Some days I simply have no mirth or good cheer. Perhaps you've experienced this as well. It's no fun in my experience, but that's not to say it isn't instructive. A dearth of mirth--if the expression might be used--can be a real bummer, a challenge if you will. But it can also, given a chance, prove a valuable opportunity. And if there's one thing I've found regarding opportunities, it is that they have a way of restoring one's sense of balance and life-ish zest. The difference often appears to exist as a matter of interpretation.
Let me give you an example. In November, I ran my first marathon in Philadelphia. In May when I signed up, I was all stoked to finally have a shot at giving the marathon distance (what Haile Gebrselassie once called "the king of the distances") a chance. With college running obligations at an end, I was eager to start something new.
Then I got a job working in a cooler (a rather large refrigerator kept at 37 degrees F) of a local farmer's grocery store. The work proved more physical than anything I had ever done (excluding perhaps a 2-week archaeology dig I did two summers before), and wore me out to the point that marathon training ground to a halt. My tired legs simply refused to run, and so I walked as much as I could. As the end of November approached, the marathon increasingly seemed to me like the most daunting challenge I had yet faced. How could I possibly cover 26.2 miles without having run more than 5km in a single effort the previous three months? For a while, the prospect made me gloomy.
The week of the marathon dawned, and I knew I was not ready. I had every intention of showing up on race day, but I could not honestly say whether my body would permit me to finish. It was at this moment that I decided to do something radical. It didn't involve some cutting-edge training method, or a new, innovative nutrional suppliment. No, it was something simple: I decided to reinterpret the coming race. Rather than assuming by default that a marathon was a challenge, I decided my first marathon was going to be an opportunity.
But an opportunity for what? That took some thinking, but after reflection I decided it would be an opportunity to observe the effects of a really long run on myself and others. How would I respond when faced with the sort of fatigue only experienced after several hours of running? What would it be like to exhaust the better part of all my glycogen reserves? And how would the other racers respond when the same happened to them?
These are a few of the questions that helped me reinterpret the marathon. It would be a challenge for sure, but it would also be an opportunity to have some very novel experiences. That helped, and while everything started going wrong at mile 15, I still finished in good spirits. The opportunity had been seized, and by so doing the challenge also happened to be conquered.
While I'm not certain of it, I like to think I finished because I had a positive object in mind: experience a marathon from start to finish, with all the feelings that go with that. Sure it was difficult, but it was also a chance I didn't want to lose. And that seemed to make a difference.
Perhaps the same technique can be applied to mirthless days. They can be a real challenge to survive, but they can also be an opportunity to examine those feelings and thoughts that drive out the happiness from you. Like weeds in a garden, negative thinking can either be a nuisance or the stuff from which life-giving compost is produced to make your garden grow. It's a challenge certainly (I fail at it all the time), but as with a marathon or anything difficult, it is within your power to choose which aspect on which to focus. Will it be a challenge, or will it be an opportunity. Your choice may make all the difference. Maybe.
Something to consider, perhaps.
Happy Tuesday, friends :)
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