Because we all need some Bill and Ted

Socrates, philosopher and savior of Bill and Ted (“He loves baseball…”), instructed us to know ourselves.  He probably wasn’t thinking about fitness at the time, but you never know:  the Greeks did invent the Olympics.

With Halloween behind us and stress-inducing holidays ahead of us, Socrates’s words might come in handy as preventives.  We need to think about how we handle all those celebrations.  Not how we want to, not at first, but how we actually do.  This might mean facing the fact that we are likely to eat half a pie furtively hiding in the kitchen doing dishes to avoid the home movies.  Or that the most important item on the grocery list for the family gathering is vodka.

Then we get to think about what we get out of whatever coping technique we have chosen.  In the first example, we get both escape and clean dishes.  In the second, what we get might range from boldness to forgetfulness to assault and battery.  Some of those things might be more desirable than others.

Finally, we get to apply what we know about ourselves to figure out what alternative coping techniques will get us what we want, like, for example, getting the kids to do the dishes while we head outside for a nice long run far from yet another movie of younger selves waving in uncomfortable clothes.

We can survive.  We can even thrive.