It's my friend Alex's birthday today. Although I don't do happy birthdays for other people apart from my family, I thought he might appreciate a little piece of writing here, including his birthday mention, so happy birthday, Alex.
Please don't be offended if I don't do you a happy birthday blog or write about you on your birthday here; it's just that Alex's birthday is falling at a convenient time to talk about this subject, and it does give a pretty good explanation of why this subject is important (Alex don't be offended that I'm multitasking the blog).
One of the analogies that I've used throughout my life is that of the oil tanker, but I use analogies all the time in stories; in fact, I live my life through stories by way of explanation, and I think that is entirely normal, but then it doesn't seem normal to everybody.
I am an oil tanker with a diesel engine.
I never go particularly fast, but I just keep going at the same speed until I change direction (which can take ages), and then I go at the same speed in that direction.
This can be both extraordinarily powerful and extraordinarily toxic.
The best way to frame that and to explain it in my lifestyle is my health and fitness and looking after myself.
And so, when I'm going in the right direction, I can run for a good period in the right direction and get in pretty good shape, but then I slow down and stop and turn around and head in the wrong direction, and it does take an oil tanker an awfully long time to slow down and stop and change direction.
It means that when that happens, you are safe and secure, going in the right direction for a period longer than that, which you are looking after yourself, but when you're going in the wrong direction, and you want to turn the other way, it takes a long time to do that.
I hope you're keeping up here?
And so, as I've written about quite a lot of times here (almost two years), I have been less than at my best since about March of 2022, a few weeks after my 50th birthday.
The reasons for that are not obviously and entirely clear, but they certainly started around the time that I had COVID in January 2022, which was at the end of the most extraordinary three-year period trying to build this f*cking ridiculous practice.
Perhaps (as my wife suggests) I had run myself right into the ground, and perhaps the attack of COVID, which was asymptomatic at the time, just finished me off.
By the time I got to March 2022, my thyroid was like a raisin dried in the sun, not much use to me in any way and certainly not producing anything in the way of useful fluid.
I've told you this story lots of times. I went through what seemed to be a chronic fatigue scenario or a long COVID scenario or various other things until I started to feel like I was getting better. Then I went and rode my bike in France in one of the most ridiculous things it would be possible to do and catapulted myself into a winter of misery trying to keep a smile on my face when I was otherwise unable to move.
By earlier this year, I seemed to be a lot better, but again, I dipped back again, perhaps because I work too hard or perhaps because I don't look after myself well enough.
But it seems throughout this period that the oil tanker has been heading in the wrong direction, and every time I've tried to slow it down and turn it around, something has happened, and it's continued to run in the wrong direction.
And so, what is the point of all of this?
Well, the point of all of this is that when your oil tanker is running in the wrong direction, there is a point where it stops. You slow it down and slow it down but you don't really notice that you're slowing it down because you're still heading the wrong way.
There is a point where it is neither going the wrong way nor going the right way, but it is stationary, and it is at those points in our lives that we need people who look after us, whether they understand that they're looking after us or not.
I wrote a blog earlier this year called Left Turn, and it was about the time when I was riding my bike in Mallorca, and I turned left and climbed up the hill again when I had the chance to go straight on.
That whole day was facilitated by my friend Alex who booked the trip to Mallorca and encouraged me to go.
He brought the people to Mallorca and then organised the most ridiculous day of cycling from one end of the island to the other, which I had no idea whether I would be capable of.
He rode with me that day, even when other people rode off because they were stronger and fitter than I was. He sat and ate lunch with me that day, and then he got me to the point where a left turn was possible.
Alex didn't decide to turn left and he didn't encourage me to do so and he didn't facilitate it for me physically in any way but he was just there and around there and made that happen and at that point on that day, I stopped, my oil tanker stopped and it started to turn in the other direction.
The thing about your oil tanker is that as it starts to go in the right direction, it's still extraordinarily slow, and you keep passing by the points you've already passed when you were going in the wrong direction, but you're actually heading to better things into a better place.
Anyone who has the ability to do that for you at that time or to facilitate it for you is someone to be grateful for.
What we want to be are people who are in a position to facilitate those changes for other people whenever that is possible because that is what makes the world a better place.
This is the concept of enablement.
The thing is, you're not really sure when other people need enablement or when they're in the position where their oil tanker is about to stop and turn around, and so you just have to keep trying, even if it seems like it's hopeless or even if it seems like it's not going to work out because every so often it will.
And so, for years to come and for the things that happen (I hope over the next three years), I will return back and back to that left turn, which was the day things changed and got better when I started to move in the right direction again.
For that, I want you to think about your own oil tanker, and I also want to say happy birthday, Alex.
You know, I don't buy cards or presents for people who are not in my family. I gave that up years ago, but I am forever grateful for the left turn that day when we could have gone straight on.
Blog Post Number - 3656
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