Castles in the sky…

I almost feel like a racehorse at the Durban July, eagerly waiting for the gate to open.  After more than three weeks of no classes, little exercise, and a bad bout of flu, I can’t wait to be back at the studio on Monday morning!  And I hope all my members feel the same.

This holiday I heard a new word – “fata morgana”, the Italian term for a castle in the sky!  Beautiful, isn’t it?  I have been thinking about this – Don’t we all build castles in the air at the start of a new year – making resolutions, dreaming about goals that have always evaded us, and having huge expectations?

Or maybe we haven`t really done that the past two years, for there was this crazy Covid-thing, restricting us, taking lives and putting a huge damper on our “fata morganas”.

And now, for the first time in many months, we can, at last, really look forward to living life “almost normally” in 2022…

But let’s be honest – Covid or no Covid, most of us go through life, waiting for something to happen.  Sure, we dream, we close our eyes, build castles in the air about living the life we have always wanted, but then we open our eyes and think, dreams are for the stupid and naïve, and then we let go.  Or we simply give up.

It’s our limiting beliefs that crush our biggest dreams, with thoughts like, “I don’t have what it takes, it’s too late for me, or the time for my dream has to wait…”

Call it doubt, call it fear, call it ‘lack of motivation’. Sometimes, we simply fail to accept the fact that we are the ones responsible for our lives and, consequently, our own happiness.  We don’t acknowledge the fact that we have become pessimists…

The reason why pessimists don’t often shake hands with their dreams is probably because they stop wishing.  They leave the castles in the air and then, somehow manage to build a staircase down to reality.  They close their eyes to hope and fail to see the light when it shows up.

Maybe 2022 is lying before you like a huge mountain to climb – maybe you feel more optimistic – I don’t know what’s going through your mind.  We haven’t spoken in a while…

But, the English historian, Edward Gibbon, said many, many years ago: “There is more pleasure in building castles in the air than on the ground”, and, coming from a man who wrote “The History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire”, this must have been huge personal castle-building to write this beast of a book.   I can almost imagine Gibbons saying this as soon as he finished the very last page, putting down his feather pen and shaking loose his powdered wig.

Fact is, it’s the dreamers who can also take action that are the ones who make the world, and their own, a better place.  As the famous French poet Victor Hugo once said: “If you don’t build castles in the air, you won’t build anything on the ground.”

The expression “building castles in the air” means daydreaming about things that are far from our present reality.  As children we dwell on imaginative visions, but somehow, as we get older, we get criticized for daydreaming.  Society pressurizes us to match our dreams with reality.  But we tend to oversee the fact that dreaming is the first step towards achieving something meaningful.

Everything in the world is created twice – once in the mind and then again in reality. Think about it.  The computer, your phone, the chair you are sitting on, the roof over your head and that pen in your bag, are all there, just because someone, somewhere has thought about it first.

So, what is the harm in thinking big…?? What could you possibly lose by thinking big?

Let’s take on this new year, applying the words of the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.  Now put the foundations under them.”

It`s hard to read this quote of Thoreau in 2022 – almost 150 years after his death – and not think, “How clichéd”!  It`s equally hard to remember that Thoreau’s insights weren’t clichés when he wrote them!

I think what Thoreau leaves unsaid is that building castles in the air – having a unique, important vision – is itself incredibly hard work.

The start is never rosy – shedding those unwanted kilograms, changing a bad habit, healing a realtionship or starting an exercise program.  But the reward at the end is made up of all the little struggles put together.

You have the freedom to dream as much as your heart desires. So, dream huge.  Dream fearlessly, ridiculously.  What if it never happens?  What if it does?  It can’t if you don’t dream it first.

The dream is the thing that fuels you – whether it’s a realistic goal or a castle-in-the-sky-way-out-of-reach ideal, it’s the thing that nudges you out of your comfort zone.  Of course, we should be realistic, but since 2020 we’ve been imagining worst case scenarios – I think in 2022 it’s time to prepare for the most positive outcome you could ever imagine.  Falling short is not failure. Not trying is failure.

Let’s stop WAITING for it to happen.  Let’s MAKE it happen this year.  Don`t wait until February to start living in January. 

What does your castle look like in 2022?  Is it change?  Then don’t wait for Monday.  Or the first.  Or the last.  You can change on an idle Sunday when everything inside of you begin to stir and rattle and bang and whisper,

“I am ready”…

2022 can’t make you a hero, neither can “fata morgana”, but you can…

Yours in fitness

Mirna