Clarified Better

“If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not doing it right.”

How many times have I been challenged on this over the years? That’s rhetorical, stop waving your hands.

Those of you who have trained with me know what I mean in the gym: do the exercise properly, by this I mean “perfectly”, until the muscle quivers with pain and won’t move. Then do it again and again and again. Do a different muscle every day til that first one is healed, then repeat.

Take it out of the gym and it’s a metaphor. (Go figure.) Pain is not a requisite for correctness, but there is a level of effort beyond comfort that is salutary. And, to reply to the comment on the previous post, yes, that includes writing this blog.

We don’t just seek comfort, we inhabit it. I revel in mine, and am lost when pushed outside its cushily familiar limits. Oh, I go, and often, but I’m not happy about it. That’s in real life. Here, in my cyber-niche, with mostly my good and dear friends and family to see, I can stretch without fear--- but I don’t. I should, but I don’t. I vent my curmudgeonly spleen on topics I have thought out to various extents. Sometimes, I even edit.

But when I’m writing something for someone else, I push. I strain. I squeeze my brain until it quivers and won’t move anymore. That’s where the best work is, and that’s when I know I’m doing it right. Just like in the gym, that’s when it hurts good and makes me stronger.