This is Western Coffee—notes on building the creative body. Last time: Improvising. Subscribe free below.
Surrender (even if it’s just biking on the sidewalk to get around the UPS truck) is not the same as defeat, though of course they can lead to or amplify each other. But what about surrender as an element of victory?
The other day, before a competitive cycling class at the gym, I had a plan: I was not going to compete. I was tired, even a bit under the weather. I had a headache. I had been sweating profusely at the mildest effort, from the kind of heat that searches you out in a cocoon of air-conditioning and infiltrates your bones, ready to flare with hoarded force when the sun eventually hits you. And in this Tuesday-night group I often encounter a rival so strong and adept that I’ve almost never passed him, though I can easily exhaust myself trying. It seemed like a good night to decide to take it easy—to fall back, work steady, conserve.
But I didn’t follow through. The rival wasn’t there, though other strong riders were. The lights went down and the teacher launched into his playlist hypnosis and I could feel my body deciding instead—with a calm and steady assumption of rhythm and breath—to fight. This shift was in fact a concession, an awakening to an ability and a desire in that moment and context that I hadn’t foreseen. After 42 minutes and three stages of competition, I came in first. (I think. I was so dazed at the end that I missed the last leaderboard.)
This form of surrender—agreeing to take back a no—has been present not some but most of the times I have made big leaps as an athlete. But it comes up more often and is cumulatively more important in daily practice, in the workouts and working sessions that simply are athletic and creative progress. Part of being a good improviser is the ability to absorb the fact of conditions you had ruled out; to see that in fact your success is possible right now and invent a way to seize it. Sometimes this is a great awakening. More often it is a small one, a subtle inflection on the moment, a breath of wind that steers you to the left.
This is why I said a while ago that the reversal that took me over the finish line of the Malibu Triathlon last year appeared overnight, though to be more literal it came in a single, surprising instant—when I decided, after years of well-founded conviction that I could not run fast or far or often because of all those broken bones, to try.
Coming Tuesday: Exposure.
Kindly send me your thoughts, questions, and provocations: dmichaelowen@gmail.com. And say hi on Instagram: @leggy_blond.