The swimming does sound like a good example of mind over matter; I suppose we’re fortunate to rarely need to push ourselves so much, though I think it does good to push to the limits now and then.

I was re-reading this post and I have a suggestion. In “His legs smashed the keyboard tray” I believe it might be clearer if you inserted “into” so that it would read “His legs smashed into the keyboard tray.” I didn’t really visualize what happened the first time I read through it.

Only once in my life can I think of doing something that might be similar to this training you went through but I didn’t have to do anything afterward and you had to go on training.

I learned to swim when I was in my late forties and I actually learned butterfly although I was never very good at it. One day my teacher said, do you think you can do fifty yards of butterfly. I said, no. She said, well try. So I made a little shallow dive and was on my way. When I got to the forty yard mark, everything in my body said, we don’t want to do anything else any more. But I willed myself to get to the end of the lane and I did. Afterward I said that I had always heard the expression mind over matter but it was only then that I really understand what it meant.

Just thought as I was proofreading this comment. One thing I learn in swimming was to keep my elbows high.

Robert

“Don’t come back tomorrow” stuck in my mind. It could be a kind of warning to people who develop a bad habit and want the reassurance of someone else’s accepting their persistent presence in their wrong frame of mind. Does that make any sense?

Of course you are not that kind of person, the physician probably said that to everyone whose situation made it reasonable for him to say it.

Small victories are probably better than large one.

Thanks for writing.

Robert