tear and repair

Your muscles can guide your growth. When you’re lifting or you’re running or you’re doing yoga, you are strengthening your muscles. On a micro level, what’s happening in there is a bunch of small, healthy tearing. The fibers tear. Then, with food and sleep before your next tear, they repair. The torn-then-healed muscle is stronger than the muscle that is never torn at all. 

Tear, repair - that’s the cycle.

You need calibration in both halves of the cycle. Tear too aggressively and you aren’t growing that muscle - you’re injuring it. Repair with too little time or too little fuel, and you also court injury. 

When I’ve encountered wisdom in the workplace, it has often appeared as an instance of tear and repair. Usually, I’m seeing a leader model how to do both, one after the other, over and over, with confidence that the next is coming. Run like hell; recharge. Take a risk; learn from the risk. Sell with conviction; improve with feedback. Push the team hard; book a retreat.

Younger, more frightened people (me, often, when I was watching these wise leaders) fell prey to a narrower gospel. Worship in the House of Tear or in the House of Repair but never across the schism. I was a devotee of hustle culture or self-care culture, not a more patient, more pragmatic contributor that allowed each their season, let them play moon and sun to one another.

If a relationship feels flat, it might be a sign you haven’t risked a tear (recently) and need to try. It might be a sign that you’ve yet to repair an old injury, however slight. Either way, you might be pretending the wheel of tear and repair doesn’t have to turn to move forward.

-eric