THE SIMPLEST HACK YOU'LL EVER USE

The secret methods of twin-parents and other endurance athletes EXPOSED!!

My daughter looked up at me during a spate of grumpy days she was having and said, confidentially, “eating cheese makes me feel better.” [Amen.]

I asked what else makes her feel better. She came up with “hugge” (“HUG-guh”), her Scandanavian-ized version of the word “hug,” which can be combined with the identity of the person giving it, i.e. “mamahugge” or “dadahugge”— as well as Wes, her owl puppet. I was starting to feel pretty good about her resources. Cheese, hugs, and an owl: the kid is pretty much all set, I thought.

But it turns out three-year-olds are pretty good at feeling fear, despite cheese, hugs, AND owls. The last three times I’ve left my kids at the Lots of Tots childcare room at the YMCA, I’ve only just figured out how to make the treadmill turn on when I get called back down in an understated text by the caregivers to the effect of “I think your kids would like to go home.”

When I’ve returned, my daughter has been wailing in a beanbag chair, pink-faced and tear-stained, saying, “I NEED A HUG,” twice, and once my son was parked behind the door doing approximately the same. What I’ve been able to piece together as far as the causes for their extreme states are a) Mister Jeremy told my son he couldn’t sit behind the door because he might get hit by it, b) Miss Mia asked my daughter to come in from the sandbox. These are earthshaking circumstances, folks.

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I’ve caught myself trying to gloss over their fears. I do a lot of “yeah, you were afraid, BUT THEN…” and then trying to lead them back to the happy land of feeling all is well. But the truths that get in the way of the Hasty Band-Aid approach include a) that everyone starts somewhere / my own tolerance for difficulty and distress was, at one point, as meager as my babies’, and b) that if I’m ever going to get past the Welcome screen of the treadmill, my children are going to have to DO some feeling uncomfortable.

As much as I’d like to train my children quickly in the art of tolerating distress for more than fourteen seconds, I can’t skip straight to the part where they feel better every time we do a post-mortem on their episodes of fear and doubt. [NORMALIZE THE UGLY PARTS, reads the sign a tiny picketer in my mind holds, as she marches by, over and over, through the days of my kids’ nightmares and separation anxiety.]

*

I don’t want my kids to feel sad. Here’s another truth, though: they are beautiful when they cry. Humans are translucent when they cry—sort of glowy, like a chrysalis. And, of course, despite our easy visions of the eventual, mechanically sound butterflies that emerge, inside a chrysalis, what’s actually happening is all the organs of the caterpillar are turning to sludge.

Nothing can change without some degree of discomfort. The goal isn’t to avoid the discomfort (unless we want to be mausoleums for our former selves), but rather, to expand in order to hold bigger, more complex, more challenging experiences. I’m working on how to help my kids do this, and so far, it’s not that different from developing any other muscle set: you do it, do it again, and then next time, do it a little longer.

When my son cries that he NEEDS SUNNYBUNNIES (the insane cartoon that for whatever reason never fails to lift him from despair), instead of saying “no you don’t, you’re OK,” or even, “remember last time you played with tractor and felt better?”, I just say, “Sure, we can do that in a bit,” or “Yeah, you’re feeling a little low, huh?” and then… I wait. I “get distracted” by something and narrate its inane significance to him, aware that my tone of voice is probably the only thing holding both of us together in the radioactive air that threatens to crack open and let the universe swallow us whole. I listen to my own voice with curiosity, only half believing in its ability to move us both past this moment. But it does.

A few more seconds here, an extra task there, and soon he’s doing a minute or two of having to wait for a thing that makes him feel better. A few weeks in to this process and sometimes we’re only able to delay 20 seconds and end up watching the show anyway, but sometimes… he wanders off, and poof, just like that, he has made it through feeling upset, rather than short-circuiting to the land where only a magenta cartoon fuzz-ball with ears that clap can reach him. A few more decades of this and he’ll be a basically functioning human. [It is AMAZING to me how hard that task can be.]

As usual, I’m left wondering what I’m learning about myself as I watch these small humans work their chrysalis organs into a paste, the exact magical spackle they’ll need to piece together the machine of their future unfolding and flight. What is MY tolerance for sadness and doubt, for fear and trepidation, and how can I make it, um, bigger? I have to at least try, because avoiding these feelings isn’t possible, and if you believe you are successfully avoiding them, you’re probably actually just cramming your organs into cryogenic preservation one by one.

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I have yet to meet a situation that could not be improved by treating everyone involved like a frightened toddler. So, I’ve been saying to myself, “Yeah, you feel a little low, huh?” and “Yes, we will eat that cheese in a moment.” By gradually extending the distance between the onset of [uncomfortable emotion] and [cheese/hug/owl], I’m going a little farther each time along the road of [uncomfortable emotion].

I’m training now for a 50-mile trail ultramarathon in July, traveling more literal roads as I progress. The weekly mileage that feels, erm, pretty hearty to me now, in Week 2, will be DOUBLED by Week 12 or so, all by simply, patiently, nudging the odometer each week— and the perceived effort it will take to complete twice as many miles won’t feel much different. I will take my discomfort in small doses— those extra steps beyond what’s easy, each run— until my capacity extends over 70 miles per week. The miles will actually become a bit easier, because my muscles and cardiovascular system will be stronger, but they won’t be that much easier. They’ll still be pretty tough. My tolerance for their difficulty will expand. I’ll become a bigger container for experience.

A few steps more each day. That’s it. That’s the big trick, the simplest hack you’ll ever use. It’s how you learn to run fifty miles, and it’s how you learn to live.