Rhythm and Gravy

I’ve started going back to judo practice. For now, I’m skipping the ろんどり (”rondori”, or sparring) because my shoulder is not 100% just yet, but even so I’m so out of shape that I feel nauseous most of the time.

Am hoping this goes away, as am annoying myself.

Anyway, the shower afterwards felt great. I find it easy to forget that enjoyment often comes from contrast. If I don’t work out, a shower is just a shower. If I wasn’t working hard, a vacation wouldn’t mean much. If I had never felt lonely, I wouldn’t appreciate much the nice things people sometimes say.

I have a friend who is doing her Ph.D. research on well-being, and I don’t pretend to understand her work but I do remember that she once told me about the result of a massive survey she helped with. They found that a sense of well-being was uncorrelated to the amount of enjoyment in one’s life, but was highly (inversely) correlated to toil and hardship.

I sometimes feel like I’m slowly but surely wearing myself down. But that’s okay, isn’t it?

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 2:20 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.