In the end of May 2000, I ran down Mount Yonah with a seventy pound pack on my back and a 240B machine gun in my hands. My squad was at the end of the line of Ranger School candidates traipsing down the mountain to the bus waiting to take us back to Camp Merrill near Dahlonega, Georgia.
My black combat boots land hard on the broken trail. My often-injured ankles had gotten worse and worse throughout the training so I paid close on the ground beneath me wary of a rock or root. I looked up for a moment at the man in front of me to make sure that I wasn't too close to him or in danger of falling back.
I don't know if I landed on something or if my injured left ankle just flopped inward on it's own. Either way, the outside edge of the sole of my boot struck the path first and my ankle snapped. Ligaments and tendons tore under the pressure. A sharp pain tore through my body. I landed hard on the forest floor.
My classmates helped me up. I grabbed my weapon, put on my pack, and hopped on my right leg back down the trail. Two days later, my right knee gave out from the added stress of dragging around my left leg.
The knee healed on its own. The swelling in the ankle didn't go down for months. The podiatrist didn't think I'd ever walk again without a brace. Eventually I did. Surgery followed and then hours of physical therapy. After a few years of healing, I was even able to hike and go on the occasional run, wrapped in protective braces.
But by the summer of 2005, a constant pain had returned to my ankle. It was getting hard to walk. I'd seen VA doctor in the spring, but the only surgical option remaining was to fuse the ankle bones together. I wanted to avoid that at all possible costs, so I wore my brace more often and began to shop for canes. Slowly getting used to that new reality.
One day, I read a newspaper article about barefoot running, and then I saw a similar article in an outdoor magazine. The proponents of barefoot running described how all of the protection of modern shoes, ankle braces, etc. were actually help injure feet and joints by forcing unnatural movements and preventing ankles from developing natural stability on their own. Pavel Tsatsouline, the Russian fitness guru whose inspired the kettlebell explosion, made similar arguments about the dangers of overprotective footwear in his books.
That summer I began working out with barefeet. It wasn't much of a start. Just a few runs on a sandy dirt road below the Elkhorn Mountains. Soon after, I picked up a pare of Vibram Five Fingers to allow me to bring barefoot-style workouts in the gym. It's hard to overstate how much my injured ankle improved when I quit wearing the shoes and braces that were designed to protect them.
The day-to-day pain almost completely went away. Beyond walking without a limp, I was able to activities that I'd resigned myself to never being able to do again. I still have to be careful about overworking that ankle. It'll never be quite the same that it was, but it's been several years since I walked in a store and sized up canes. That wouldn't have been the case if I hadn't decided to stop using some of the protections that I thought were essential.
It's hard to imagine how many times I've had to relearn that lesson in my life and I continue to relearn it. Every injury, great or small, creates a defense mechanism. It doesn't take long for that defense mechanism to become more dangerous than the injury it was designed to prevent.
How many times have we isolated ourselves to protect our hearts. Over-planned our lives to protect from the unexpected. Walled off our faith to protect from it from hurtful challenges and judgments. Numbed ourselves to hide from guilt and grief.
At some point, we have to stop. To put down our guard and experience life - pain and all.
****
William James - "It is only by risking ourselves from one hour to another that we live at all."
NOTE: Please consider making a donation to my team at Montana's NAMIWalk to help us support, educate, and advocate for people who live with serious mental illness and their families. I'm biased, but I really believe it's a great cause. http://namiwalks.nami.org/mattkuntz Thank you!
No comments:
Post a Comment