Today was hard.
I woke up at 3am with this feeling of anxiety. It's been happening a lot recently, and I've been embracing it as a sort of early-morning reminder to keep breathing.
Sometimes, life seems to get way ahead of me. I forget to eat. I forget to breathe.
The best part of my day is spent conjuring up inspiration. Just taking a moment to imagine what the world could be like.
I maintained this practice of imagining possible futures when I was in high school. I did it so often, in fact, that it became really difficult for me to imagine anything further than 2 weeks in the future because I had opened the door of all possibilities. At any given moment, I could imagine at least 6 possible futures. What if... yes, but what if....
These days, I have to make space to imagine things. Inspiration has to be set as an intention every morning. I want to say the world is rougher than it was when I was in high school, but really I know that's not true.
The truth is, I am.
10 years ago I ran the Boston Marathon. I was coming off of 6 months of intense training, and 4 weeks of touring around Italy (my first of many European adventures). I was about to graduate, and completely unable to imagine anything about my future. Nothing was certain, but everything was happening. I felt like I was going over a waterfall-- I was completely out of control.
In addition to all the stress of being a high school senior, 26.2 miles is nothing to sneeze at either. They say some crazy things happen to your brain when your body is under that kind of stress. You might think that after a while the physical pain would pass, but it never really does. It just becomes less and less shocking. It was amidst this consistent discomfort that I had a really major breakthrough about the fragile nature of humanity.
Weird. I know. Let me explain:
I was about halfway through the race, when I suddenly started running toward (what I thought) was the nearest T station. Eventually, I coaxed back on course by my running buddy, who assured me that my parents would be waiting for me at the finish line in a few hours. I kept running on course, but I couldn't shake this feeling. The feeling that pulled me away from my path was the realization that life is beautiful and fragile and fleeting.
Life is Beautiful. Fragile. Fleeting.
This was no passing thought. It completely overwhelmed me. It consumed me. I realized that I only had a few years to be alive, and yet it could so easily be wasted with illusions of "doing something more important."
(What if.... What if... )
Finishing that race, 6th form formal, graduation, college, graduation, grad school, job... it all flashed before my eyes in a dull blur. I wanted no part in these "important things." Every single moment is an eternity, filled with possibility. Why was I wasting my time running a race?
What if... what if life is actually something other than all these things?
I finished the race. The pain stopped. I lost all my toenails (ew). But that desire to veer off the path completely remained. It's still here.
When bad things happen, it seems like all the suffering of the world is pouring down on us. Pain is scary. It's incredibly sad. It is also really important to explore. Today, a bomb went off at a wedding in Afghanistan. A car bomb exploded in Baghdad. LAPD probably shot someone a few miles from here. And yes, bombs went off in downtown Boston, in the very same area where my family stood waiting for me to cross the finish line 10 years ago.
I'm writing this post as a reminder of the importance of pain, fear and discomfort. It shocks us into examining what is truly important. It forces us awake, shakes us into looking at what we actually are, and what we actually could become. From this space of fear and discomfort, we can examine our possible futures. What path are we on? What world are we living in? What kind of world could we live in?
What if?
This is a challenge to see the world as it is. It is a challenge to see the world as it could be.
Imagine with me, for a moment.
And then let's get to work.
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