Listening To Ourselves

We think it is the big moments, the large times of grandeur, that we will see our own true nature, that our very self will be revealed, finally, purely, wholly, to us. We long for that time when our convictions and beliefs will come to sit with us and tell us their names, loud and clear, like pupils in a well-run classroom.

Not who we think we are, not who we tell the world we are, but who we really are.

The person we even sometimes don't want to tell ourselves about.

But it is actually the small moments in which we see ourselves fully and truly this way. 

The small moments define us, reveal us, paint us true and bright.

It's in the moment right before the big decision, in the unplanned reflex, the bracing before impact, when our arms go out instinctively to save the person next to us, and leave our own body without defense.

Or maybe we only save ourselves.

Either way, our nature is revealed. This is when we learn who we are, for good or for bad, for richer or for poorer. 

But always for better or for worse, because we are, after all, married to ourselves.

The big lift tells us much, but the way we approach the bar before the lift tells us more.

The way we lower into our squat tells us much, but the way we bounce out of the bottom tells us more.

And whether we race back out to help the last person make it in on that run? Or perhaps just put away our equipment and leave, because we have to be somewhere else. These things tell us much too.

The CrossFit founder Greg Glassman is fond of saying "Virtues are best and most easily taught in the gym"—and I would not argue that.

But I would add that our own virtues—and our vices—are revealed in the gym too.

We broadcast who we are in so many ways each and every day in what we wear, what we say, what we write: the noisy soundtrack of our lives.

But in the moments when the song glitches, when the playback pauses unexpectedly, that is when we really hear who we are, if we are smart enough to listen.