As is inevitable over the years of athletic life, I’ve had my share of back, or hip, or even knee, shoulder, and ankle tweaks.  And, if I were looking at myself from a rational, outside perspective, I would probably think that the unaddressed scoliosis might at least conceivably be part of the underlying cause of any of those.  But, as ever, I simply ignored the possibility, working on all kinds of other stretches and mobility drills and pre-hab exercises, skipping anything that dealt specifically with the slight spinal curve.

In the last month or two, however, I finally realized that’s kind of ridiculous.  So I started thinking and researching and self-programming to address the scoliosis head on.  It’s early, still, but even in that short amount of time, I’ve made a real impact.  Which leads to a reasonable question: why hadn’t I done this before?

I’ve thought about that a bunch, and I think the answer is simple: I just didn’t like the idea that I had an inherent structural flaw.  So, instead of facing up to the problem and trying to solve it, it was psychologically easier to ignore it and to route around it and just to try to power ahead.

Maybe it’s age or wisdom, or a year-early onset of a 40-year-old midlife crisis.  But, for the past few months, I seem to be having a ton of similarly obvious ‘revelations.’  Because it turns out there are all kinds of things I do, all kinds of behaviors and beliefs and patterns and habits that haven’t served me particularly well, that I’ve similarly spent decades studiously ignoring.  Most, similarly, aren’t even that big.  But by not addressing them, by trying to just plow past them, I’ve tripped over them repeatedly, in ways big and small over the course of my life.  And it’s only in the last little bit that I’ve been willing to say: if I have flaws or shortcomings, certainly it’s better for me to own them and try to face them head on, rather than pushing them into the back of my mental closet, shutting the door, and trying to pretend that not seeing them means they don’t exist.

Anyway, I realize this sounds so patently obvious when I put it down in words.  Which makes me further wonder how I managed to make myself willfully blind to so many issues for so long, rather than simply sucking it up and trying to solve them.  I definitely feel like the guy who’s walked for miles with rocks in his shoe, ignoring the pain, taking aspirin, coming up with different ways to walk that don’t hurt.  When, instead, it would be so much more effective to just stop for a minute, to take off the shoe, and to dump out the rocks.