Dr. Patrick W. McCary
I can see in my minds' eye my two support partners as they strain to understand me. I tell them about myself, my hopes, my fears, my belief in God and what kind of person I want to be. I can see myself listening to them as they do the same. This process has gone on weekly for the past seven years, except for the year I spent in Hawaii. These fellow adventurers in life, Dr. Robert Stewart and Dr. Robert Shellenberger, know the struggles and joys of my life and soul, and I know theirs. We talk about ourselves and how we can express our uniqueness creatively in our lives.
Some people think this kind of self-exploration is selfish. They think it is a self-centered search that makes a person individualistic and egocentric. But, healthy, growing people must be honest about life's problems and struggles. They seek harmony, love and peace for themselves and their loved ones through personal evaluation that is never easy and often painful.
The struggle for us in modern times is to find a process that will help us discover and live out our uniqueness through our vocations and avocations. It is not enough to merely accumulate more and more material things. It is not an easy time to engage in this search. Now, more than ever before, a new kind of person is emerging. What will these "people of the future" look like, and what will they value?
I return to the work of Carl Rogers. Rogers has spent a lifetime developing theory and conducting psychotherapy and research in the areas of individual and group psychology. One of his most recent books, "A Way of Being", has a chapter describing the characteristics of Rogers' person of tomorrow.
Rogers attributes 12 characteristics to individuals who struggle to cope with a changing world while reaching for self-actualization. I suggest that these characteristics are nurtured by the kind of lifestyle and experiences that we see emerging among triathletes and other endurance athletes:
1) Openness - These persons have an openness to the world - both inner and outer. They are open to experience, to new ways of seeing, new ways of being, new ideas and concepts.
2) Desire for authenticity - I find these persons value communication as a means of telling it the way it is. They reject hypocrisy, deceit, and double talk of our culture. They are open, for example about their sexual relationships, rather than leading a secretive or double life.
3) Skepticism regarding science and technology - They have a deep distrust of our current science and the technology that is used to conquer the world of nature and to control the world's people. On the other hand, when science - such as biofeedback - is used to enhance self-awareness and control of the person by the person, they are eager supporters.
4) Desire for wholeness - These persons do not like to live in a compartmentalized world - body and mind, health and illness, intellect and feeling, science and common sense, individual and group, same and insane, work and play. They strive rather for a wholeness of life with thought, feeling, physical energy, psychic energy, healing energy and being integrated in experience.
5) Wish for intimacy - They are seeking new forms of closeness, of intimacy, of shared purpose. They are seeking new forms of communication in such a community - verbal as well as non-verbal, feeling as well as intellectual.
6) Process persons - They are keenly aware that the one certainty of life is change - that they are always in process, always changing. They welcome this risk-taking way of being and are vitally alive in the way they face change.
7) Caring - These persons are caring and eager to be of help to others when the need is real. It is a gentle, subtle, nonmoralistic, nonjudgmental caring. They are suspicious of the professional "helpers".
8) Attitude toward nature - They feel a closeness to, and a caring for, elemental nature. They are ecologically minded, and they get their pleasure from an alliance with the forces of nature, rather than in the conquest of nature.
9) Anti-institutional - These individuals have an antipathy for any highly structured, inflexible, bureaucratic institution. They believe that institutions should exist for people, not the reverse.
10) The authority within - These persons have a trust in their own experience and a profound distrust of external authority. They make their own moral judgements, even openly disobeying laws that they consider unjust.
11) The unimportance of material things - These individuals are fundamentally indifferent to material comforts and rewards. Money and material status symbols are not their goal. They can live with affluence, but it is in no way necessary to them.
12) A yearning for the spiritual - These persons of tomorrow are seekers. They wish to find a meaning and purpose in life that is greater than the individual. Some are led into cults, but more are examining all the ways by which humankind has found values and forces that extend beyond the individual. They wish to live a life of inner peace. Their heroes are spiritual persons - Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Teilhard de Chardin. Sometimes, in altered states of consciousness, they experience the unity and harmony of the universe.
Dr. Patrick W. McCary, avid Triathlete, Ironman and psychologist, combines his understanding of human nature with first-hand knowledge of endurance athletics. Laugh, cry, love and move to your highest potential. These excerpts are taken from Dr. McCary's book "The Road To Kona Never Ends; The Endurance Athlete - Deeper Dimensions."
Return to Kailua Bay Community 08/28/04