Long Road to Long Distance

The night before race day. The night before my first race day.

A thousand thoughts are running the 10 km through my head - and almost all of them deal with why I have no right to be sitting here, with a pounding heart, anticipating race day. Thousands of excuses, ranging from the “I absolutely cannot do this" through the "what happens if I can’t finish" right on past the "what if I need to pee" and back to the " I can't"......

I am 54. No, I have never participated in any run of this kind or any kind before. Ever.

No, I have not trained for years and months on end. I don’t have the right clothes or shoes or sweat vaporizing socks.

I am asthmatic. I am diabetic. I am terrified. How dare I?

But there burns deep within me a small voice who for the longest time has wanted to dare to try. To change my view of the middle aged overweight smoker that I was into this person who can DO this. I had lost the weight. But still the voices, perceived and real – telling me how absolutely ridiculous. To get a grip. To be realistic.

My question on perception of reality is this: Our view of the world and our essential view of our self are born in our formative years by the information and data that we take in from our surroundings and those that fill it.

If I have always been told that the world is flat, and was never allowed to question that fact, and one day I saw that it was really round – what then does that discovery do for all the other beliefs I hold? Are there other things that I hold to be true and absolute that maybe are not? How then can anything, including myself be real? What then is the truth? How does one then go about rebuilding what is essentially a new reality, a new truth, a new existence based now on - what?

Now here is the thing – could those who fed me the data, the environment, the caretakers, the people – could they (dare I say it) have been WRONG?

Can I really build something NEW? Different? Something else? Could I then (dare I say it) have been RIGHT?

I think this is, for me probably the biggest thing to come to terms with – that all those buried hopes and dreams, aspirations and wants and desires that I had and have are not then the ramblings of a selfish, stupid, ugly kid who grew into a selfish stupid ugly adult, but they could actually be legitimate aims and goals in the life of a fairly competent and productive human being, who is as deserving as the next person to be allowed to fill her space and purpose on this earth. If we take a fact of nature that all that is, is, and all that is has a purpose – then if I am here, I am. And my place can only be filled by me. Not because others pity me, or allow me, or grant me that place but because it was always mine from the start and not anyone else’s to permit or give, or, more importantly – take away and deny.

So what then, does all this then mean in reality? How can this be translated into something useful for change and forward growth? To my mind the most significant gain here is the wonderful word – choice. It actually means that I get to choose!! I finally get to decide. How thrilling, how absolutely terrifying! Me? We are back to me. No disapproval? No accountability and “may I please” followed by long explanations and justifications?

And if “they” were wrong – because the reality shows so ( the world is indeed round and not flat) then the “unlearning” process can be allowed to be that much more guilt free – because it is not going against, it is in that correction and redefinition and in the acknowledgment of that terrible error, we give ourselves permission to be free.

And what about the wasted years? The years of being told the world was flat and not having the option to question and having had to live according to that creed for that was what we knew? What about the professions, partners and paths we followed and chose for all the wrong reasons? Again , if we look at the what is, and not at the what could have been – well – it isn’t, and so it is irrelevant to the here and now. Now there is the ability to change. Is there the courage to go with it? It’s never too late and while obvious limitations do exist, we need to check very carefully whether or not those limitations belong to us or to “them”.

And together with the other voices, those of encouragement, those that I chose – I flew. I wore that dripping sweat and those aching muscles and pounding heart like a badge of honor – and I beat those demons by a long distance..