lance armstrong-"Every Second Counts";from the chapter on "My park bench."

here are some words from the book by lance armstrong that i wanted to save so i blogged them. i hope that i am legally allowed to use them as there is no intent to violate his copyright for profit. the question has been for some time now- how do you live beyond it?
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" I know this, too. the seize-the-day mentality that i carried with me from the illness doesn't always serve me well. It's too tempting, in the throes of it, to quit on any problem that seems hard or inconvenient, to call it a waste of precious time and move on to something more immediate. Some things require patience.

The question of how to live through cancer, for me, has become: how do you live beyond it? Survivorship is not unlike competition; both are emotionally complicated, and neither necessarily delivers pat answers, no matter how nice it is to think so. In both cases, you have to constantly ask yourself what the real lessons are, what's worth transferring to the rest of your life?

But both cancer and competition have taught me one great, incontrvertible lesson that i think every person can learn from, whether healthy or ill, athlete or layman.
The lesson is this: personal comfort is not the only thing worth seeking.

Whether the subject is bike racing, or cancer, or just living, comfort only takes us to a point that's known. Since when did sheets with the right thread count, a coffee maker, and an electric toothbrush become the only things worth having or working toward? Too often, comfort gets in the way of inner reckonings.

For instance, there's no math that can tell you why some people ride in the Tour de France, some never enter the race, and some ride but don't risk. I've known guys who never quite put it all on the line, and you know what? They lost. One minute, after neafrly a month of suffering can decide who wins. Is it worth it? It depends on whther you want to win. I have the will to suffer. I can do that.

There are parts unknown with regard to human suffering and those are the parts when it's just about pain and forfeit. How do you make yourself do it? You remind yourself that you're fulfilling your obligation to get the best from yourself, and that all axchievement is born out of sacrifice.

The experience of suffering is like the experience of exploring,of finding something unexpected and revelatory. When you find the outermost thresholds of pain, or fear, or uncertainty, what you experience afterward is an expansive feeling, a widening of your capabilities.

Pain is good because it teaches your body and soul to improve. It's almost as though your unconscious says, "I'm going to remember this, remember how it hurt, and i'll increase my capacities so that the next time, it doesn't hurt as much." The body literally builds on your experiences, and a physique and temperamnet that have gone through a Tour de France one year will be better the next year, because it has memory to build upon. Maybe the same is true of living too.

If you had a largely unexamined life, you will eventually hit a wall. Some barriers can be invisible until you smack into them. The key then, is to investigate the wall inside yourself, so you can go beyond it. The only way to do that is to ask yourself painful questions-just as you try to stretch yourself physically."