Welcome Back

323.

Not completely unexpected, our final day of leave is spent mostly in recovery. I had been, for some time now, tracking the sobering rate of decline of my once high-performance anatomy. Parts were now failing faster, fatiguing sooner and taking significantly more time to fully recover. That Mustang's three-part therapy would cause the degree of uncomfortability I was experiencing is something others without my history of athletics, military service and years of specialized training might see as cruel and unusual. It was, I admitted to her, punishment of an altogether different level. It being as bad a physical hangover as I can recall only prompted return comments such as "You ain't seen nothing' yet,' and 'Would you care for some cheese with that whine?' By noon, after liters of water and electrolyte replacement, I finally give up, give in and, interestingly, give thanks.

"You can thank me when your efforts are rewarded, because you know it and I know it, there will come a time when you will need the use of your right side, the complete you, full, flexible, powerful and quick. You have deluded yourself into thinking that you can be as effective at half-speed as you once were at full, that you can outsmart and out strategize the bad guys. Breaking news: They don't give a shit about your experience, record, legend or rank. If you stand in their way, which you will, the odds of your success are reduced exponentially with every passing day. Every passing day that you fail to appropriately respond to this challenge. Right now you are like a race horse with a broken leg. Do you think that there hasn't been talk of putting you out to pasture, out of your misery?"

We are walking the trail out back of the cabin, a single-track path that keeps me hustling to keep up. I recall using this 'active recovery' in my own coaching, but her pace is the hare to my tortoise. I also sense that she is using our conversation to further the recovery dynamic.  

"Well, yes, I'm sure there has been scuttlebutt gossip of this nature, always is. I first heard such nonsense about twenty years ago. But let me tell you, the thing about last missions, final chapters and farewell tours is that somebody - usually the hero - always dies. Sometimes I think it is planned that way to avoid the messy alternatives.

"Retirement, pensions, change of commands, nothing to do but golf"

"Zactly."

"What about meaning then? What part of life's purpose do we lose once the low road is taken? With mediocracy embraced? Compromised and cozy? How do we justify our self-knowledge and self-worth with the decision to make Easy Street our new home? I don't see how such a prolific warrior as yourself could ever reconcile that choice at the expense of eternal peace of mind. Please tell me what I am missing." As she stokes the fire of my soul she leaps a recently felled and blocking maple tree in a single, graceful, spontaneous firing of mind, muscle and matter. She stands on the far side of the tree, hands on hips wordlessly asking a similar result, prolific or otherwise, from her warrior companion.

I stop short and explore my options, although I already know there to be only one.

I hear a voice inside snicker that it is 'time for some magic' so I pivot and spin, take three steps in recoil and execute a perfect foreword flip over the log, ending an inch from her statue-like position. I expect an ovation, but I get a greeting.

"Welcome back."