The Effort of Running
June 5th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
My husband and I went off to the Okanagan Valley this week for a bit of a holiday. We were combining business with pleasure – visiting customers ( a pleasure) and doing some cycling (which can be tough business depending on the grade!) It was a great week with lots of outdoor time, time to relax, and time to both think and not think, if you know what I mean.
As we started for home at the end of the week, my happy frame of mind wobbled and fell off its bicycle. Going for a run after we got home, I found myself literally running an old familiar route while my mind rehearsed old downer thoughts.
Inside my mind is a large house of mental rooms, each of which holds old problems – memories of mistakes I have made, or worries and fears that repeat over and over. Some of these rooms I have turned inside out in an effort to find resolution. Many of them I obsessively enter again and again, re-running the same scenarios.
Running for me is symbolic of a commitment I have made in my middle age to leave those rooms and go out into a new space. I am trying to close the door, accepting that if I did not find answers in the past, I am unlikely to find them now by hunting through the same old pile of thoughts. It is time to find new, better, more positive things to think about.
Like running, this is hard work. Just as it’s hard to make myself get out the door and run, it’s an effort to turn my back on those familiar old thoughts, and face in a new direction. This work has to be done again and again. It is the price of being both fit and happy.
Today, as I started the work of my Sunday long run, I also started the work of getting back into in a happier frame of mind. I wobbled at first, but as I made the effort to notice the wild roses, the sunshine, the birds darting in and out of the roadside, I felt better.
It’s wonderful to take a break, as we did this week in the Okanagan. New vistas, new sights and smells can bring refreshing new thoughts to mind. But it’s good to come home as well, and to find new good thoughts here, waiting to be discovered – with just a little effort.
