I have taught the Sunday morning class at Lake Zürich for a year and a half. I have wanted to skip almost every one of them. Saturday night this happens, every week, like clockwork.
The argument starts around 22:00 the night before. Not loud — just a low hum behind everything I'm doing. The dishes, the last text, the brushing of teeth. You don't have to go. The trains run late. The lake will be cold. There are five regulars who show up rain or shine — they will be fine without me. Maybe I'll watch sunrise from the window instead, like a civilised person.
By 06:30 I am at the train station with mat bag. I do not know how I get there. I have walked the route forty times now. My feet do it. The argument is still ongoing in some part of me but my feet have made the call.
Three things I tell myself.
One. The hardest part is the door. Once I am out of the door, on the platform with my coffee, the argument is already over — I just don't know it yet. Fifty per cent of showing up is the fourteen seconds between deciding and locking the apartment behind me. I have learned to make those fourteen seconds the whole project. Everything after is downhill.
Two. Nobody who came regretted coming. I have a small notebook in which I write things women say to me on the boardwalk after class. I have read it back this morning, before writing this. There are 87 entries. None of them say "I wish I'd stayed in bed."
Three. The lake will not always be there. Not the lake itself — the this Sunday version of the lake. Sunday in April is different from Sunday in October. Sunday with the regulars I have today is different from Sunday next year, when some of them will have moved or gotten pregnant or stopped coming for reasons I won't know. Every Sunday is the only one of its kind. I think this when I am tying my shoes.
One thing I tell the women.
When someone tells me they almost didn't come — and many do, on the way out — I always say the same thing: good. you should fight yourself a little. then come anyway. That little argument means it matters to you. The win is not in stopping the argument. The win is in showing up while it is still going.
The thing about the lake at 08:30 on a Sunday is that the argument is fully over by 09:00 and you didn't even need to win it. You needed to just show up while it was happening, and then the lake takes care of the rest.
See you at the lake.