Your Lorem Ipsem is Yoga

After I revoked my commitment to 60-day Bikram yoga challenge I DID decide that I wanted to keep documenting my experiences with the practice - on and off the mat, as they say. Today, there was not a lot of work life balance, but there certainly was a lot of life in work.

I am currently employed at an integrated marketing communications firm which, before the amazing new worlds of digital and social, was known simply as "Ad Agency." Ya know, Mad Men? As a copywriter, there is a lot of LOREM IPSUM in my life.

LOREM IPSUM is a section of a Latin treatise, from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC.

When graphic designers at the ad agencies create beautiful brochures and websites they make layouts first. They are really good at making images direct your eyes to the real copy (which, goes unread in this day and age without their magic).

LOREM IPSUM is the filler text the Magic makers (aka designers) use to occupy the space where real words get inserted after the design is approved. If real words are used, people will focus on those words and get distracted from the overall integrity and quality of the design itself...even if it was something inane like the quick blue fox jumped madly and then ate the brown dog.

I'll just copy paste part of the translation of the text about separating our understandings of pleasure and pain. Turns out that LOREM IPSUM is not only part of all insanely long work days, it is also a good lesson for getting tough when the going gets tough in a yoga room.

And now I present some of the translation from Cicero's text:

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. 

No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. 

To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

[33] On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain.

These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.

 From 45 BC. Cicero. Ya know, the guy who favored Pompey over Julius Caesar but flip-flopped like any good politician does - even in 45 BC. He probably didn't do a 30 day Bikram yoga challenge but I'm sure he still did have a bunch of stressful things to deal with and practiced some physical exercises. LIKE WARRIOR TRAINING. 

I don't know if Statesmen trained to be warriors in ancient Rome but I do feel like my life AND work  training is sure making me into an effective and peaceful warrior (see: Shambhala). Yoga hurts sometimes. So do long work days. In the end, the hurt stops greater hurts from happening later. 

Sweaty warrior training is a good idea. So is integrated marketing communications. So is Mad Men. So is lorem ipsum.