My one reader must have spread the word about last week’s blog because I have received comments about phone use that concur with my own thoughts that our ‘youth’ do not like the unpredictability of receiving an unplanned phone call from a parent. One friend said that when she called her daughter for a cosy chat on her way to work this week, the response was, ‘What the hell mother, I thought someone had died!’

I sound like a village elder and yet I am the first to double check that everything is alright if one of my brood should message asking if I am around for a chat later on. It seems that I too value control above all other capacities. I am someone who congratulates myself – and others – on controlling personal circumstances. I follow the doctrine of Marcus Aurelius who opines that we should, ‘be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved.’

Marcus, no offence but I clearly need to learn some adaptive water sports quickly. I need to swim with the tide and rest my legs a little.

I have always been someone who can get over-fixated on routines – and ironically, when I am tired, I hang on to them even more tightly. I am a little scared to know how I will behave if I unleash myself – the upside of this is that I am a very cheap date as I drink so little. I pretend that I like spontaneity, but the ‘Monica’ in me really prefers rules because they, ‘control the fun’. Then when something side-slams me, I thrive on the unpredictability.

I ponder this today because I have been grounded by own stubbornness and pig-headed refusal to take a break from running. I knew I had pulled a quad (technical term) weeks ago, but I have pushed through with denial, a massage gun and Nurofen…and have naturally just made things worse. Yesterday I ignored Himself’s advice to ‘Skive to survive’ and was too proud to admit to him that after limping through 10 miles and inching myself back up the 30 steps to our cottage, I had to go and research Stannah Stairlifts and find some Epsom salts. I may have to say goodbye to Strava.

Once I had finished crying I started some half-hearted research to see if there is any data or evolutionary explanation to back up my sense that we would rather experience pain than be in limbo. I need to go and dose up on Nurofen again, but in short I find that there was an experiment testing a foolhardy sample group who were tasked with turning over rocks to see if there was a snake lying beneath; the upshot was that all measures of their stress – subjective and objective – maxed out when uncertainty was at its highest. The participants were less stressed when it was certain that a snake lay beneath the rock than when there was a 50:50 chance. Proof that we share a reptilian brain with snakes perhaps? The evolutionary argument is that we relax around certainty (good or bad) but if we are in the Serengeti it may serve us better to keep our stress levels ramped up to stay on high alert.

What is particularly galling about my approach to life is that I also have a very low boredom threshold. I love being dragged kicking and screaming to try something new – admittedly I do not always tell my face. I work in a chop logic world – teaching – where there is huge rigidity (bells, timetable, term time) and yet the unexpected can happen at the flip of a coin because young people are blessed with impulsivity – unless it comes to calling their parents on a whim. It is a heady and addictive mix which is dangerous for a woman of my age who should start to consider diving into her refirement years. The irony of teaching Keat’s concept of Negative Capability to an A Level class does not escape me. (Keats encouraged us to dwell in uncertainties, mysteries and doubts, without any, ‘irritable reaching after fact and reason.’).

Well, I can say with confidence that I have irritably over-reached my quads in the hunt for the certainty of retaining my ‘local legend Strava status’. Yes, predictably shallow as charged. Surrender, not control, would be a better approach to life’s inevitable riskiness. Monks and mystics have always had it right; you cannot out-run risk, particularly if you are limping.

I promise to ponder upon my self-enforced learning but will also continue to avoid rocks and negativity. I plan for some spontaneity later on and may even don some beer goggles and swap my Nurofen for a glass of snake bite – just the one glass mind, for I do have school tomorrow. I may even give my kids a laugh and phone them – without the life jacket of a prior warning – when I am just a little squiffy. First I need to find my running shoes… just in case I need them in the morning.