Control, Acceptance, Openness

I’m thinking about how much and how little I control my weight. I control what I eat and drink, but my weight each morning is removed from the moment of stepping onto the scale, dependant on last night’s dinner, yesterday’s exercise, the water still in my system. These were under my control but not in the moment on the scale.

Contrast my morning weigh-in with things under my immediate control. Say I want to walk 5,000 today tracked on my phone. Right now, I can pace one hundred steps. Immediate effect and entirely under my control.

Will those steps affect tomorrow's weigh-in? Maybe a little. If my weight still trends upward, I can try 7,500 steps or add in other movement, taking control over immediate things and using the scale as a measure of how things work out. Choosing control of immediate things and accepting the mysteries of the larger picture, I might be alright, but this is tough for me to believe in the moment of a weigh-in when the number has gone the wrong way. I need some way to prop up my faith. For that, I remember how this works in writing.

I recently finished my seventh year of Morning Pages, writing three pages by hand every single morning. Some pages are inspired, but mostly they are drivel. They are process and practice rather than product. Once again this morning, I worried that I’m wasting my time, covering the same ground, spewing random thoughts rather than writing something artful. It felt dangerously embarrassing.

It is if I frame Morning Pages as needing to result in brilliance. A better frame is: “sit, write three pages, accept what comes and push for more.” If I show up, do the work, accept what I write and open myself to what might happen, that’s all in my immediate control. In writing, I largely believe in that practice and process. I even believe, mostly, that product will result from it.

Today, after Morning Pages, I fed a page into the typewriter with the goal of filling one page that might become a blog post. I typed two pages and created this. I exerted control by typing a page and accepted what it might produce while opening myself to the possibilities for product. A pretty good balance.

I can likely become healthier through a similar combination of control, acceptance and openness. I control how much I move my body in the moment. I accept that the number on the scale involves factors I have yet to realize. I’m open to what I might be able to do.

If I sound like I really get this, I’ve exaggerated my position. I struggle to show up each morning and accept that as this human’s nature. I fill the Morning Pages. I weigh in each morning. I try to accept what is and I’m really trying to be open to what might be. It is a balancing act for sure and I am out of balance more than I am steady. I suppose that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I might as well accept it, right? Make adjustments in the things I control and be open to the possibility that someday I will be more secure up on the wire on which I have chosen to walk.