Race

Yesterday, everything I’ve been working towards for the past five months did not come to an end, but a beginning. It sparked the beginning of a passion, it lit a fire, a strength, and a determination; it was the start of something great.

Words cannot express how I felt after leaving the starting line at Coastal Grand Mall in Myrtle Beach. With the rising suns cascade of colors flooding the horizon and Jordan Sparks, “This is my now,” playing on my MP3, I couldn’t help but smile (almost cry). Never have I felt more alive, more in the moment, and more content with being exactly where I was, doing exactly what I was doing. And as I settled into pace as we rounded the mall, breathing in deep the chill of the wind and salt of the ocean, I felt a passion I’ve yet to experience.

 After running my first half marathon, I can proudly say I am in love. I’m in love with the feeling of working for something. I’m in love with the temptation and persistent desire to push myself beyond my limits and past my capabilities of endurance. I am in love with blurring the line between running and flying, pain and pleasure, fatigue and the feeling of being more alive than ever.

I can’t wait to do it again. 

Horizon

We often focus so much on trying to write the definition to our lives and in the midst of this forget that many times it is life that ends up defining us. The years shape far more than the face in the mirror. Whether there is a method to this madness or not remains unclear. We try to place together the many puzzle pieces of our existance all the while assuming that there is indeed a master blueprint to be followed, a pattern to take shape, a known quantity to be found.

All that can be known is that time does seem to change at least most things. Wounds may heal, but scars are always left behind even when they go unnoticed or ignored. Like wind on stone, we are worn down. Like wood in the hands of the Whittler we are changed in an instant and are never the same again. Contours form where once was youthful innocence. It seems we are much more the sum of our scars than that part of us that remains unscathed.

Free will plays its part, yet more often than not, in reprising its usual role of choosing how to handle circumstance rather than defining the circumstance itself. This uncertain entity we call life trudges perpetually on with a deaf ear turned to both our approval and rejection. We cannot stop moving forward even when we desire nothing more than a momentary pause. What remains is only to choose the direction we want to go. From there we wait to see what mysterious horizon waits to greet our sojourner eyes.

The Station

Tucked away in our subconscious is an idyllic vision. We see ourselves on a long trip that spans the continent. We are traveling by train. Out the windows we drink in the passing scenes of cars on nearby highways, or children waving at a crossing, or cattle grazing on a distant hillside, or smoke pouring from a power plant, or row upon row of corn and wheat, of flatlands and valleys, or mountains and rolling hillsides, or city skylines and village halls.
But uppermost in our minds is the final destination. On a certain day at a certain hour we will pull into the station. Bands will be playing and flags waving. Once we get there so many wonderful dreams will come true and the pieces of our lives will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. How restlessly we pace the aisles, damning the minutes for loitering- waiting, waiting, waiting for the station.
"When we reach the station, that will be it!" we cry. " When i am 18." When I buy my new Mercedes-Benz!" When i put the last kid through college." When i get a promotion." When i read the age of retirement, i shall live happily ever after."
Sooner or later we much realize there is no station, no one place to arrive at once and for all. The true joy of life is the trip. The station is only an illusion. It constantly outdistances us.
So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, climb more mountains, eat more ice cream, go barefoot more often, swim more rivers, watch more sunsets, laugh more, cry less. Life must be lived as we go along. The station will come soon enough.