Plateaus

Athletes are very aware of their bodies. They know the ebbs and flows, they know when to push themselves and when they need to recover. Top athletes are masters at delivering a peak performance when it is needed. Most of us are not athletes though, most of us are not even very good at anything. Our lives are on a flatline more or less so there are no critical moments we are preparing for, we are living day to day or week to week, our goal is mere happiness or contentment if we can't even manage that much.
My struggles with my body are those of a man not so many years away from his fortieth birthday. When I am running or swimming or even rollerblading I am not doing it for anybody except myself. I have no audience to impress, my wife is not putting any pressure on me to be fitter or slimmer. When I start out on an exercise program I am normally overweight and I have kilos to lose, I have something to aim for. In the first months the kilos melt away but then you hit the wall, the plateau. In terms of my weight and shape I have stayed the same for months now. The books tell me that you are winning when you are not gaining. Is that it though? I need to be content with the plateau, the flatline, treading water, not backwards and not forwards either.
It's not just the body but the mind. I learn a new language and quickly pick up the fundamentals and before long I have the ability to express most basic concepts, to listen to conversations, watch television etc. The last weeks and months I have bombarded my mind with Japanese (and enjoyed it I might add) but doubts are already entering my mind. Is it worth all of this effort, what am I learning for? Am I learning to use what I have learned or just learning for learnings sake?
There was a time when I sat in university lecture theatres listening to lectures on crystal chemistry, tertiary phase diagrams, metallic glass, dislocations, grain boundaries, polymerization, sintering.... What was it all for? The top athlete has a goal just like the rock star, the Nobel prize seeking scientist or the entrepeneur sniffing the next deal. Most of us are living in a state of stasis though, we don't reach peaks, we reach plateaus unless we are lucky enough to find a true calling.