When last did you crouch down in your shower? Not quite child pose, not quite like Usain Bolt in starting blocks. Down there things are different. You can feel pain and really think about it. It smells different. The hot water plays differently on your back like the opening melody of Riders on the Storm, finally dripping off your top lip or chin. Things become clearer. Things come into focus as you look out of your hot water lens. You know what to cut away in your life and what to keep. You know what has to be done to go forward, to get better.
I remember watching a western where a cowboy is wounded in his chest by an Indian’s arrow. Sitting, leaning against a rock he pours some gun powder around the wound, lights it to disinfect the wound. He grits his teeth as a pulls out the arrow. He knew what needed to be done to get better.
Do you really know what is required to improve? Do you know what you need to cut away to beat the opposition? Are you willing to grit your teeth and pull out the arrow that is holding you back? Are you willing to admit to yourself what your Achilles heel is or is it easier to carry on? Covering up the wound and hoping it will go away?
Sometimes it is obvious like a foreign arrow. Sometimes it is harder to figure out. That habit which has served so well up until now. From time to time we have to crouch down in the shower and think. We may not like the scum that we see but recognition is the first step or so they say.
“Sing, Goddess, of the rage, of Peleus’ son Achilles the accursed rage, which brought pain to thousands of the Achaeans.”
leo rust 