I embarrassingly tore my calf playing pickleball this past week. Yes, pickleball, the sport that your parents play. I’m aware of the irony. And my ego took a bigger hit.
Now I’m in that frustrating state where I can’t do any of the activities I enjoy during break with Cat’s fam like ping pong or indoor golf. And every day my brain says, you can push it. You’ve healed enough.
Funny enough, this week’s theme is Savlanut, patience. The timing is almost annoyingly perfect. I love that Savlanut shares a root with the Hebrew word for suffering. This turns what feels like passive waiting into something active… bearing a burden. If it was fun or easy, you wouldn’t need patience. The challenge is the whole point. This reframe is helping me see my injury differently. My body is asking me to slow down yet everything in me wants to speed up. Patience here isn’t waiting for healing. It’s being with the healing.
And then there’s my 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat coming up next week. No talking, no phones, no distractions. No reading, no writing. Just sitting still for 10 hours a day.
If patience is creating space between stimulus and response, then Vipassana is basically a 240-hour intensive course in exactly that.
My body gave me an early start. The injury forced me to sit with discomfort I couldn’t rush through… which is exactly what I’m about to do for 10 days straight. Maybe that’s the practice. Learning to stop fighting the timeline and start to endure it, whether it’s a torn calf or a restless mind.
Wish me luck next week! 🙏