21Aug

One Decision that Changed My Life for the Better

• Saved in: Hobbies, Personal Essay, Writers, Writing Life
• by Chris Orcutt
• with Comments Off on One Decision that Changed My Life for the Better

Last week­end, I attend­ed a sur­prise par­ty for my younger sister’s 50^th birth­day. The par­ty, host­ed by her hus­band and best friend, was a great suc­cess, most­ly because she nev­er had a clue about it. Dur­ing the par­ty, I found myself among some of my sister’s friends from high school. These women were a cou­ple class years behind me, and most of them hadn’t seen me since then. One of her friends was chat­ting with me and oth­er peo­ple from our school when, out of nowhere, she blurt­ed out to the oth­er women at the table, “Chris has not aged a year! Not a year! He looks exact­ly like he did in high school!” She said this in an awestruck tone, got up and walked away shak­ing her head.

After the par­ty, I kept think­ing about the woman’s com­pli­ment, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t deeply flat­tered. Of course I have aged since high school, but per­haps not as quick­ly or as severe­ly as oth­ers. I’ve gained weight (I no longer have the 3% body fat I had back then); my hair is thin­ner and sil­ver now, instead of the lush auburn brown it once was; and over the past 33 years I’ve strug­gled with excess­es and addic­tions includ­ing mar­i­jua­na and alco­hol. (Thank­ful­ly, I’m now com­plete­ly sober, and have been for almost three years.)

I con­tin­ued to think about the woman’s com­pli­ment dur­ing the week, when I engaged in my fit­ness reg­i­men, which includes some vari­ety of the fol­low­ing: strength train­ing, run­ning, row­ing, lap swim­ming, ten­nis, hik­ing, moun­tain climb­ing, golf, cross-coun­try ski­ing (in sea­son), and flex­i­bil­i­ty and pli­a­bil­i­ty work. I also thought about my recent vaca­tion alone to the seashore, where I—sun-kissed, mus­cu­lar and drip­ping wet—had a walk­ing-out-of-the-surf moment akin to Daniel Craig’s in the James Bond movie Casi­no Royale.

As I relaxed at the seashore, engaged in my fit­ness reg­i­men, and mused about the com­pli­ment that I haven’t aged, I real­ized that the life I’m liv­ing now is large­ly because of a book I read a long time ago.

When I was 14, I stum­bled upon a book in my junior high school library that changed my life in innu­mer­able ways. I can’t remem­ber the book’s title or author, but it was basi­cal­ly an intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek phi­los­o­phy, with empha­sis on the teach­ings of Pla­to. One of Plato’s ideas (which I lat­er learned was in his Repub­lic) made a deep impres­sion on me. Pla­to said that the Ide­al Man (or cit­i­zen) devel­oped both his intel­lect and his phys­i­cal body to their high­est poten­tial, and that the two are bal­anced; he is as strong and phys­i­cal­ly capa­ble as he is smart and intel­lec­tu­al­ly well-round­ed; he is a schol­ar-ath­lete. By exer­cis­ing the body and cul­ti­vat­ing the mind through study, the Ide­al Man even­tu­al­ly brings the two elements—physical and intellectual—“into tune with one anoth­er by adjust­ing the ten­sion of each to the right pitch.”

I can still remem­ber exact­ly where I was when I read that. I was sit­ting alone on the school bus, rid­ing through a neigh­bor­ing devel­op­ment on my way home. It was an ear­ly sum­mer after­noon, close to the end of the school year, and I laid the book on my lap and thought about this idea.

Pla­to, recall­ing the teach­ings of his teacher, Socrates, explained why it was crit­i­cal that a per­son should devel­op both the phys­i­cal and intel­lec­tu­al: “Exces­sive empha­sis on ath­let­ics pro­duces an exces­sive­ly unciv­i­lized type, while a pure­ly lit­er­ary train­ing leaves men inde­cent­ly soft.” He also said that while there were many men who were intel­lec­tu­al­ly devel­oped, and while there were many who were phys­i­cal­ly devel­oped, there were very few men in the world equal­ly devel­oped in both areas. In oth­er words, the Ide­al Man was rare.

This idea was extreme­ly attrac­tive to me at the time. I liked the notion of dis­tin­guish­ing myself some­how, of being spe­cial, a rar­i­ty. While I was very smart and fair­ly ath­let­ic (base­ball, ten­nis, swim­ming, horse­back rid­ing, Boy Scouts), I wasn’t the smartest per­son among my friends, and I wasn’t the most ath­let­ic or phys­i­cal­ly devel­oped either. I had a friend (and still have) who was intel­lec­tu­al­ly gift­ed and showed incred­i­ble apti­tude for com­put­ers. I had anoth­er friend who was an avid weightlifter and body­builder (and still is, I believe). But—and this is why Plato’s notion of the Ide­al Man was so attrac­tive to me—I didn’t know any­one who was both.

That after­noon on that bus, I made a deci­sion, a deci­sion that I now see did more to pos­i­tive­ly influ­ence my life than any oth­er. I decid­ed I was going to become an Ide­al Man—one whose intel­lec­tu­al and phys­i­cal assets and capa­bil­i­ties are bal­anced and reach their high­est poten­tial. As some­one who was very good at coin­ing new lin­go at the time, I even came up with my own term for this: “rugged intel­lec­tu­al­ism.” I decid­ed to make myself into a rugged intel­lec­tu­al.

After school that day I set up a small “gym” in the unfin­ished base­ment of the raised ranch where we were liv­ing, and I start­ed imme­di­ate­ly with body weight exer­cis­es: pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups, etc. I filled two gal­lon milk jugs with stones and lashed the jug han­dles to a broom­stick to cre­ate a tem­po­rary, makeshift bar­bell. Soon I got a weight set, bench and heavy bag and real­ly start­ed to make progress on my physique, so by the time I was 17, rel­a­tives who hadn’t seen me in a while didn’t even rec­og­nize me. I played ten­nis and base­ball in high school, and I also did track.

When I got to col­lege, I immersed myself in my stud­ies as nev­er before, start­ing as a foren­sic chem­istry major and even­tu­al­ly switch­ing to phi­los­o­phy and his­to­ry. I had loathed high school—endlessly being told what to do, when to do it, what to study, and the point­less hours of “homework”—but in col­lege, where I was encour­aged to be self-direct­ed and self-disciplined—I pos­i­tive­ly bloomed. In addi­tion to my required course­work, in my sopho­more year (when I knew I was going to become a writer) I set out to read as many of the clas­sics as I pos­si­bly could. I real­ized I would prob­a­bly nev­er again have as much time for leisure read­ing as I had in col­lege, so I read the clas­sics every chance I got.

Near my col­lege in Boston, there was a book­store (I think it was one of the now-defunct B. Dal­ton Book­sellers), which had an amaz­ing selec­tion of qual­i­ty, inex­pen­sive Signet and Pen­guin paper­back clas­sics. Each Fri­day evening, I would take one of my girl­friends to din­ner and the movie the­ater next door to the book­store, but before going to the movie, I would buy myself 4–5 new clas­sics. I set myself a goal of fin­ish­ing one every two days, but some (like Can­dide and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) I tore through in an after­noon, while oth­ers like Anna Karen­i­na, took me a sol­id two weeks to fin­ish. I can still remem­ber the way the steeple­chase scene in Anna K. made my heart pound with anx­i­ety for Anna and Vron­sky, the pity I felt for Madame Bovary when (spoil­er alert) she kills her­self by poi­son, the night­mares I had while read­ing the first 100 pages of Drac­u­la, the moti­va­tion I felt to write when I read Jack London’s Mar­tin Eden, and the wave of admi­ra­tion and envy that washed over me when I read Fitzger­ald, Hem­ing­way, or Stein­beck. I still have dozens of the 200-plus clas­sics I bought back then.

I went on to reach my high­est poten­tial intel­lec­tu­al­ly in col­lege, grad­u­at­ing sum­ma cum laude (5^th in my class of 750) and Phi Beta Kap­pa, but phys­i­cal­ly I fell down in a major way. Idol­iz­ing Jim Mor­ri­son and Axl Rose, I drank way too much (some­times wak­ing from black­outs in Boston alleys), smoked way too much mar­i­jua­na, got involved with too many girls, and did very lit­tle ath­let­i­cal­ly.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this trend con­tin­ued on and off through my twen­ties into my ear­ly thir­ties, when I was try­ing to get estab­lished and choose my career path. I was a news­pa­per reporter for a few years, then a high school teacher, then a soft­ware com­pa­ny co-founder, then a cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, then a col­lege instruc­tor, then a speechwriter—and all the while I was devel­op­ing my fic­tion-writ­ing skills.

Then, about 20 years ago, my wife encour­aged me to quit my lucra­tive job with Mer­rill Lynch to focus full-time on my fic­tion. I had just returned from a friend’s wed­ding in Las Vegas and looked at pic­tures of myself at the Grand Canyon. I was fat. I mean fat—espe­cial­ly for a guy who, just 15 years ear­li­er, had had 3% body fat and the build of a vir­tu­al decath­lete. I was fat and didn’t like it at all. It sim­ply didn’t fit with the vision I’d had at 14 of becom­ing an Ide­al Man. Around this time, I also devel­oped a her­ni­at­ed disc in my low­er back from too much sit­ting and a seden­tary lifestyle. So, I bought an expen­sive ellip­ti­cal train­er and joined a gym. I start­ed hik­ing, cross-coun­try ski­ing and play­ing a lit­tle ten­nis again, and I weaned myself off the “com­fort foods” of my youth.

Through my 30s and 40s I kept up my intel­lec­tu­al pur­suits, although because I was also writ­ing my own books, I didn’t have time to read a clas­sic nov­el every oth­er day like I had in col­lege. Instead, I kept (and still keep) a pile of a dozen books at my bed­side and fin­ish one or two a week. In the last 20 years I’ve read prob­a­bly 20 books that I con­sid­er game-chang­ers or works whose ideas have direct­ly ben­e­fit­ed me. These include Mas­tery, Atom­ic Habits, War and Peace, The Odyssey, The Bible, Wish­es Ful­filled, and Tom Brady’s The TB12 Method.

The truth is, liv­ing up to that deci­sion I made at 14 years old, try­ing to achieve bal­ance and my high­est poten­tial both intel­lec­tu­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly, has been a 37-year strug­gle. There have been a few occa­sions along the way when the two lines have inter­sect­ed (in eco­nom­ics, this is called equilibrium)—when I’ve man­aged to bring the two “into tune with one anoth­er by adjust­ing the ten­sion of each to the right pitch”—but usu­al­ly achiev­ing my peak intel­lec­tu­al­ly has required me to sac­ri­fice some on the phys­i­cal scale, and vice-ver­sa. For exam­ple, when I’ve been in the home stretch of the final draft of one of my nov­els, I’ve had to sac­ri­fice sleep, work­outs, food, companionship—heck, even sunlight—to get the work done. And when I’ve been work­ing out intense­ly every day (say to train to climb a moun­tain or to pre­pare for X‑C ski sea­son), I’ve writ­ten few­er pages on those days and read few­er books in my leisure time.

Which brings me to recent days—completely sober; walk­ing out of the surf, tanned, cut and drip­ping wet; receiv­ing a com­pli­ment from a woman that I haven’t aged since high school; and receiv­ing com­pli­ments from oth­er women at my sister’s par­ty about how much they’ve enjoyed my novels—and I’m tak­en back to that after­noon on the school bus when I decid­ed to become an Ide­al Man, and I see that much of my life today result­ed from that one deci­sion.

Today I look at my life, and I see that I’ve done it. The intel­lec­tu­al and phys­i­cal sides of my life are bal­anced and in tune with each oth­er. While many men my age are strug­gling with weight issues, heart prob­lems, hyper­ten­sion, back issues, joint prob­lems, dia­betes and/or addic­tions, I’m in the best shape of my life since I was 17. (True sto­ry: the last time I saw a doc­tor, while read­ing my chart and see­ing my pulse and blood pres­sure stats, he said, “Excuse me, Mr. Orcutt…are you a triath­lete?”) Hav­ing tak­en med­ica­tion for my men­tal health for almost 20 years, I now take zero medications—only the occa­sion­al aspirin or ibupro­fen.

And while I know a few men in very good phys­i­cal shape, their intel­lec­tu­al lives and achieve­ments have lan­guished. I, on the oth­er hand, have been a life­long learn­er, con­stant­ly seek­ing out new ideas and meth­ods to improve my results, and con­stant­ly push­ing myself intel­lec­tu­al­ly to do more and achieve more.

Today, I view my body not mere­ly as a sack of pro­to­plasm that car­ries my brain around, but rather as the machine that makes good oper­a­tion of the brain pos­si­ble. I’ve learned that when I’m in great phys­i­cal health—particularly car­dio­vas­cu­lar health—I’m able to think more clear­ly, and I can write bet­ter and for longer stretch­es. I’ve learned that main­tain­ing the phys­i­cal machine is essen­tial for writ­ing well—especially for the endurance writ­ing that I do of long nov­els.

I’m feel­ing a great deal of grat­i­tude late­ly for final­ly achiev­ing this bal­ance, and I want to thank my 14-year-old self for it. Not only did my 14-year-old self have the curios­i­ty to seek out, read and think about these ideas of Plato’s, be he also had the wis­dom to rec­og­nize a great, life-chang­ing idea, and the self-dis­ci­pline and the resolve to decide to make him­self in that image. That one deci­sion has done more to pos­i­tive­ly influ­ence my life ever since than any­thing else.

So, thank you, Pla­to, and thank you, 14-year-old Chris Orcutt.

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Tagged: Chris Orcutt, fitness, fitness for writing, Ideal Man, physical and intellectual balance, Plato, working out, writers, writers life, writing

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