What are you trying to do differently this year? I am trying to write a new novel, which I ask you to imagine is like the hardest, worst, but also most beautiful and worthy hike you’ve ever done in your whole life. It’s a journey you make in the murkiest, cloudiest, muddiest of weathers. You can’t see shit. You have a map, but it’s not very helpful because the landmarks are either all obscured or there are unforeseen obstacles in your chosen route. You run out of food. It starts sleeting and you realize you forgot to pack your rain jacket. You begin to question where you’re going, why you’re trying to get there, and who the hell you thought you were to try in the first place.
It’s super fun.
The only thing that will get me to the top of Narrative Mountain, I know, is discipline. BUT! Even that’s tricky because discipline as I have known it is a dark magic that gets results but has eaten me up in the process, and I bet maybe it’s chewed you up, too, and spat you out, leaving you exhausted and/or ashamed, wondering why you can’t stick to a diet/get up at dawn/budget accordingly/not nag your teenager/floss every single day/drink enough water/quit sugar/be superhuman. This is something I’d very much like to get to the bottom of.
For a while, I was a rower. Rowing is a sport of hard discipline. It is pre-dawn workouts, and bleeding hands, maintaining a precise stroke rate, nailing the correct oar depth, and giving power tens when the coxswain says so. It’s throwing up after erg workouts, and rowing through joint pain, and just bullheaded determination that no, that other boat will not be passing you.
I loved it, but one day my coach pulled me aside and pointed out that I was working too hard. “You’re going to wear yourself out,” he said, “and you won’t go as far or as fast. You need to learn to back off.”
This pissed me off immeasurably. I wasn’t some slacker. Couldn’t he see that? I was sitting my butt down in that boat to prove myself over and over as hard as I could. No one was going to accuse me of not pulling my literal weight. I’d show him.
The thing is…he was right. There is such a thing as rowing too hard. And when you do, you forget the most important thing about rowing, which is that you’re on the damn water. If you don’t learn to go with the flow, you’re not going to go anywhere at all. The water is going to beat you every single time because it’s bigger, faster, and deeper.
I’m starting to see that for most of my life, I’ve approached discipline in completely the wrong way, which is the way our greedy culture celebrates it. Discipline is an iron rod. It’s punitive. It’s no pain, no gain, sacrifice, only the strong survive, eat or be eaten, and derives from a scarcity mindset. I looked at my bleeding hands as a badge of honor instead of as evidence that maybe I was holding on way too tightly for my own good.
The other thing that rowing coach used to say was to bend, not break. This, too, is a kind of discipline—a better kind, I think. More sustainable, more rewarding, more powerful. But harder because it requires you to consider the whole stream, to find the right current, and coordinate your efforts with everyone else in the boat. It doesn’t mean you won’t row really hard. It just means you’ll have the wisdom and restraint to do it at the correct moment.
This kind of discipline requires humility and self-forgiveness. It demands you walk the line between striving and acceptance, only works when you are radically honest with yourself, and, most of all, necessitates a kind of stupid blind faith in the shifty water underneath you that I personally find unnerving.
Here’s the thing: we’re all out here on the water in our little boats with our puny little oars, trying mightily to get what we want. Wealth. Fame. Love. Security. Revenge. A bikini body. But you have to ask yourself: Is that where the water really wants me to go?
Back on Narrative Mountain, the lessons of the water also apply, I’m finding. Halfway up a mountain is not a good time to run out of steam. Halfway up a mountain is not a good time to look down or up, for that matter. It’s a time for just putting one foot in front of the other, gently, at the pace that feels right, and for moving forward with one hand on my heart and one clutching the stained map I drew back when I thought I knew what I was doing.
Discipline is a flow. It’s a practice. It’s an act of faith, of surrendering to something bigger than yourself. It’s saying just ten more steps in your nicest voice, and then asking for ten more, then maybe only five. It doesn’t have to be all that serious. Maybe instead of an iron rod, it’s really a pixie stick. Something sweet and pretty. The real reward in and of itself, instead of the thing you thought you wanted when you set out. A thing that feeds you if you let it, not because you need to prove you’re worthy or better or work hard enough, but just because you are human in a world of tall mountains, wide rivers, and muddy trails. This year, I’m trying to see where they take me, but gently.
This year, I’m bending because I’m just so tired of breaking.