I
realize I’m stating the obvious, but it’s something I thought a lot about recently
while on the Mountains to Sea Trail near where I work. Sprinting down hill the nice lady inside my
shuffle informed me I had completed 20 mins, and my current pace was 9:23. I’m
rocking! I never run close to a
9-minute mile, and I wasn’t doing it then, but like a scale that errs 3 or 4
lbs in my favor, I’m not going to argue.
So I was cruising along, listening to Slave, feeling happy, hip, and healthy as I reached the bridge
that marked my turning point. In no time
I was climbing what I had bounced down just moments before and cursing the
effort it took. Don’t wanna be your slave. Why is it so hard to run uphill? I cursed my legs and my lungs for their scorching
response. All these years of running and
I’m still a slave to hills. Yet I will
tell anyone who asks, and more who don’t, that I love running them. Really, they ask, you don’t like flat
courses? No, I like hills. You go up, you come down. You work hard and you get a reward.
Hmm. That’s a little like life, isn’t it? It is,
and it reminds me of graduate school.
The struggle to balance my children’s needs with my need to read 100
pages before the next day and write a reflection on it. Trying to give my family, my professors, my
employer, and my friends something resembling perfection and reconciling that I
can’t. Uphill battles.
But
I crested the first semester hill, with good marks and hard-earned
confidence. I had a wonderful break,
moved into a new home, and felt like I was on top of the world. I cruised into the second semester buoyed by
my success, certain I knew the rules of the game and better yet, how to
win. But there were more hills I had not
anticipated. I walked into Children and
Adolescents with my head held high, ready to embrace whatever challenges
awaited me. I walked out angry and
deflated. The professor hadn’t asked very
much. She wanted us to create a timeline
of significant milestones from birth to 18.
She warned us to include only that which we were comfortable sharing
with the class, but explicitly encouraged us to consider that which made us
uncomfortable, for whatever demons lurked in our closets would seek us out as
counselors. For example, if you had an
alcoholic parent as a child, you would find yourself working with the child of
an alcoholic. His or her experience
could trigger emotions surrounding your experience, and your ability to help
that child could be seriously compromised by your own unresolved issues.
Do
we have to do this again? I spent an
inordinate amount of time contemplating my story last semester. I had already dug around my closet and written
about it at length. I thought we were
finished with that.
Is
your closet clean? No. Then get busy.
At
that point, I became not only angry, but also resentful of my non-counseling
friends. She doesn’t have to examine her
skeletons. He can leave all his baggage
at the door and that’s not fair. All of
this bounced around my mind like a pinball as I ran. Then This Head I Hold came on.
I was more or less oblivious to it, so consumed with sour thoughts,
until the following lyrics jumped out and caught my attention:
See the answer is this
If I wanna be free
I gotta stop playin’
round and runnin’ from me
Wow.
I was reminded of a Pema Chödrön quote Brené Brown included in her book, The
Gifts of Imperfection, which I
highly recommend by the way. In her
book, The
Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times, Chödrön
cautions “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the
wounded. It’s a relationship between
equals. Only when we know our own
darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when recognize our
shared humanity.” It caught my attention
when I first read it, and as I recalled it, while fearing my own darkness, I was
amazed. Though I was heading uphill, I
wasn’t a slave to the slope. I felt
strong and inspired by the revelation. If
I am to sit with others’ pain, I have to become comfortable with my own. We all struggle and often dodge that which
causes us discomfort, but if we could acknowledge it and cultivate compassion for
it, for ourselves, we all could become more compassionate with one another,
recognizing our common vulnerability.
Running
hills is like navigating life. Introspection
and personal work can be grueling and exhausting, but it doesn’t have to last
forever. You climb, and as you do, you grow. You reach the summit and you descend with
more confidence and compassion than you had before. Yes, I like running hills. I'm reminded of a quote from Brené Brown’s
blog, Ordinary Courage, “Only when we’re brave enough to
explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”
I’m inspired and I hope you are too.
