Sometimes I forget that discomfort is not only to be tolerated, but can be embraced…
I run. Not fast, not as regularly as I’d like, but I’ve been running for about 11 years. Gets me out in the sun, enjoying the beautiful outdoors, is healthy for my body, and good for my soul. But I’m really not fast. So not fast.
Roshonna inspired and challenged us, and we have entered a team from Bergen and Associates Counselling in the Manitoba Marathon Relay. Michael, Kevin, Sabrina, Roshonna and myself have committed to getting ourselves ready to run together. I’m, well…ahem…the senior member of the team, rather substantially…and so while we have all assured each other that speed isn’t important, and the important part is to participate together…I just wanna feel good about my participation.
So…I decided I would pick up the pace a little on my runs. A friend of mine recommended RunKeeper, an app for my iPhone that tracks how far and how fast I’m running…a great little app that pitches me my pace every 5 minutes and at every kilometer.
Game on!!
…I may not be fast, but I am competitive…and I like to beat the clock…seeing if I can do the same run with shaving off a few seconds from my minutes/kilometer time.
I pushed myself yesterday like I haven’t in some time on a run…and lived to tell the tale. But it hurt some…the challenge had me sucking air, and this morning, I could feel it in my legs some.
Reminded me of a story a friend of mine told me…his son is a competitive runner…runs like the wind, that boy. A while back, he had a knee injury which required a brace, and a coupla months of rest. When he got back to running full speed, his dad asked him what it felt like to really be able to give’er. He responded that it felt great to be back running…but that he had had a “stitch” in his side that he hadn’t felt in a long while. His dad consoled him and said, “After you get back into training condition, that stitch will fade.”
He turned to his dad and rolled his eyes (cuz dads can so often be completely clueless about matters that just seem so very obvious to their adolescent boys) and patiently explained,
“Running with a stitch means you’re running hard. If you don’t have a stitch in your side when you’re running, it means you’re not running hard enough.”
That line stuck with me. In this day of heated car seats (don’t have’em, but I covet), remote control, extra padding in socks, shoes, non stick pans, dishwashers, automatic garage door openers, I could go on…so much is done to make our lives easier. So many things to increase our comfort, decrease or eliminate work, stress, distress. We get a little spoiled…and I wonder if we can start to think that life owes us an easy life.
Life is hard…it’s stressful. For some…it’s more stressful than for others…either because there are more stressful circumstances, or because it just hits in a different way for a different person.
I’m thinking that the challenge for us, in North America in 2012, in this age where advertising convinces us we deserve happiness and total comfort, is to build capacity in ourselves and our children to tolerate the stitch. We need to challenge ourselves to recognize that feeling discomfort doesn’t mean we are doing something we should quit…discomfort isn’t bad.
I’m thinking we need to work at developing tolerance for discomfort…because it is in that zone that we dare to grow, that we can continue to live vitally during difficult circumstances. Maybe this means:
- hanging in there and choosing the “real discussion” with your partner, rather than shrugging off something that hasn’t felt right in a while in a jokey way. Really dealing with it to improve the foundation of your relationship.
- recognizing, that if you’re honest with yourself, you’re not staying home from that work party because of a busy schedule you tell yourself you have, but because you don’t know most of the people all that well…and then figuring out how to support yourself at an event you’ll find nervewracking
- choosing to do a poster presentation for the national conference even though you have never done it before, and no one would notice if you didn’t submit but this could really be a growing edge because of what could be learned from the experience (can you tell where my current stitch is right now?)
- letting yourself feel the frightening pain of a loss…getting support if necessary, rather than putting a wall between you and your grief.
It’s about recognizing that the stitch is a part of life… not comfortable, and maybe not desired, but it exists. It means allowing yourself to be vulnerable to feel the pain, and not be frightened of it, not feel that it’s wrong to have it. To feel discomfort in life is not a sign of weakness or failure…it is a sign of your humanity.
To avoid the pain and discomfort of life often means not really living at all…not in a vital way that bring. It means pulling back from the cusp of really cool accomplishments, from developing richer and more meaningful relationships, to living a safe but likely more boring life as you erect walls from yourself and potentially painful tasks.
Think about finding ways to tolerate the inevitable stitch of a life lived to the fullest.
Write a Comment