#23 Kryptonite and Cockroaches
An allergy is when your body treats something harmless like it is harmful and attacks it, causing more destruction to itself than to the allergen.
I am deathly allergic to other people telling me what to do.
A few years ago, my therapist told me not to do anything cognitive in the morning, to go for a walk first thing instead. No don’t walk, run. Shower afterwards. I should take cold showers. Always and only cold showers.
With this advice, I continued to write on topics I over-rationalize. I insisted that I couldn’t run, though I used to love it. I took comfortable showers — maybe at whatever temperature comes out of the pipes in Hong Kong’s 35-degree Celsius (95 F) with 90 percent humidity summers, and steamy 42-degree water in Hong Kong’s cool, gray, clammy London-esque winters.
Growing up, I resented being told to make my bed. For decades, I never made my bed.
Then I revisited the spas. Spas in Busan, Korea — spas in Kagoshime, Japan.
Large spas, small spas. Some with ten pools, some with two pools.
Two pools, the minimum. One hot, one cold. By cold, I mean icy.
That’s the health philosophy — to soak your body in hot water, loosen and relax the muscles, soften the skin and open the pores, once so comforted that you want to sleep — climb your naked body out of there and go dunk it in the cold pool.
I tried this while traveling alone in unfamiliar countries, no one there telling me what to do. Everyone did it and I tried it to.
It reset my mood. I heaved at the shock, the same kind of heave that snaps me out of my thought loops on a hard hike or a swim in choppy water or a holding my balance in yoga or on a rock wall or facing competition.
After that, I took cold showers every morning, or at least finished them off with cold water in case it felt necessary to start with warm water.
And in Japan, I felt an even calmness after folding up my blankets each morning, following the practice of the Ryokan, a guest house, I stayed in. I just liked it. I felt undisturbed.
I now fold up all the sheets and blankets each morning, with no intention to open them again until I’m ready to sleep again.
That is my allergy — being triggered by people telling me what to do and attacking it as if it is harmful. Part of me gets obsessed with this packaging and blind to the realistic potential to benefit me, or at least to not harm me.
Cold showers and making my bed are mild examples. There are countless instances — legal, academic, relationships, finding directions, collaborations — where I turned down help or advice that could have helped because I was too obsessed with its delivery in the “tell me what to do” package and would rather figure it all out myself.
How many more years of clearer-headed empowerment have I turned down because of this allergy?
This allergy hasn’t destroyed me yet thanks to my indestructible double-edged sword — curiosity. It’s everywhere and all the time and with everyone.
Eventually I tried, in the absence of other people’s “you should do this”.
I noticed my satisfaction and tactile joy in maneuvering sheets through my fingers, demonstrating to myself that I an agent of change. In five minutes, I can turn a bedroom into an office.
I noticed the release of inhibitions in the cold shower — a routine I now call “liquid courage”.
Now I persist. Whether I’m at my house or yours, in Hong Kong, Philadelphia, Berlin, Hanoi, Kagoshime, Busan, in a village, in a high rise, or a dank hotel — my morning involves going for a walk and a cold shower, and some reading and journaling sprinkled in there.
Someone asked me if I still needed to walk on the morning of a boat trip that would involved a lot of swimming.
Yes, I said, and told them why.
They said — It sounds like you are saving the world.
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This is day 23 of Don’t Break the Chain, a class by Cole Schafer.
Today’s prompt — what is your Kryptonite — what are you deathly allergic to? Then, in what way are you like a cockroach, indestructible?
