So the title of this blog is “Training for Someday.” Lately, I’ve been challenged to deeply consider and redefine my views regarding myself, love, tradition, labels, nutrition, and life. It’s been a confusing and uncomfortable, yet enlightening experience, that makes me appreciate every friendship, touch, meal, and experience with more joy and simplicity. At the same time, this renewed appreciation of life is allowing the dreamer in me to consider lots of options for what the future might hold. I don’t know which ones I’ll have the opportunity to experience, but I want to be able to say “yes” when the chance comes. Where is the balance between patience and action? The “early bird gets the worm,” yet “good things come to those who wait.” Do we save for the opportunities of a tomorrow that may never come at the expense of living a more full life today?
So far, that I haven’t related much of that to a running analogy…I guess sometimes viewing things in light of running is simpler. This one, however, seems about as circular of an argument in running form, too. Do you run in the moment or “bank” suffering because you want to accomplish a goal? I don’t think either is wrong…and I’m sure they can co-exist. Is it too much of a dream, however, to be just as joyful accomplishing a race as returning home to training the next week? Can we reconcile hating even a moment of our lives (track intervals, a terrible job, etc.), knowing that it could be our last, because it prepares us for a moment that has yet to happen?
I believe in the concept of “no pain, no gain”…in discomfort, we grow. Perhaps the answer is to find joy in every suffering, not because of what it will “bank” for tomorrow, but because it means we’re alive… A Utopian society never flourishes, because pain does not exist; therefore, true love and joy cannot exist.
That doesn’t completely reconcile the difference between the parts of my heart that dream about tomorrow and the ones that are happy with today, but at least it gives them each a space in the same room…
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