I have been a running since I was 13 years old. I started off jogging to the end of my block and back, in an attempt to lose baby fat and finally be on the outside what I felt in the inside. What I discovered at a young enough age is that running would always be about the event itself, and not so much the way it changed the shape of my body. The most challenging times of my life have often aligned with this strange inability to run properly, to catch my breath, to feel the power of my body - the mind taking over and rendering me powerless.
I have been running again, committed to at least three runs a week, and each one of them has been slow, tedious, marked by measured progress, but never that natural rhythm that I have felt before and have come to recognize as a barometer of my stress level subsiding, of challenges coming into check and good times potentially on the horizon. To get through my runs, I put on music and I think of a specific topic to focus on, hoping that these provide me with enough distraction to get through the run.
Today's 'running' topic was going to form this week's blog - I was going to explore those aspects of me that are not grey. Ten minutes into the run, Tom Petty's "American Girl" came on . . . the lyrics "And if she had to die tryin' She had one little promise she was gonna keep O yeah, all right Take it easy, baby Make it last all night" and those lyrics which I had heard so many times before took on a whole new meaning.
I have never been, but have always admired (and loved greatly) those people who are able to work very hard to achieve a goal, making mostly good decisions along the way and achieving with grace that which they have set out to do. More often than not, I approach opportunity from completely the wrong direction. And though I am earnest in making promises to be a better self, to do more in this world than is just enough, I often take on more than is humanly possible, thus making it impossible to be at the top of my game, or even worse, getting too invested in something that requires pragmatism, while other commitments fall by the wayside.
But there is this side of me that is unique, that I know isn't in those people who seem to always know the right direction to take and act on it - I am a true scientist in examining where my life experiments have gone wrong, what could have been done differently, and I am able to evaluate my life from an observational standpoint, letting go of any disappointment, guilt, etc., that might hang around a bit longer in the lives of people who tend not to make mistakes.
I am relentless, truly determined to get on the next horse that will take me to the next destination, knowing that it might not fit some imagined ideal, but it is still very important for me to keep going, to keep pushing forward, and exploring those opportunities that might not have been available to me had I not gone in the wrong direction in the first place.
This aspect of myself is what makes me able to keep going when most reasonable people would have stopped and waited it out for better circumstances. It is that essential part of self that has made my life incredibly full, way more than the average person, despite any setbacks along the way.
Over the last 4 years and in chronological order, I got married, sold an apartment, moved in with in-laws, helped husband through a tough time, changed roles in my career twice, started my MA, broke my foot, got pregnant, got sick (hospitalized for nearly four weeks), had my daughter, welcomed 12 Americans into my home over six-week period with newborn, finished my dissertation, traveled from Ireland to Australia for my friend's wedding, traveled to the US for Thanksgiving, went back to work (in Ireland), relocated family to San Francisco while still working as close to full time as possible until my daughter was in daycare, back into full-time work, started volunteer libary project, and experienced another major change in my career.
And even as I continue to head in the wrong direction on a regular basis, I know that I will look back in another 4-years-time feeling a sense of a life well lived.
Today, I felt that rhythm again, not the whole run, only small snippets, but it was natural, the body and the mind finally appreciating what the one brings to the other. These are my moments of clarity, not in the cerebral sense, but in the same way that Tom Petty's song makes me feel. I want to get up and dance, sing, and keep that one promise to myself, to make it last all night.
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