AO: DMZ
When: 10/10/2023
Number of Pax: 15
DR Names:
Number of FNGS: 0
FNG Names:
QIC: Den Mother
Introduction
Shortly after I grabbed this Q 5-Putt reached out and asked if I had plans set. I hadn’t, and he offered up his idea as it was going to be on 10/10. I hadn’t made that connection and was glad he reached out!
Warm-O-Rama
- Motivators from 6
- Abe Vigodas IC x 10
- Imperial Walkers IC x 10
- Good Mornings IC x 10
- Arm Circles IC x 10 forwards/backwards
The Thang
Start at the goal line and traverse 10 yards with the assigned movement. Then perform 10 reps of the assigned movement. Continue in this form for 50 yards.
- Round 1: Bear Crawls/Burpees
- Round 2: Duck Walk/Merkins
- Round 3: Flying Nuns/No Surrenders
- Round 4: Bernie Sanders/Makhtar N’Diayes
- Round 5: Dutch Skate/Big Boys
- Round 6: Frankensteins/Squats
After every 2 rounds (100 yards) the group did an Indian Run around the perimeter of the field.
The Pearl Jam album Ten was played from the start. When the song Why Go came on, the Pax were brought to midfield for disruption with a Happy Jacks interlude for the duration of the song. Happy Jacks = 5 SSH IC followed by 2 Jump Squats. The cadence on this was varied from normal to very fast.
For Mary, we did Morties down to 6 Big Boys, then finished with a set of 15 Big Boys.
Circle of Trust
The Blind Men and the Elephant
Six blind men are brought to examine an elephant that has come to their village.
The first man touches the trunk and says that the elephant is like a thick snake.
The second man touches the tusk and says that the elephant is like a spear.
The third man touches the ear and says that the elephant is like a fan.
The fourth man touches the leg and says that the elephant is like a tree.
The fifth man touches the side and says the elephant is like a wall.
The sixth man touches the tail and says the elephant is like a rope.
Each of the blind men is convinced that he is right and that everyone else is wrong.
American poet John Godfrey Saxe’s version of the story concludes with a simple, beautiful line:
Each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong.
The moral of this story is that the information we have about the world represents a tiny fraction of the information available, yet we use it to form a view of how the world works.
The world is always infinitely more complex than our narrow observation windows would allow us to understand.
I’m reminded of David Foster Wallace’s famous This Is Water speech in 2005:
“The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.”
You can either choose to (A) cling to the notion that your view is the absolute truth or (B) embrace a degree of humility about your views and open your mind to change.
The goal of Path A is to preserve the notion of our own intelligence. The goal of Path B is to broaden and improve our view of reality by acquiring new and better information.
We should all choose Path B…
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” ― Mark Twain
At the end of every quarter, ask yourself what you’ve changed your mind on recently.
If you can’t think of anything, that’s a bad thing.
Fighting back against perspective blindness and opening your mind to new ideas is a tried and true path to consistent, compounding growth.
The next time you want to reject an alternative viewpoint without thinking, remember the story of the Blind Men and the Elephant:
The world is much more complex than any of us can possibly understand.
Naked Man Moleskin
I liked the format of this workout (thanks 5-Putt!) and will be using it again. The football field at DMZ is ideal for it, but it will work well at any AO.
Quatro shed additional insight on the Blind Men with the Elephant story. Apparently a blind woman was also present. She touched a part of the elephant that made her think it was Quatro. Draw your own conclusions as to which part of the elephant she touched.