Tough times don't last, tough people do
Smile and endure
A few years ago I signed up for a karate tournament where I planned to compete in the middleweight division. The middleweight division was for people 75kg (165 lbs) or below (I can’t remember the lower limit). At the time I weighed between 80 and 85 kg (176 to 187 lbs). I wasn’t a runner at the time, but I started taking to jogging by the river and cutting back calories in order to make weight. I hated being hungry, I hated the small amount of low calorie food I was eating, I hated jogging along the river in the dark, I hated myself for signing up to this tournament, and I hated being angry pretty much all the time.
The tournament was one match and it was against a guy who was much younger than me. My plan for the match was to go in hard and try to hit him with a 踵落し (kakato otoshi: axe kick) and score a knockout. The match started, and I managed to pull off that axe kick, but it didn’t quite land hard enough to knock him out. The match continued, no points were scored (points being awarded for injuring your opponent to the point they can’t continue), and it went to the judges, where I lost by a split decision. The guy was much fitter than I was and my stamina was not what it usually was due to having to cut so much weight.
After that match, I didn’t care that I lost. The whole situation being over was one of the greatest rewards I could have imagined. I suffered for a long time before the tournament, but I gave it my all during the match, I landed the kick I wanted to land, I lost by a small margin, and it was now all over. I was free.
I remember eating pizza that evening. It was part of a course during the after party of that event and it possibly would have been quite disappointing pizza under normal circumstances. But I still to this day remember how much I enjoyed that pizza.
Expressing negativity in a productive way
I’m not the kind of person who enjoys hating things. I also don’t enjoy being angry. But I would much rather go though a period of hateful feelings and anger than feeling down and depressed.
If I just felt down about what I was doing there’s a high chance I would have lost drive to keep going, would have failed to lose the weight I needed to lose, and all of the effort I put in may have been for absolutely nothing. So when I felt down, I chose to focus that negativity into thoughts like, “It’s this guy’s fault I need to go through this! I’m going to axe kick the F out of him for making me go through this!”
None of that was true by the way. It was all on me. But those thoughts kept me going to the dōjō and axe kicking things (sometimes with weights on my legs) in order to break though the tough time I set up for myself.
When I was going through my weight cut, I could have made it all stop by simply withdrawing my entry from the tournament. I could have withdrawn then just gone back to business as usual. But I decided that all of what was going on was within the physical and mental limits of my endurance, and as long as I pushed through the bad times I’ll achieve a good result in the end (no matter the result of the tournament).
Choosing the hard road
Endurance sports are something I enjoy doing. As I’ve gotten older I realize I prefer overcoming a difficult task than I do showing that I’m the top contender of the day. Ultra running is a fantastic expression of this.
When people ask me about some of the ultramarathons I enter, I sometimes tell them that it’s a silly hobby and that people don’t NEED to run that far. It’s an activity for a very specific group of crazy individuals that enjoy choosing to put themselves though pain and suffering in order to achieve something personal.
When you run ultras you experience extreme highs and extreme lows. The Izu Trail Journey was not the longest ultra I ever entered, but it was the one with the most extreme climbs. My legs burned going uphill and the more downhill sections I did the more my toes hurt. But at one point about 50 km into the run, I remember slumping to the ground in a car park with a bowl of boar stew and an incredible view of Mt Fuji and thinking to myself, “This is awesome.” (I’ll remember that stew forever).
There’s a phrase I keep trying to refine. I’m not sure if I’ve got it right yet:
The suffering we willingly endure is the currency with which we buy greatness.
I spend a lot of time training for ultramarathons and all that training I go through gets me through my races. The same can be said about time sweating and bleeding in the dōjō. Studying or doing research can be very similar as well. The suffering you go through during these experiences is all done willingly. You can just stop training/studying if you want to…but you won’t get a great result if you do that.
This is all fine when you consider choosing to walk through your own personal hell in order to achieve something, but what about times when it isn’t a choice?
True endurance
Sometimes we make choices to do something, then part way through it the choice kind of gets taken away from us.
In April I chose to run a 100 miles from Tokyo to Numazu. But at around 2am I was in the middle of a forest, there was literally no civilization around me, I was surrounded by total darkness, and I was running along with one other person I met on the day. At that point I thought to myself, “I am totally screwed if I stop now.” The choice had been taken from me and I had no choice but to keep moving forward. I either needed to get out on my own power or go though some embarrassing situation of being ‘rescued.’ Thankfully I had a lot of stamina left so I was able to get through it. This was very much focused on physical endurance, and happened over a relatively short period, but I feel like this is one good example of what I would call ‘true endurance.’
When I say ‘true endurance’ I am referring to situations where you keep going because there is no real choice to stop without a major negative consequence. DNFing a marathon is not quite the same, because if you stop running there are people in the immediate vicinity to help you out and get you some first aid. That didn’t exist in the forest at night and I considered needing to be rescued a significant negative consequence that I wanted to avoid at all costs.
Another, more extended and less physical example of ‘true endurance’ was when I attended graduate school. I wasn’t forced to attend graduate school. I chose to be there. I was on a four year program, but I was experiencing a lot of negative feelings towards my situation even in my first year of my degree. However, quitting would mean I lost not only my degree, but my source of income, and possibly my visa as well. This was a very high stakes situation where I had no choice but to simply endure and get through it.
When you are choosing to do something motivation can be a bit of a problem sometimes. But when the choice has been taken away from you and you MUST do something, motivation is less of a problem. (“Do this, or you’re f**ked,” is pretty good motivation). But keeping that true endurance going is hard and sometimes you need some kind of mantra to get you through it.
Everything ends. Eat the elephant
One thing I’ve come to realize after putting myself in situations where I’ve repeatedly needed to put my endurance to the test is that everything will eventually end. Some tasks might seem like they take forever, but there is only ever a limited amount of work that can reasonably be done.
Question: How do you eat an elephant?
Answer: One bite at a time
You cannot reasonably eat an elephant in one go. It seems like a task that is impossible, but there is an end to it. The average Asian elephant weighs about 4,000 kg. So eating an elephant is not eating an infinite amount of meat. It’s eating 4,000 kg of meat. And how do you eat 4,000 kg of meat? The same way you eat 500 g of meat. One bite at a time. You also run 100 km by running one step, about 100,000 times, and work for 4 years by working one minute at a time.
Find the strength to endure
If you are in a situation where this true endurance is necessary then you’ve got no choice but to keep hanging on. If you don’t, you’re f**ked.
I started this article by talking about my relationship with negativity leading up to that karate match. So I’m not going to turn around and tell you to keep your chin up now. You need to be an avatar of positivity. It is hard to keep the endurance going. You will experience negativity when doing difficult things, and it will suck.
When I ran the Challenge Fuji 5 Lakes Ultramarathon (118 km) last year, I experienced a lot of ups and downs. Other ultra runners might understand what I mean if I say, “I lived a lot in a day.” I had multiple highs and multiple lows. One minute I was feeling great, then I hated myself for entering this stupid run, then I was convinced I could strangle a bear to death if one jumped out at me, then I felt fine again, then I started yelling at a lake for the crime of being a lake, and then I came across an aid station where I drank some coke, ate a banana and jogged on, ready to start the cycle again.
Graduate school was pretty much like that, but for 4 years, and I didn’t yell at any lakes.
When you need to keep expressing endurance over a long period of time I think my main strategy is to focus on the goal, keep moving one step at a time, and doing my best to avoid the kind of negativity that can drag me down. At no point did I consider stopping to be an option. I HAD to complete what I set out to do.
Be as happy as you can be or as angry as you need to be, but do your best to avoid feeling sad and defeated for too long. You can use anger as fuel, but do your best not to turn it on anyone who wants the best for you (there’s no benefit to pushing people away who want the best for you). I still haven’t found a good use for feeling down…so I try to avoid it.
But that’s just me.
Final thoughts and take home messages
There are people out there in the world that choose to make life difficult for themselves by choosing to do difficult tasks, like choosing to step onto the mat for some recreational violence or running distances that it’s not really reasonable to run. Nobody has to do these things. But doing so can be rewarding.
Preparing for difficult endeavors can suck. But finding a way to endure means you feel rewarded and fulfilled in the end.
If you get yourself into a situation you have no choice but to push through then just remember that nothing is forever. Tough times don’t last. Tough people do.
There are people out there that will tell you to not be so negative. But it’s ok to be negative sometimes. As long as you can be negative in a way that’s productive. If you must be negative, don’t be sad…get mad. That doesn’t mean lose your cool with people who are trying to help you. It means, use your fury to drive yourself forward and find a solution to your problems.
So no matter what happens, don’t forget to smile.
笑うという行為は本来攻撃的なものであり獣が牙をむく行為が原点である
"The act of smiling originally had an aggressive nature, stemming from the baring of teeth by animals."
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Osu!
Anthony