Hitting The Wall

Some emotions and feelings are distinctive because of the way they creep on us seemingly out of nowhere.

Listening to a song – I have the tendency to get into lyrics - it brought me back to a couple of feelings that have overpowered me more than once with no warning. They have come out of nowhere, literally.

Take for instance the feeling that overcomes a runner in a marathon at around mile - give or take - 20. One can be full of energy, smiling, high fiving, waiving at 19 and then within a few minutes “bang!!!!” it seems that the life is sucked out of us and we are left gasping, depleted, exhausted, in my case praying. All self control, all promises and plans are gone. No goals, nothing “I just want to finish” feeling. “I want this pain to end” feeling.

The plans, the training, the expectations, it all seems to be wasted, out the window. “Self control” gone, pride gone. All gone. Nothing seems to matter, nothing matters. Just make this pain go away.

There is another feeling I have been familiar with. The one the song talks about. “Said I wouldn't call but I lost all control…”.

There are those times when our resolve vanishes and we lose all control and the promises made to ourselves of not calling, not trying, not begging seem to go out the window and all we want, as in the marathon, is to reach that finish line and be free of this overwhelming ache. And we go from promising we’ll never call again, to dialing that number one more time while hoping we can end this pain.

And we wonder, we wonder if it will ever end.

The distance of the marathon can bring you to your knees. Love, a love we miss, a love we lost, can bring us to our knees. But "I rather hurt than to feel nothing at all". I rather not deprive myself of feeling, that would be a wasted life..

The difference between the two is that the emotional pain eventually gets better with time. The marathon feeling only gets worse.

So between a marathon and love…hmmmmm tough decision.

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Networking

She was already in front of the mirror when I walked in to change. She fixed her bangs, and added a little more hair spray. She turned to the side and then the other side and for the final touch added a little body splash. I continue changing while thinking that I never have that much time to “powder my nose” after my work out. I basically run out of the gym when I’m done.

I finished changing and wished her a good day assuming she would be heading out the door in a few minutes. And surely a few minutes later I saw her walk out of the locker room but instead of leaving she head out to the weights on the floor with frequent chatting sessions in between.

It reminded me of, years ago, a church I used to go in a back-then small town. I had asked my friend to meet earlier and go together. I went to her house and waited for her to get ready. And I waited and waited and waited. Off came many outfits out of the closet and back in the closet, make up, hairdos, jewelry. We made it to church and after mass I understood why it had taken her so much time to get ready. It was a social gathering!!! People socialized more than they do at a bar!

Maybe some of us have it all wrong.

Somehow it didn’t seem the right setting. Not that I want people to be asocial but the focus did not seem to be on the service but on the hour after. It was about pretension, it was about impressing, it was about who was there. It was about me, me, me.

I must be missing something…After 9 years going to the same gym, I work out, wave, smile and nod when I see a person, I don’t know their name or what they do. I leave them alone and they leave me alone…maybe I need to spray a little body splash on me….

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Driving Lessons

She has always been determined, driven to achieve her goals. I assumed on her 16th birthday she would be in line at the DMV taking her test and behind the wheel on her way home.

It was not until 8 months later when she, at my insistence – heck, I can use a designated driver! – took and passed the written exam she didn’t study for.

So on Sunday I was summoned to the house right after gym. “I want to drive” her voice said with excitement. I figured the adrenaline of my workout would help keep me calm so I agreed to take her.

Teaching my son was different, a traumatic experience for both of us. I thought he was trying to kill us on payback for some childhood trauma I might have inflicted on him. Although a much different experience than with her brother, I still pressed the imaginary break pedal several times. No wonder my legs hurt on my run on Monday.

She appeared calm, very calm, calmer than I. She listened to my instructions and she asked for advice. “When do you think I can do the Head bobbing?”

“The what???”

“Head bobbing, you know to the music, like this” - she says as her head starts bouncing back and forth.

Keep your eyes on the ROAD!!!

“What about the hand tapping?”
Keep your hands on the 10:20 position!!! No Tapping!!!

So she drove for two hours. And I made myself a scotch on the rocks when I got home. Phew!

• My Playground

While my daughter was in preschool and even in subsequent years, there were many times I watched her interact with her friends. It seemed that the only quality she sought in them was to have fun and to like to bewith them. Nothing else mattered.

It was amazing to see the enthusiasm and intensity she devoted to all her relationships and also the fights and anger associated with them.

At times their emotions turned them into ruthless little creatures capable of hurting each other with words or by withholding a toy or rejecting the other and showing off with a new friend for the time being. They relentlessly pushed, shoved, hurt. But then, they always went back as if nothing had happened and the past actions and incidents were never brought up. Clever little rascals they are.

After years of watching her love a friend and then tell me next “I never want to see her again, never, NEVER!!!” and then watching her run laughing with the same friends a day later or even hours later, I realized how delightfully forgiving kids are.

How beautiful and carefree their friendships are.

I have compared some of my different relationships with hers. Some have had the fun, the laughter, and also the intensity of the fights. We also have behaved like kids in a playground, ruthless, hurtful, pushing and shoving like 5 year olds but have failed at the most essential part of the whole game, the forgiveness and the forgetting the offense forever.

It is interesting that we spend the better part of our kids lives trying to teach them to be intelligent, well educated adults – to be like us! And somehow along the way we all seem to lose that quality that we had when we were little when we loved and appreciated and forgave and forgot and moved on and life was good until the next meal came.

We teach kids to be adults when, in some areas, adults should be like kids.

It Makes No Sense!

I like to find logic in most everything. Or I like to believe that I find logic in most things. But sometimes I fail to.

You know I run. Yes, I am one of those whose day is not complete if I don’t lace up my sneakers (soon that phrase will be obsolete as laceless shoes are becoming more popular) and go for 5 or 6 miles a day and my weekends are highly disappointing if I don’t get at least 12 miles in.

However (yes, a conjunctive adverb is allowed at the beginning of a sentence I just learned), in spite of my semi-long mileage, I can drive around and around and around in the parking lot of a mall until I find the closest parking spot to the door. God forbid I’d have to walk more than a few yards to the store.

My family looks at me flabbergasted; “you are running 18 miles tomorrow, what’s a few feet?” A few feet too many, if you ask me.

My coworkers are baffled sometimes when I yelled “is that fax for me? I don’t want to have to walk over there to check”. And the other day I ate my yogurt in the kitchen. I could not bring myself to walk aaaaall the way to my desk and then aaaaaall the way back to the kitchen to dispose of the container and then aaaaaall the way back to my desk to work. That might have been a whole 1/10 of a mile! Is that the epitome of laziness? Maybe.

So back at the original question. What possesses a person who works out regularly, runs over 30miles a week to try to find a short cut to exercise on the mundane things of life? Maybe just that it is not necessary, I don’t have to. Walking a few yards to the mall doesn’t do anything for me but running 12 miles does? No logic. It is what it is.

And sometimes that is how it has to be. No logic. Just let it be what it is.

Invaluable Lessons

After long hours they arrived with their families at their final destination. No specific plans were made.

One decided on the itinerary, the other disagreed.

"This is not going to work", both thought.

The one walked hastily to the beach, the other walked to her room to settle. In mid way one stopped and turned back on her heals. The other started walking back inside. They met in the middle.

"Want to sit outside?"
"Would love to".

And with that, they learned their first lessons of compromise in their adult life.

Instant Replay

We don’t always understand other people. In fact, we seldom do. And the truth is, we don’t have to. It is nice to be able to relate to a person and their actions but that is not always the case.

When my aunt was terminally ill, I had a difficult time understanding the actions of a relative. Her aloofness, detachment and her lack of involvement had me perplexed.

Relaying my feelings to a friend she laid out two options, either accept whatever her reasons may be to act this way or change the way you see her. You can change the way you feel about her.

“You can change the way you feel about her”

That was exactly the trait I hated in my family when I was growing up. How they changed back and forth between liking and disliking someone based on their last actions as if their memories held no history. They’d judge the actor based on the last role they played and changed their minds accordingly.

At an early age, I challenged them “but what about what they did for you before?” “But last year you said you liked her?” “Didn’t you say this about them back then?”

There was of course no logical answer.

Their minds, it seemed, had only an instant replay mode, only the last action on the field determined the outcome of the game.

I hated it. I still do.

I hate the fact that all the good can be wiped out with one action in some people’s heads. That nothing a person does stands the test of time. No matter the magnitude of an action, if a contrary one arises after, it outweighs the one before.

It is unfair.

So my answer that night was “no, not at all”. I could not overlook that person’s goodness, her honesty, integrity and hard work throughout the years because one action -a major one, mind you - was not to my liking.

I may not understand her reasons and I’ll never agree with them. But my disappointment should not and will not outweigh the years of kindness that I witness.

I prefer to look at the whole picture not just the trailer.