Once upon a time I read Living with a SEAL, a motivational fitness book with blurbs from no less than Tom Brady, LeBron James and Sen. Cory Booker. Author (and guy that sang “Shake it Like a White Girl”) Jesse Itzler paid Navy Seal David Goggins (his memoir went on to be huge) to train him for 30 days.
In addition to the money, Goggins’s only condition was that Itzler must do everything he says. No refusals, no excuses. Everything he says. One scene stuck with me to this day. “You’re too comfortable,” Goggins told Itzler one night, and he made him sleep in his chair at the workdesk.
I was taken aback because I had internalized over many years the importance of sleep in muscular recovery and repair. There is no way that sleeping in a chair would enhance any athlete’s performance in endurance, strength or any other kind of competition. So what’s the thinking? Just as Goggins said, you’re too comfortable. Get out of your comfort zone. Toughen up.
It’s great advice for parents. Find ways to make your children uncomfortable (as much as that is anathema to their Latin mother). January is the best time to see bald eagles over the Mississippi River in St. Louis? Subzero temps with windchill be damned, we made the two-hour hike across the Chain of Rocks Bridge, freezing our bollocks off. And we felt great when we completed the mission. We don’t even remember the bald eagles.
The air conditioning in my car failed this year, and I live in an old house built before AC, which requires the installation of window units each summer. Those two circumstances gave me a new idea for tolerable discomfort: no AC until June. That should toughen everybody up a little.
I’m not saying we’re ready to survive the zombie apocalypse off the grid in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Unlike the folks of 100 years ago, we enjoy electric fans and short pants. But sweating in the balmy, high 80s makes the children a little tougher, more resilient or, in the overeducated parlance of the day, “gritty.”
We open the windows to afford a breeze. We sleep on top of the covers with an electric fan trained on the bed. I take cool or even cold showers, as I did in the Lima summers. And you get used to it. I may extend the challenge until summer solstice.
The “No AC Until June” challenge is not possible everywhere. I recently read that 645 people died in Phoenix last year of extreme heat. While people did live in Phoenix 100 years ago, they were of a mettle largely lost in today’s Sonoran Desert. And of course the planet is warming. Those steely desert cowboys of the 19th century probably would have moved if they had to do it today.
Summer doesn’t start until June 20. If you can’t do the “No AC Until June” challenge, that means you can’t handle spring. And if you can’t handle spring, you probably don’t belong there.
Expat Chronicles 