One of the coaches at my gym is a former Marine. At the gym, he coaches CrossFit and Olympic lifting classes.
He also loves to bake cookies.
He told me that some of his friends chide him for the fact that he’s an ex-Marine, weightlifter, intense guy who also bakes.
On the surface, the baking hobby doesn’t seem to fit in with the other elements of his personality.
But on a closer look, it’s a perfect fit.
Human Beings Are Multi-Faceted
First, let’s address the apparent dichotomy of an ex-Marine, weightlifter, intense guy who also loves to bake.
In my opinion, the fact that his baking doesn’t seem to fit with some of his other hobbies and experiences is a feature, not a bug.
Too often, modern life encourages linearity: find a niche, specialize, hone one craft or one aspect of your identity.
But that’s not authentic to human nature.
Human beings are multi-faceted by design. We have many archetypes that exist within us. One of the journeys of life is to get to know these various aspects of ourselves.
The more we nurture these various parts, the more well-rounded we become.
In life, it’s helpful to cultivate a variety of techniques to get what we want. Here’s a man who can embody both the warrior archetype and a nurturing archetype. He can shoot to kill or charm with cookies.
Connections Run Deeper
Beneath the surface, our different parts are often connected by underlying threads. It’s not by chance that this coach gravitates toward baking as a hobby.
Weightlifting is a technical sport. It involves quite a bit of math: adding weights on the bar, calculating percentages and proportions, scaling.
This coach is what I’d call a technical coach. In class he is less of a cheerleader and more of a teacher. He is very precise in giving cues and focused on form. He pays attention to little details.
Both weightlifting and coaching require the discipline of showing up every day. Coaching requires patience to work with clients who may not get things the first time.
These are the same skills and qualities involved in baking. Unlike cooking, baking is technical: it involves the alchemy of ingredients that must be in specific proportions and precisely measured to get good results.
Creative impulses have a place in baking, but it requires discipline and patience to test one variation at a time in order to figure out what works.
When this coach is baking, he’s using the same skills and qualities he shows at the gym, just in service of a different outcome.
The Illusion of Contradiction
We often think our interests need to “make sense” together. But human beings aren’t linear–we’re layered. We contain many facets that may seem unrelated on the surface.
Having parts of ourselves that seem to contradict each doesn’t mean they are in conflict. In fact, when we look below the surface, we can see the threads that tie things together.
Baking and barbells aren’t opposites; they’re just different expressions of precision, patience, and presence.
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