Life is not a dress rehearsal

But it can be full of experiments. Like trying touch rugby when you can’t throw or catch

Photo by Pete Walls on Unsplash. I typed in ‘Saigon, moped’ to the image library and here’s what came up. He does not look comfortable to me!

Hello – and thank you for reading The Honesty Box. I’m sending this later than usual because life got in the way this week somewhat.

A combination of rather too much work, illness and preparation for going away on a solo trip – of which more later.

Today I’m writing about that thing called the comfort zone. You know, that place people say you should get out of once in a while, to experience more of life.

This is true for me: I think I sometimes have a weird force inside that helps me to try things I’m scared of, which is at some level itself driven by fear.

A casual frisbee game with a boyfriend in my 20s had me running for the hills

Fear of missing out, fear of not realising my potential, fear of not making the most of life.

The way I like to think about it is that when I do these things, they’re either an experiment or they are an adventure.

Humans like control and certainty, but there is a lot about life that is uncertain and if we can get comfortable with it then maybe we’ll be happier and less worried.

Sporting activities used be something I felt were wayyyy out of my comfort zone.

Having labelled myself ‘crap at sport’ during my teenage years, even a casual frisbee game with a boyfriend in my 20s had me running for the hills (or certainly the roof terrace of a friend’s flat for wine and sympathy), and I couldn’t even contemplate picking up a pool cue in a bar, let alone trying to pot anything.

So, at some point in my early 30s, I decided enough was enough and I needed to push through my ‘crap at sport’ thought and at least experiment.

I still don’t quite know what touch rugby actually is, but it involves running a lot and throwing a rugby ball to other people and sometimes touching it on the ground between your legs before picking it up and throwing it backwards to someone because they’ve yelled at you.

Anyway, I can’t throw or catch, so naturally touch rugby was the sport that I thought would get me out of said comfort zone, and I joined a beginners’ league.

I wanted something that would be a good physical activity, in a mixed team, which would also be fun and sociable.

This story does not end with me winning the league, becoming the star player and meeting my future husband

Approaching the sports fields at Regent’s Park (who knew those fields even existed), the old familiar ‘I don’t belong here’ feeling started bleating in my brain, and got louder as I saw people in groups in the distance looking very efficient with clipboards, matching t-shirts and various forms of equipment.

This is what used to make me fear trying sport as a teenager – the fact that they solely seemed to feature people who had all the gear – and all the ideas - who knew the relevant sporting words and had glowing, healthy faces and bodies and wore the kit as if they were born in it.

Eventually, someone gave me a t-shirt, told me which team I was in and pointed at a faraway pitch. There, I ‘played’ for maybe 40 minutes, which largely involved running up and down one side of the pitch and very occasionally catching a ball and not knowing what to do with it.

I’m happy I tried touch rugby, but I’m delighted I never have to try it again

This story does not end with me winning the league, becoming the star player and meeting my future husband (OK, the husband was the real aim – sod getting out of my comfort zone), it ends with me being very red-faced and sweaty and grinning for a photo after my first (and almost my last) game, grasping a rugby ball and thanking my lucky stars that I would never have to experience another 40 minutes like it.

At the time, I described it as an ‘out of body experience’ to one of my best friends (who actually did go on to meet her future husband through a different touch rugby league), a sort of swirling-headed feeling, part exhaustion from all the attempted running and jumping and throwing and catching, but mostly from the sheer brain cell exertion from all the bits of my mind I had to use that were dormant until then.

It was like going to the gym for the first time and feeling like your biceps don’t actually exist because you can’t pick up a 2kg dumbbell and your arms shake uncontrollably if you try to lift them over your head.

It was a kind of a cross between a rave and a religious ceremony

My brain just could not compute what I’d experienced. I’m happy I tried touch rugby, but I’m delighted I never have to try it again.

Anyway, I don’t know if anything else I’ve done has made me feel quite that way, but I do still believe pushing myself beyond my comfort zone is a way to grow.

It’s the classic ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ approach.

So, it was with this in mind that I went to a 5Rhythms dance event the other week.

Rather like the touch rugby, I still don’t know what exactly 5Rhythms is, but it gave me an out of body experience in a different kind of way.

The way I’d describe the 5Rhythms event I went to is a kind of a cross between a rave and a religious ceremony, and the great thing – and the tricky thing too  – is that there aren’t really any rules.

There are no set steps, you just do whatever it is your body feels like doing at the time.

The man in charge stood by his laptop with a painting of the crucifixion behind him

This is great for me in one way because I’m not very good at learning dance steps when demonstrated, I have to do things over and over again and find my own way through, so 5Rhythms avoids that, but in another way the lack of structure made it harder to know what to do, especially as this was my first time there.

The 5Rhythms style of dance was invented in the 1970s, by an American, Gabrielle Roth, as a kind of moving meditation, and 5Rhythms dance events are still held all over the world.

The one I went to was held in a white-walled church in north London, with dark rafters and a few fairy lights strung high above the dance floor.

The man in charge stood by his laptop with a painting of the crucifixion behind him, playing sounds that varied from ‘whale’ music to trance, as about 100 people waved their arms and bodies around to varying degrees of exertion.

Once I’d suspended my judgement of other people, I could suspend judgement of myself

The music built up and then slowed down over the course of about an hour, during which time I danced along the side-lines, alternating between admiring the dancers for how free they looked and wanting to have hysterics.

In the second hour I really got into it. As the beat got faster and went into a crescendo I found myself jumping up and down with my hands in the air while doing a kind of roar (most other people were doing this too), and all my giggling inhibitions were gone.

Once I’d suspended my judgement of other people, I could suspend judgement of myself, and there were moments where I just did whatever my body wanted to do. It was a kind of out of body experience, and one I think I’ll try again.

I loved getting ‘out of control’ when I tried 5Rhythms, and also when I did improvisation (click here to read all about it), but there are some things that do need research, planning and preparation.

One of these is travelling to Vietnam on my own, which I’ll be doing when I write the next issue of The Honesty Box in two weeks’ time. I’ll be in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), dodging mopeds, eating street food and doing a walking tour, before heading for the Mekong Delta.

I’ve already got my clothes ready, found a suitcase, dug out a money belt, checked my vaccines and visa requirements, photocopied my passport, printed out my flight details and saved all my hotels on to Google Maps.

I’ve also spent hours poring over the Rough Guide (I still love a guidebook), triple-checking hotel reviews and am working on getting the right balance of doing a few cheaper/more local things and throwing money at the situation to get from A to B faster but less authentically.

Anyway, I’m sure some of this trip will be out of my comfort zone, and I certainly can’t control all of it. I’ll let you know how I get on with my next adventure.

Things I like

Notes to Self

Notes to Self, a book of essays by Emilie Pine, is the kind of non-fiction writing I would love to do. It’s quite revealing, and also funny, sad, shocking and bloody honest. And you know I love honesty.

In one essay, she describes giving a talk about violence towards women, after which a male academic makes a comment (to the audience) about how she can talk about such things when she looks “cute.” “I find it hard to reconcile how you look and your manner with your subject matter,” he says. And then he asks his question.

Instead of laughing at him and highlighting his misogyny, she answers his question and moves on. “I wanted to look professional. I wanted to seem strong. I wanted to move on,” she writes.

But later, she says: “In side-stepping, in not calling out the sexist remarks, I act as if they are in the right, I act as if women should not have voices… and I am tired of my complicity, tired of playing the game,” she says.

I think we have all been there, in that there are times when it’s been easier for me to just accept something sexist, and not fight it, and just move on, and I admire Emilie’s honesty about this.

You can read an interview with Emilie Pine here.