Structural Disruption
and a Tidy Silver Lining
There’s a magical hum that comes with the momentum of stacking up good days. It’s quiet but powerful, and accompanies an accumulation of direction and self-respect. In theory, I like the 80/20 rule: live 80% of your life on the righteous path and screw off with the remainder. That rule feels emotionally fair to me and even fairly logical.
But I’ve gotta zoom out. Look at the totality of my life from a distance. I’m not entirely sure that if I spent every remaining second on the righteous path, I’d make it to 80%. The past weighs heavy. Momentum doesn’t just push forward, it pulls backwards too.
If I get 8 straight perfect days, and decide to take two screw off days as reward, day 3, it’s tough to get back. It’s molasses. The fumes of momentum don’t push me forward, they literally drag me backwards. That magical hum dissipates and in its place are all the voices telling me 60/40 is a far better solution. Logical, even. Compassionate.
But I’ve been here before. That game is rigged. 60/40 becomes 50/50 becomes 20/80 in the span of a week. And then I’m staring square-one right in the face, trying to remember what 8 straight days even felt like.
So I cling to that glorious hum, especially when, for whatever reason, my plan is disrupted. Whether it’s intentionally stepping off the path for hedonistic sanity, or because sometimes life just lifes: chaos, curveballs, complications. Doesn’t matter, disruption is disruption.
I keep that inner tune going in my head and often even quietly, out loud. Brandy points out that I hum when I’m anxious. She’s absolutely right, I do. But what she doesn’t know is that hum is me conjuring momentum, trying to summon it back when I feel it slipping. When it becomes so quiet within me, that I have to create it externally so I can soak it back in.
On top of all of this, lies a major compounding factor, comfort. I don’t repeat the same movements in the gym, day after day, week after week, because my body will game that structure. It will become more efficient and the movements will lose whatever edge they began with.
Unfortunately I think this is probably true with structural momentum as well. Structural rhythm, no matter how sacred it might seem to me, ultimately offers me a degree of comfort. And one thing I know for certain is this, I need to be uncomfortable sometimes.
This may be all melodramatic rationalization, but I’ve gotten far more out of intentional discomfort than I ever imagined. My intense need for comfort, that deep reflexive craving, was a shortcut to mental and physical anguish I had to claw my way out of.
Comfort made me soft. It atrophied me. It was decay. Disease.
The embrace of discomfort, intentional and deliberately structured, has made me sharp and focused. It hasn’t just toughened me up, it’s eased pain I once thought I’d carry forever.
Now, when the tension of disruption builds, I hear it for what it is: the low burgeoning hum of growth’s possibility.
Outstanding.