Fire Inside

 We have to be challenged.  We need to be confronted.   If life appears easy, maybe we are probably missing something.    Sometimes when things get too bland, ordinary, and routine, there is a hunger within that can't quite be explained, described, or exorcised.  We can find ourselves going nitnoid about things that really don't matter, maybe because we don't have anything in our easy lives that does matter. Perhaps we are programmed to regularly need some kind of quest, an adventure.  

Yeah, you can get the new car, the latest hot gadget,  and know all the attributes of your phone and iPad, and be so smart and informed, but that is not nearly enough. Sure, it's fun, satisfying, and pleasurable at the moment, but it is not sustaining.  Its like eating candy to satisfy your hunger.  You feel good and full, and have energy and focus, until the sugar spike ends.   

Could we be hungry for more solid food that feeds our true selves?  Could we be hungry for less certain outcomes?  Real adventure?  

When tapping on an icon on yet another screen doesn't do it for us, where do we go to fill that empty spot?   What do we do when multimedia is just not enough to fill the empty spot we can't describe?  What do we take to cure the growl in the stomach of our souls for the real food we were made to eat?  

Growth is restless for something else, perhaps something a little more wild and uncertain? Growth happens on the edges of the comfort zone.

Have we muddied the waters between here and there, between where we are and what we could be, between what we are doing and what we could be pursuing, between who we are and the person we could be pursuant to be?  Are we squelching that passion to chase an uncertain outcome?   Down deep, I think most do, but some suppress it more successfully.  

Thoreau wrote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."  That was in the 19th century. I can't imagine the amount of desperation lived out now.  

Actively envisioning doing another triathlon, yet only half-heartedly planning  it, still quickened my pulse so that I wondered where I had been living all this time   . Life is good.  God has been good to me. I am grateful.

 However, I am not ashamed to say, something is still missing, and I think it is some instinctive lure toward adventure, an activity maybe a little larger than myself, beyond my strength,  involving a degree of risk.   Maybe that is why some people climb mountains, have affairs, drive fast,  take arduous long bike rides, go to theme parks and take risky rides, and so on.  Maybe there's something in the DNA of some of us that calls us to the edge of ourselves and beyond. 

  

Looking at the races, envisioning the event and everything included, fills me with a fervor for life and the kind of Hope that, for me, only God is capable of creating. 

  

Love the Climb

 When I fell across that hole I had dug, it pulled something in my upper back and shoulder.  It has taken a couple of months to start getting better.  Sleeping still isn't really comfortable.  But, like so many injuries before, it is all part of the miles of the journey.  

Endurance sports have gifted me through these miles, with several cracked ribs, pulled shoulders, trashed knees, torn up hands, cut legs, sprained wrists, a split sternum, and a few others I can't recall at the moment.  They hurt. They all had their moments to torment, but the built-in miracle called the body eventually healed them. They are all part of the journey, a part of the life.

As with every injury, the returning ability gives me such gratitude. The mountains God has put in my path have taught me how to climb and to love the climb even more.  

Face the Truth if You Want to Be Free

 Life is slippery sometimes, and sometimes, the comfortable, safe, and easy things grease the hands to such an extent that real life  can become hard to hold on to. It slips away moment by moment, attending to maintaining the status quo of an easy life. It becomes a continuing personal, physical, and even spiritual degradation process. Instead of honing skills toward peace, performance, and personal improvement at some risk, we became proficient at quickly making excuses. Self-deception and denial can become our sport and greatest skill. Small aches become perceived as big pains and small issues can take on the appearance of major problems.  

We try to give it a value it doesn't have. But self-deception never really works. Deep down, in quiet moments, we know the truth. We just can't confront it directly. It is just too hurtful to our comfortable little lives built on illusion.  We are scared. 

So, I guess I want to be fearless.  The Bible says,--"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."   Face the truth.  I want to be free.  

HAVING AND BEING YOUR OWN PET MONKEY

 My wife once told me, “I love living with you. You're so amusing. It’s like having your own pet monkey .”   I think she’s right.  Lots of things I do and think don’t make sense, and are not rational. And so I deliberate what I want to do with all its limitations and then ignore the obvious; the pet monkey is amusing.  So onward I go, unrewarded and unheeded,  plodding off into the night to fight a war no one cares about. 

However, I can tell that moments when life gets vivid reawaken what we already know, and getting closer to my truest self is a sort of reunion. The liberation felt by being oneself, warts and all, is amazing.

And so, at 81 I am still going to ride bikes. Though my doctor says my knee is a trainwreck and I should never run again, but have surgery, I am running, however incredibly slow it is.  My young grandchild walks faster than I run, but the pet monkey says,” Try anyway.”

So, I smile as I write this because it  all makes life and what’s left of it fun and “amusing.” I would rather be that pet monkey than a well-liked imitation of someone else