore more since I recently completed my own 7th 7-year cycle, being 49 years old.
What's the Big Picture analog to the heartrate monitor though? Is there some kind of technology that can help you make sure you're living an integrated life? I can't think of any technology, but as far as some kind of outside help, I think friendships are important. Family relationships might fill that need, but I think friendships with people in a similar state of life are especially important, and too rare in many people's lives.
Conclusion
A fully integrated life is something that I feel I have not been able to achieve, and maybe the ideal of what I'm talking about is unachievable. However, I feel like organizing ones life so that everything is "pulling in the same direction" is a reasonable goal. Regular self-examination and attention to making sure that ones life is in order are certainly reasonable efforts to make in this direction. Prayer, meditation, rest, and checking in with friends are practices that I hope to more regularly implement towards living my own one-piece life.