The Rider, the Elephant and the Path

First, I want to give say a warm "what-up?" to all my new followers! If you should know anything about me, it's that you can ask/tell me anything. I encourage commenters and welcome commentary. Please enjoy my blog!

{That being said, I'm wondering if the "What I'm Wondering" meme is dead. No one has linked up for this weekend yet and only 2 people linked-up last week. The first week did well and it's sort of dissipated since then. I'm thinking it has a lot more to do with the amount of meme's out there hosted by other blogs and mine simply didn't make the cut.

I'll give it one more week and put the kibosh on it if it doesn't go well. If any of you have strong opinions on it, please let me know.}

I am a member of a gym (Life Time, a chain here in Minnesota and across other states, sort of like Bally's or LA Fitness.) As part of my membership, they send out a monthly publication called Experience Life. Normally, the issue comes and I glance through it for any good recipes or work-out tips and then I toss it. Rarely do they offer much more then that.

This month was a little different. I saw the headline of this article and stopped to read it.

I am so glad I did.

The article talks about the battle between our emotional selves and our practical selves and how hard it is to encourage any real change in our own lives as a result. The author compares the emotional self to an elephant; emotional, concerned with immediate results and satisfaction, the pleasure-center. It also happens to be the part of us that controls our fighting instinct, our nurturing (and parenting) personalities, and the part of us that gives us courage and determination. It has both bad and good qualities.

So does the rider. The rider is the practical thinker inside us. It's the part of us that wants to get up early to get a run in before we head to work (while the elephant really, really enjoys sleeping in.) The rider looks at things long-term, acts as decision maker and provides direction. Problem is, the rider tends to over-analyze things and tires quickly when doing so.

Still in a fight between our two selves, the elephant will always win.

That is where the path comes in.

The path is the whole picture. Its our life; our destination; our goal. It serves as a guideline of where we are and where we are going. If we are unable to get the rider and elephant to agree and take action, perhaps changing the path is another option. Change direction, or end point and perhaps the rider and elephant will be better equipped to work together and get things done.

This article was so interesting to me. With all the stresses that I've encountered in my life (school, deployment, money, etc...) it's often difficult to get any real change to occur. Often times I shut down, letting the elephant take over a simply meander down the path with no concern of where and when I'll get there. Unfortunately, I get there and more stress exists because I'm picking up the pieces or turning around to backtrack.

Especially regarding deployment, when things get especially hard, it is SO important the make sure the rider stays checked in. That I'm reminding myself WHY I do this and what the pay-off is. That I continue to set goals, some short and some longer, for getting through this adventure.

Most importantly, I need to remember that when all else fails, maybe I need to change the path. This doesn't mean changing where I'm going, but maybe how I'm getting there. This became a huge reality last night when I was web-camming with Al. We were (again!) discussing some of our communication issues with his bad attitude and my over-emotional self. He had suggested a handful of times that we cut down on the daily chatting (which end up being 2 hours or so if we want them to be - - I know, I'm so spoiled and I should just shut up now - - but I remind you that it's only been about 1 month of this. We spent our first 7 months of deployment with semi-weekly, 10-minute phone check-ins because he was in the field.)

He suggested this because he just can't shake his attitude right now.

See, he's stuck in an office, doing tasks completely unrelated to his job and getting more bored by the minute. When he transfered into this new unit to take this job (which of course he was was volun-told to do) he got a new chain-of-command which he doesn't care for. All of these things are contributing to his disposition and he doesn't see either changing any time soon. So, his suggestion was instead of trying to change our individual attitudes (his very much an ultra-rider and mine very much an ultra-elephant) that we change how/when we're talking (ie: change our path.)

I've always been really hesitant to do this because I worry that we're voluntarily cutting down how often we talk to each other - what if something bad happens and we get to talk even less? Or worse! What if something happens and we never talk again? I'm going to feel guilty that I CHOSE not to talk to you last night. Nevertheless, we are a couple that is ever-changing to our circumstances and we both work HARD at our relationship (as any good couple should.) So, I reluctantly agreed to work out a system. We can, of course, still contact each other if something big happens or we had a rough day and need the pick-me-up, but otherwise, we're spacing out our talks.

We hope this does two things: ONE, it allows him to have his crappy days without coming home and crapping on me and TWO, it allows me to cool my emotional heels and be in the best mind-set (maybe more like heart-set) to talk to him. Finally, we hope this change of path will get us back on track to a happy, healthy and lifelong relationship with miles and miles of road to go. I'm letting the rider take over because frankly, the elephant is getting tired of carrying your stupid ass!