With just a few weeks to go before the wedding (really?!), Derrick and I find ourselves in conversations about what the future will look like more often than ever before. Most of it is just talk and daydreams and slivers of possibility. What happens next? When the dissertation is finished? When the next academic year is over? Where will we go? What will we do and be?
All this talk has had me thinking and rethinking about not only my own immediate world, but really the whole world. It's a big place, but not as big as I once thought.
Growing up in a small town, I only new one perspective. Small towns were safe, secure, quiet. Kids could run and play all day, ride their bikes down the middle of the street, play in any backyard they wanted. It was a most amazing way to spend a childhood. But with that perspective came a certain perspective of the "other" existence. Cities. As a kid, and even on my way to college as an 18-year-old, I truly believed that if small towns were heaven-like, cities must be hell. Danger, predators, noise, fences, stop lights, traffic...all of it was bad and scary and wrong. Similarly, when growing up within a 15-minute drive of all of the cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, I assumed that's just how the world worked. Everyone got together with their whole giant crazy family for every holiday, every Sunday lunch. And thus, as my logic would tell me, the "other", being away, was most certainly wrong.
But there was a strange contradiction building inside me. One that began to challenge these assumptions and perspectives. Something urging me to look beyond the confines of the known and just glimpse the "other." As an 18-year-old high school graduate, I excitedly embarked on a journey that took me, gasp, out of state. I crossed the Wisconsin border (all of 25 miles into the southwest corner of the state), and set up my new home in the big city of Platteville (pop. 8,500 or so). There were stoplights, a Wal-Mart, gas stations and grocery stores. And I was terrified. A brief adjustment period later, I found that I really loved that town...if only it were...bigger.
Bigger? But what about the evil of the city? What about that scary "other"? Some slow stretching of my boundaries was apparently redefining my perspective.
Fast forward to now. As Derrick and I set the table for dinner and cook side by side, our conversation once again meanders to the possibilities of the future. How do you feel about Canada? he says. There's a lot going on in Sweden, he suggests. Madison and Boulder are still just about the perfect cities, I think aloud.
At this point in my life, the world no longer feels like it's so big. Not quite as scary. There's less and less that seems so "other" to me now. If I adapted from a town of a few hundred people to a college town to a small city, surely I can adapt to wherever we go. There's still that contradiction inside me, that urging to go and do and try and learn. My family is so valuable to me, but maybe the experience of dwelling and growing up with all of the cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents just manifests itself differently when you don't live down the street from them. And maybe that's not so scary, just different.
As the world continues to shrink and my perspective continues to grow, I am more and more excited to take a leap. To experience the "other." To allow myself to truly believe that the "other" can be good. Maybe that little urge that's always been in me has really been preparing me my whole life for what is yet to come. It caused me to tiptoe out of state, then jump into a small city, then....? Well, who knows. But I sure will be excited to be there.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Fear and the Wall
Realizing there are less than six weeks to go before Derrick and I jet off to our mysterymoon has pushed me back into frequent workout mode. You may have noticed the last few posts focusing on this more than other topics, and with good reason.
I have dearly missed running and working hard. I hit the treadmill this winter irregularly at best and started the spring off with a yellow fever vaccination that took over nearly four weeks of my life leaving me with no energy to do anything at all. And now, here we are. Just six short weeks from one of the biggest adventures of our lives, and I find myself needing to confess: I'm not ready.
As I ramp up the run mileage, and the additional workouts, and hopefully soon some swim miles, I am made fully aware daily of my own human limitations. I feel frustrated. I feel defeated. I feel afraid.
In the running world, there is an analogy that nearly all runners know and know well: the wall. In an endurance race, it is the point at which you feel like you can't go on, like you want to quit. The point at which you are frustrated, defeated, and yes, afraid. I have met the wall. But I wasn't really aware that the wall was more than just a point in a race. For me, it has become a point in my training. As I work to make up the deficit of all that was lost this winter and spring, which after counting the costs so far, was A LOT, I have come to a point in my ramp up where I have been left to face a mighty wall. Right now, training is not fun. It is not enjoyable in any way. It hurts. I'm frustrated. And I want to quit.
The mighty wall is decorated with nothing except ribbons of my own fear. They cover nearly the entire surface of the wall, with just enough room for pain, frustration, and defeat to show through. But if I am honest, it's the fear that I see.
Now, this might sound like crazy talk to some, and I accept that for what it is, but I have dreams. Dreams of becoming a serious athlete. Maybe I'll never be a Chrissy Wellington (my personal IronMan superwoman inspiration), but I believe that I could be a competitive age grouper, that maybe I could even win some races. But I also know that standing between the current me and the competitive athlete me is not just the wall I stare at today, but many, MANY walls, each laced with fears, anxieties, pain, frustration, and defeat.
Why in the world would I want to put myself through this again and again? It sounds downright torturous. And maybe, to some extent, it will be. But I am learning why I might want to face these walls, even this one now. Courage. The only way to knock down the wall of fear in front of me is to face it head on with courage. How does one acquire more courage? By taking down more walls of fear. And where do walls of fear come from? Doing the hard things that cause the walls to show up in the first place.
Walls remind us of our humanity. Our own weaknesses and limitations. Those things exist. People facing walls have two choices - stop when they arrive at the wall, acknowledge their weaknesses and limitations and accept them as fact OR breathe courage deep into their lungs, refuse to accept the weaknesses and limitations as truth, and hulk-smash the wall into a pile of rubble, stronger and more courageous than before.
Today, I choose the hulk-smash. Today I choose to breathe deep the courage required to keep going. I will not believe that what I have done today is all I can do. There is so much more in store for me, and it's waiting just on the other side of this wall.
I have dearly missed running and working hard. I hit the treadmill this winter irregularly at best and started the spring off with a yellow fever vaccination that took over nearly four weeks of my life leaving me with no energy to do anything at all. And now, here we are. Just six short weeks from one of the biggest adventures of our lives, and I find myself needing to confess: I'm not ready.
As I ramp up the run mileage, and the additional workouts, and hopefully soon some swim miles, I am made fully aware daily of my own human limitations. I feel frustrated. I feel defeated. I feel afraid.
In the running world, there is an analogy that nearly all runners know and know well: the wall. In an endurance race, it is the point at which you feel like you can't go on, like you want to quit. The point at which you are frustrated, defeated, and yes, afraid. I have met the wall. But I wasn't really aware that the wall was more than just a point in a race. For me, it has become a point in my training. As I work to make up the deficit of all that was lost this winter and spring, which after counting the costs so far, was A LOT, I have come to a point in my ramp up where I have been left to face a mighty wall. Right now, training is not fun. It is not enjoyable in any way. It hurts. I'm frustrated. And I want to quit.
The mighty wall is decorated with nothing except ribbons of my own fear. They cover nearly the entire surface of the wall, with just enough room for pain, frustration, and defeat to show through. But if I am honest, it's the fear that I see.
Now, this might sound like crazy talk to some, and I accept that for what it is, but I have dreams. Dreams of becoming a serious athlete. Maybe I'll never be a Chrissy Wellington (my personal IronMan superwoman inspiration), but I believe that I could be a competitive age grouper, that maybe I could even win some races. But I also know that standing between the current me and the competitive athlete me is not just the wall I stare at today, but many, MANY walls, each laced with fears, anxieties, pain, frustration, and defeat.
Why in the world would I want to put myself through this again and again? It sounds downright torturous. And maybe, to some extent, it will be. But I am learning why I might want to face these walls, even this one now. Courage. The only way to knock down the wall of fear in front of me is to face it head on with courage. How does one acquire more courage? By taking down more walls of fear. And where do walls of fear come from? Doing the hard things that cause the walls to show up in the first place.
Walls remind us of our humanity. Our own weaknesses and limitations. Those things exist. People facing walls have two choices - stop when they arrive at the wall, acknowledge their weaknesses and limitations and accept them as fact OR breathe courage deep into their lungs, refuse to accept the weaknesses and limitations as truth, and hulk-smash the wall into a pile of rubble, stronger and more courageous than before.
Today, I choose the hulk-smash. Today I choose to breathe deep the courage required to keep going. I will not believe that what I have done today is all I can do. There is so much more in store for me, and it's waiting just on the other side of this wall.
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