Several years ago, I decided to take swim lessons. After ten years of running half marathons and one marathon, my body told me something was wrong. Training for what would have been my tenth year in a row of the annual Charlotte Half Marathon, my hips and lower back decided they had reached their limit. My body was out of alignment and I was simply not meant to run the race that year. After some trial and error, I was fortunate enough to find an amazing sports rehab chiropractor and a personal trainer who, over time, helped me to discover how improper movement mechanics had caused my injury. My running days were not over, they were just on hold. While I recovered, swimming became my way of staying in shape.
In all my years of running, I enjoyed participating in organized races. I was never very fast, never won any awards, and usually finished somewhere in the middle of the pack. Winning races was never the goal. The energy at these races is unbelievable and the inspiration I received from simply participating and witnessing all the other amazing people there was reward enough. The races were more of a celebration of the training that I had completed in order to get there. They were simply fun.
I figured that the same philosophy would apply for swimming and so in order to maintain the motivation to keep showing up at the pool day after day, I signed up for a swimming race and I found a coach and swim teacher. One day while I was working with my coach, she noticed something about my kick and gave me some advice that felt like a huge whack on the side of the head and has become a metaphor for so much of my growth in other areas of my life. Watching my kick as I swam across the pool, she noticed that my foot was turned out at the ankle in such a way that it was creating resistance against the water. It was highly inefficient and caused me to go far slower than I could have been. She said that my outturned foot while swimming was having the same effect as driving a car with the emergency brake on.
In that moment, I felt like I had just received a flash of enlightenment. I was driving around with the emergency brake on. Immediately, I realized that this was not just something that happened when I was swimming. This was an analogy for much of my life. Life often feels really hard! I often feel like I try and try and try and the results don’t seem to match the effort. Yes, I make progress but it seems so hard sometimes. There is an old saying, “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” Life seems like that sometimes. Until I realized that perhaps it’s only because I am trying to “do life” with the emergency brake on.
Ego is the emergency brake. To be clear, ego is a part of our humanity and it is a very helpful thing. Just like the emergency brake is helpful when your car is parked on the side of a steep hill. It keeps the car safe. The ego tries to keep us safe too. But if we drive around with it on all the time, it will also slow us down. Ego causes attachment to our own identity and to worldly things. This attachment then causes weak states of consciousness which cause fear, desire, anger, hatred, guilt, etc. When we live an egoic based life we are trying to do life on our own, by sheer will.
If you’ve ever driven around with your “E” brake on, you know that feeling that the car seems to be working harder than usual. Movement is sluggish, noisy and you feel something isn’t right. It’s an unconscious feeling, but it is there for sure. The moment you realize the brake is on, that feeling becomes conscious and it all makes sense. You release the brake and suddenly the car begins to move more efficiently and with far less effort.
When we release the “E-goic” brake, the same thing happens in life. Letting go of expectations and attachment to outcomes is freeing. The first step is acknowledging the ego, recognizing its usefulness, but then also becoming aware of the ways in which it blocks us. There is a force greater than ego that governs the universe and we are not in control. It takes courage to cross the threshold and it also takes practice. It has become a daily effort for me. But speaking for myself, life certainly flows more easily when I simply trust things will happen just the way they are supposed to.
Photo by Benjamin Brunner on Unsplash
