Show Notes
The three stages of flabbiness
There are three stages of flabbiness in life, I realised years ago (and wrote about in
There Are Other Rivers). The unsettling epiphany led to me deciding to walk from one coast of southern India to the other, through Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.
Each stage of flabbiness is more restricting and stifling than the one before it. They creep insidiously over me like vines until it takes one hell of a struggle to escape their clutches. If ever I feel the saggy symptoms of flabbiness snuffling up on my life, then I know it is time to make some changes or hit the road. Only once I acknowledge the problems am I able to take the first small step towards fixing them and getting back on track.
The first stage of flabbiness, and the easiest to fix, is physical flabbiness. It begins when busy schedules, dark winter days and eating too much win the devil's footrace against the part of me that knows that exercise isn't a waste of time but actually makes me more efficient, alert and happy. Despite knowing this, at times I am still sufficiently idle to let my standards slip and my fitness slide away.
Fitness is like chasing a shoal of fish: difficult to get hold of, so easy to lose. If I don't go running for a few days, I feel cooped up and ratty. Leave it a few more, and the habit is broken. I know I need to run. But I can't be bothered. Flabbiness has begun to set in, slowly, invasively, like cataracts. Before I know it, I am easing out my belt buckle and blaming my sloth on the effects of age.
The second stage is mental flabbiness. Give up exercising, stop forcing myself out the front door for a run, and inevitably my mind starts to sag too. I used to feel alert and inquisitive. I used to read lots of books. But one evening I come home tired. Flopping down onto the sofa, I reach for the television remote instead. I realise how pleasant life can be if I stop thinking about it.
It is much simpler to exist than to live. I've got a dishwasher and a coffee percolator and I can drink at home with the TV on. I flick round and round the channels until I have frittered away enough of my life that it's time to go to bed. If I don't snap out of this quickly, then I'll soon be on a slippery slope towards the third, terminal, stage of flabbiness: moral flabbiness!
Each day brings me closer to my death. No matter how aware I am of this, it is sometimes difficult to believe my days are numbered. I burn carelessly through weeks, even months, unable to restart living fully.
I don't know when I will die, so putting important things off to an indeterminate date in an un-guaranteed future is pretty daft. There are so many places I still want to see, so many interesting people to meet, so much to do. And there is so little time. Before I know it I'll be dead and what a bloody waste that will be if I've just been arsing around.
By the time I have succumbed to the debilitating onslaught of the first two stages of flabbiness, I am already well on the primrose path to moral flabbiness. Not only have I conceded my physical health and settled for candy floss in place of a brain, but I have also accepted that this is good enough for my life.
This is ridiculous because I know that I am happiest when I have a sense of purpose. Instead, I have become comfortably numb. I have decided that scrolling through social media with a Chinese takeaway is sufficient return for the privilege of being born – healthy and intelligent enough – in one of the wealthiest, most free countries on the planet.
I have a passport to explore the world. I will always be able to find some sort of work. I will never starve to death. It's hard really for me to come up with any decent excuses.
The choice is all mine.
Life is too brief and too magnificent to tiptoe through half-heartedly, rather than galloping at with whooping excitement and ambition. And so I explode with outrage just in time. I need to get back into the wild. It is time to live deeply once again.
It is time to sort my life out.
This can be done in two ways. I either jump in the nearest cold river for a bracing swim, or I make a plan, set a start date and, come what may, begin.
OVER TO YOU:
What are your symptoms of flabbiness that are an early warning of a deeper malaise?
- Physical Flabbiness:
- Mental Flabbiness:
- Moral Flabbiness?
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Alastair Humphreys, a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, cycled around the world for four years but also schedules a monthly tree climb. He has crossed the Empty Quarter desert, rowed the Atlantic, walked a lap of the M25 and busked through Spain, despite being unable to play the violin.
‘The gospel of short, perspective-shifting bursts of travel closer to home.’ New York Times
‘A life-long adventurer.’ Financial Times
‘Upend your boring routine… it doesn't take much.’ Outside Magazine
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