Are We All Weenies?
More thoughts while running
I didn’t get all of my training runs in this week. I managed the Sunday-Monday doubleheader, but I skipped my interval workout on Wednesday.
I don’t like intervals.
They hurt.
And then, just when you’ve almost recovered, they hurt again.
About the only thing I can think about when I’m starting is how much they’ll hurt. And all the way through I think about how unpleasant they are. And when they’re over, I’m just grateful to still be alive.
I really don’t like intervals.
But that wasn’t the reason I missed them. It was a combination of physical doubt and mental negotiating that put me wrong.
The mental negotiating came because our dog found something from which we needed immediate protection. At 5am. Which resulted in lots and lots of aggressive barking. I got her in the house, but suddenly the 6am alarm looked daunting. I reasoned that I could run a bit later and still get to the library on time.
I couldn’t.
Sapping my motivation further was that I didn’t feel great. Sore joints. Lethargy. Everything that says, “I’ve got a bug!”
So I didn’t run.
And I didn’t run Friday morning either. Thursday night, sometime after I had to get Ruby in the house again following another early-a.m. barking episode, I felt contractions in my chest. It was the second time within ten days or so. (Note to self: might want to ping my primary-care doc.)
But the other two runs were just regular runs at manageable paces.
I spent my weekend 6-miler with my man Tony, and we spoke of many things: family, travel, gossip about friends. The usual.
My Monday run was shorter and more lonely, but it gave me time and space to wonder where our can-do spirit has gone. It’s like we’ve turned into a whole country of weenies in the past few years.
Immigrants are coming into our country. Waaaaah!
Gas is too expensive. Waaaaah!
Someone is calling me “weird.” Waaaaah!
If we live somewhere pleasant or cool, other people will also want to live there. And yes, newcomers definitely need to respect us and the pre-existing vibe. But we’re all people, the same in every way that matters, so we need to respect them too. Maybe extend a hand instead of a middle finger and see how they respond. The fact is that we need to negotiate a future together instead of insisting on keeping everything exactly as we’ve made it.
Change is the nature of life. One day is never the same as the next. Or the preceding one.
And it’s great when we find something that works for us. And I understand that once we’re there we want to keep it exactly that way for our own comfort and pleasure. But that’s not how life works, and especially not life in community with others. We all have the same inalienable rights to pursue our happiness wherever we want. I don’t get special veto rights because I’ve been here longer than you. We are interconnected, and while I might have relevant perspective thanks to my longevity, I don’t have moral high ground. So how about engaging with newcomers and sharing our experiences and talking about what we want going forward? And then listening to their thoughts? And then working together to find a way that we all get most of what we want to see?
If you’re not a child, then you really shouldn’t expect to get everything you’ve ever wanted. Sacrifice is the currency of adulthood, but it is both noble and useful — giving ground on the less-important to get you what you value more.
Playing the victim is a bad look, but it’s also self-defeating. When we play the victim, we quit. We look for someone else to solve our problem. And there are plenty of would-be autocrats who ache to impose their will on us all. And not all of them are porn-star lovin’, orange-skinned liars.
When we don’t like something, then we join with other people and see what we can make that will work best for us all. Denying other people agency is destructive, and it won’t end well. Revolutions happen when people are denied for too long. And even the eventual winners in revolution suffer — winning anything that’s contested inflicts suffering on everyone who participates.
I understand frustration, but deprive someone of a fair hearing and you’ll just offload your frustration onto someone else. Doesn’t it make more sense to see what common ground we can find?
It’s certainly better than crying about our problems.
So HTFU, world — we can do better!
