Life is Never Easy

Drifting my way from Van Buren to Caribou, something occurs to me.  After I wrote the Secret to my Success post I had a couple of people tell me they wished it were that easy.  I do too.  I never said it was easy.  Losing all that weight and resisting cookies, cakes, pies, and deep fried whatever is not an easy task.  It is immensely satisfying.

My best runs come in the winter.  My favorite run was when it was 19 out and there was snow.  Not a lot of it, but enough to stick to my beard, eyebrows, and eyelashes.  I was at my parents’ house; so, my choices were stay inside next to the fire place, or head out into the dead of winter.  I could have stayed inside reading, I could have had a cup of hot cider, I could have had ginger snaps with it; but I chose the run.  It was the best run on my life.  On that run I decided I did not want to work in my current office.   I made the decision and five months later all indications are I will be successful in my new job.   I made that decision early on in the run and felt liberated.  I had set my mind free of two years of angst and trouble.

I felt amazingly connected to nature, welcomed.  Sitting in the house snow falling in a light wind appear like diagonal white streaks against the solid landscape.   Putting yourself in motion makes the landscape fluid allowing you to slow down the flakes and focus on them.  Instead of being driven by wind, now they floated with me, or I with them.  As if I was part of the squall.  I felt like I was supposed to be there, in that moment I was meant to be running.  Nature wanted me to play with her.  The wind would eddy around a house or a hedge and push the flakes back into me, up, around, and over.  Gleefully chiding me to continue on with them.  I had to turn back.  For one and a half miles I had Nature as a running partner.

What would I have gotten if I had stayed inside?  Probably a good conversation with my father, maybe read my daughter a book, or had a nap.  As it happened I got those things, too…probably.  I don’t remember, but I remember that run vividly.  Was it easy to deny myself the hot cider, gingersnaps, and book?  No it was not.  Look what I got in return.  I didn’t set out to have the best run of my life, but I did.

It gets easier the longer you do anything.  Knowing the disappointment and the reward can make you anticipate how you will feel, and you start to make decisions in a different way.  I knew I would have been disappointed in myself had I chosen the fire.  I knew I would be rewarded with that, now all too familiar, feeling of pride at heading out there no matter the weather.  What I didn’t know, is to what degree.