Dick's Blog
Pushing the Envelope, Without It Pushing Back
Pushing the Envelope means to surpass normal limits, any boundary pushing activity, or attempting something that might be viewed as radical or risky in achieving a new physical accomplishment. Two good examples would be the advances you see every four years in the challenging sports of Olympic snowboarding and gymnastics.
As a hiker, I constantly pushed the envelope, increasing the number of mountains to climb. First, it was all the mountains in the New York Adirondack High Peak Region over four-thousand feet. Then I added the New Hampshire four-thousand footers, then all the sixty-eight New England four thousand footers, the peaks of the Catskills of New York over thirty-five hundred feet, then the hundred highest peaks in New England, the hundred highest in New York, climbing the Presidential Mountains in New Hampshire in winter including Mt. Washington, and many more in New York and New England in winter, from day hiking to backpacking, from trail walking to bushwhacking and route finding where there are no trails, snowshoeing, climbing with crampons and ice axe in subzero temperatures and windchills, pushing the envelope. The list goes on.
Now, my envelope is more limited, just getting through the night and getting out of bed with minimum pain. That has proved to be bigger than life, way beyond my hiking challenges. My wife and kids are hoping I show some measure of improvement following my recent emergency back surgery. They expect me to tell them that I am experiencing less pain each day or week or month. One month following my surgery, I'm experiencing the same pain. Am I discouraged? I am being tested, but I do view progress in my own way. My rationale is, if I define the envelope as the boundary, threshold, or limit where I experience the same pain, then I'm making headway if I'm pushing or expanding the envelope, meaning expanding my activity and mobility within that pain envelope or threshold. I'm doing more, achieving better performance, at the same pain. One thing I've done is graduate from a walker to my trusty hiking poles, the indoor ones with rubber tips to protect the hardwood floors and rugs, the outdoor ones with carbide tips for gripping the terrain. What self-respecting hiker would ever use a walker. Expanding the envelope, I just "hiked" to the back yard to inspect the bird feeder. I'm also starting to cook out on the propane fired grill on the back deck.
As the engineer in me, another way at looking at this is to imagine a spherical snow globe with its outer transparent surface and inner volume, detail, and scenery. The surface area of a sphere is proportional to the square of its diameter or D2. The volume of a sphere is proportional to the cube of its diameter or D3. The ratio of its volume to surface area is proportional to D3 divided by D2 which equals D. Think of the surface area as the envelope, my pain boundary or threshold. The volume is my performance, my mobility, the positive advances in my recuperation. As I recover from surgery and push the envelope or its diameter, D, the ratio of my performance to my pain threshold increases proportionally to the diameter, D. As I recuperate, the snow globe keeps getting bigger with increasing detail and performance. That is good.
If I exceed or push beyond the envelope, I'll pay for my indulgence, resulting in higher pain, setting me back in my recuperation. It's best not practicing the "no pain-no gain" philosophy, rather staying behind the pain. In my overconfidence, I exceeded the pain limit and am paying the price. Just when I was feeling better for a few days, I seems like I'm starting all over again. My wife and kids encouraged me to stand up straighter in my back brace, which I will be wearing for three months to assure and protect the slow fusion process of vertebrae in my low back. I'm too bent over in my walker (one with wheels and tennis balls). So, I leaned back against the counter and held myself straighter, happy to do so, feeling kind of good in the place where it hurts. That night I experienced severe muscle spasms. I had exceeded the pain boundary, envelope, or threshold, not staying within it. My question is, when and what is too much? How do you push the envelope without tearing past it? Two steps forward, one step back is ok. Sometimes it's two steps back. When I push the envelope, I wish it didn't push back so hard.
Flight Risk Legal Definition: Someone accused of a crime and considered likely to flee from the country or the court's jurisdiction before their trial begins.
The shortest possible interval of time in the science of quantum mechanics is called a "Planck Time" unit, which is approximately 10-44 seconds. The scientist, Max Planck, derived this definition around the year 1900. One Planck Time unit is one divided by an enormous number, one multiplied by ten forty-four times. Shorter than this miniscule time interval, all known laws of physics break down. Spatial dimensions, time, mass, and energy are granular and totally unpredictable. Anything can happen, although vanishingly improbable, even the creation of a new universe. To put short intervals of time in larger and slightly more understandable terms, light travels at 186,000 miles per second. It travels the distance of one foot in one nanosecond or one billionth of a second or 10-9 seconds. That's one divided by one multiplied by ten nine times, still a very small number.
Humorists have devised an anecdotal means of expressing the very smallest interval of time. It's often expressed in a simple question and answer that we all can appreciate, "What is the shortest possible interval of time?" The answer is, "The time it takes after the light turns green before the guy behind you honks their horn, telling you to move your car and get out of their way."
I have an anecdotal story about another smallest interval of time. It was impressed on me on my recent stay in the hospital for spine surgery, and the chance that an accidental fall could ruin everything accomplished during that surgery. My status as a patient could be termed as a "fragile" person who could be harmed in a fall, or even cause litigious actions against the hospital for not keeping them safe.
Naturally, they are very concerned about patient safety and don't want them getting up and leaving their hospital bed without the assistance from the nursing staff. All the nurses and staff carry a safety belt that they put around you, even for a short visit to the john. The use of a walker with wheels is also mandatory. That is placed far away from the hospital bed so that the patient knows it must be retrieved by a member of the staff before it can be used.
Unknown to me, in the interest of my safety, my bed was equipped with a pressure transducer or sensor to warn when my weight was no longer pressing evenly on the mattress. That signal was instantly transmitted to the nursing station to warn them that the patient had shifted his weight on the bed. Activation of the sensor represented a possible "flight risk" of a patient, under the surveillance of the watchful eye of the hospital, attempting to leave their jurisdiction before the their official release from the hospital. I wasn't fleeing, just barely contemplating sitting up and hanging my legs over the side of the bed, relieving the pressure of the mattress on the painful brand new 8-inch incision running down the base of my spine. I'm sure that with all the serious drugs in me (I could be delirious or at least impaired) that even contemplating moving to the edge of the bed was a dangerous proposition.
I had no sooner, and painfully shifted my weight on the bed, when the monitor, maybe in the blink of a Planck Time unit, "honked" the nurses' station and a nurse appeared instantaneously to restrain my motion. It's a little more complicated than my "green light/honk" analogy, but I was impressed that the hospital was looking out for my best interest and could do that at the speed of light. Kudos for keeping me safe and supervising my stay at the hospital. The fact is, I needed all the supervision I could get. This "fragile" patient really appreciates the compassionate and expert care they provided. In gratitude, I gave them the highest marks in the on-line patient survey they sent me within a nanosecond of arriving home from the hospital.
My dream after this back surgery, and a lengthy recuperation, is to get back doing what I love to do, hiking. You can now see why this hiker is frustrated. The recovery time for this surgery is at least three months.
"Taking a Walk" by Dick Sederquist
Dick Sederquist has just published on Amazon his fourth memoir "Taking a Walk: Stories and Reflections on Pathways Old and New" (2022), which follows his previous memoirs "Hiking Out" (2007), "Inside and Outside" (2011), and "Hiking Out Again" (2021). Much of Dick's writing reflects and refers to his Unitarian/Universalist experience and values. The 100 short stories and reflections in "Taking a Walk" celebrate the challenges that come with everyday life, from missing the camp-side coffee specialty of a deceased friend, to encouraging a teary stranger bound for a job interview, to stories of his high school overindulgences, and to this avid hiker's own frustrations with his decreasing mobility. Each of Dick's essays is a postcard-sized memory of the unexpected joys and sorrows of life as seen through his unique prism.
If you ever come across one of these in the snowy woods, you will know who made it.
"HIKING OUT AGAIN" now available at Amazon. This completes a trilogy with my earlier memoirs, "Hiking Out" and "Inside and Outside", all available as e-books and paperbacks. Just search at Amazon: Books by Dick Sederquist
Topics: Surviving depression, my secular prison ministry, love of science, humor, spirituality, travel, musings on contemporary issues, life seen through the eyes of a hiker. Short stories and essays. Something for everyone