Repair

Hi, 

After talking about the book for like 3 months, I finally finished A Timeless Way of Building. In my defense it was 545 pages and it felt like every sentence had something that needed to be attended to. 

One of the closing chapters was about repair. I really liked it because it reminded me that Timeless does not mean indestructible. Things that are meant to exist still require maintenance. It also cemented something that I have been orbiting around, but hadn’t clarified. 

I want to talk about repair this week, but not in a traditional sense, I want to talk about repair as a sort of preparation for what is to come. 

Let’s jump in, shall we? 

Since around November of last year, I have been starting the slow and arduous process of getting back into shape. At least that is what I have been telling myself. There have been moments where I am running and I start to visualize what it may feel like to race again, what it might feel like to run fast again, or what it would feel like to win a race again. 

These moments are fleeting when I start to feel my achilles tighten up or when I look down at my watch and my heart rate is climbing while running paces slower than my cool down paces from my hardest races in college. 

The silliness creeps in, what am I training for? I am never going to get back into that shape. So what does it mean when I say that I am getting back into shape, it is arbitrary. 

This week as I have been reflecting on this quote, I am realizing that I am not getting back into shape, I am building a new one. In a lot of ways, I am repairing my physical fitness, not to reflect what I used to need my body to do, but for what I will need it to do in this current reality. 

When I am doing exercises to build my calf and ankle strength, I am not doing that so I can run a 4:20 mile again, I am doing it so I can go for a jog when my mind is racing. When I am rolling out my legs after a run, I am not dreaming about qualifying for a state meet, I am thinking about how nice it will feel to not walk with a limp. 

The repair doesn’t reflect previous goals, it reflects my new ones. 

When this first started spiraling around my brain, I thought it was a bit too lofty or not applicable to broad experience. But, the longer I thought about it, I realized that it actually applies to almost every set back in life. 

This type of repair harkens back to a couple of devices humans use to create major life changes like the fresh start effect, odysseus pacts, or hitting rock bottom. These are moments where you look forward and see all of the obstacles and despite the daunting adventure make the commitment to never turn back. 

You are deciding on a new reality. 

Let’s do a couple of examples: 

I have seen a couple of videos on Linkedin recently where people talk about getting laid off, and they are visibly bummed. Yet, they say something interesting. They dedicate themselves to getting a new better job. They recognize that although the pain of the layoff stings, they also know that they dreamed of a better future. Thus, they are committed to the building of that better life. The truth is that when they were in their job before, they had yet done the transformation in themselves that would prepare them for their future life. 

This is something that I have felt deeply, when I left The Hero’s Journal, I had no idea what I was good at. I didn’t know what my value was, and I certainly didn’t know how to pitch myself. So I had to do the work. I had to write 50 newsletters, read, talk to anyone who was open to it, and I found a path through. 

If someone had offered me the position in my life that I have right now, 2 years ago, I wouldn’t have been the me I am today, and thus wouldn’t have been able to even enjoy my current reality. 

Another example I was thinking about was graduating college. I think that this one is interesting because nothing specifically broke. Actually, everything went the way it was supposed to, but yet you are in a state of repair.

Why is that? 

Well, it’s because the things that determine success in the world you are leaving couldn’t be further from the things that determine success in the world you are entering. The grand irony is that the world of education is supposed to prepare you for the “real” world, but well, it doesn’t. 

Does that mean it is broken? Not necessarily. There are a lot of cases where people need a time of refuge away from the realities of normal life. I mean look at Batman, he had to live in the mountains for some time. 

But just because you needed that time, doesn’t mean that you can hold onto the rhythms that the previous world required. 

This is all a good thing, it is the first time in many people’s lives where they learn the tough lesson that life comes in phases. The way today is will not be forever. That does not make today the worst or the best, it just means today is today. 

The goal is to repair yourself so that you are ready for the most todays you possibly can. 

Recently, there has been a lot of discourse from the hustle gurus of old saying that they were wrong. Over optimization can be just as painful as under optimization. Which makes a lot of sense. When you systematize your daily life completely, you force out the wasted time, but you also lose the opportunity to discover. 

The paradox is that when you watch your time too closely, you know what happens with every minute, but you cannot see when the importance of the minutes changes. 

You live in an old repair and cannot see the new ones that desperately need to be taken care of. 

We are so accustomed to believing that repair means to bring back to the previous state. We must change our perspective that repair means to bring forward to match the new requirements. 

Kyle