On Sept 6th 2019 – I wrote this in my diary…
‘Today is September 6th, a new life begins today… I followed the instruction of the voice within and I find myself travelling to work in the middle of London Town… “Everything is changing… I will strive after whatever my inward voice commands… Not tarry anywhere but where the voice advices me”…’
I remember the nerves fluttering about my chest while I sat on the tube on my way to my new destination. I watched the feelings reminiscent of the first day at a new school, a new job, a course, a new path to who ever knows where it will lead…
And today one exact year later, I felt the familiar feelings of ‘pre race nerves’ – the same slight flutter within as I once again went into the unknown…
The familiar path of tarmac and one step in front of the other… And yet each new race never been trod before…
I have been running races for nearly fifty years – doing the same thing but always exploring the unknown…
In the same way that I watched the feelings as I sat on the tube a year ago – I watched these feelings too as I jogged to the park on a Sunny Sunday September morn…
A sign at the start of the race said it all… ‘Remember you can’t reach what’s in front of you until you let go of what’s behind you…’
All the races I have ever run, are done… They never happened… Now in this moment there is just the running step in front of me; whatever has gone before has gone and everything is new uncharted territory…
So even though I have been running races for so many years – today was my first race ever…
Being focused only on the process is quite possibly the reason I keep on turning up on a start line, because the other races have all disappeared like the wake of a boat…
It is a strange thing that I should choose to spend my life running as fast as possible from A to B, whilst learning deeply that life is not a race…
There is nowhere to get to… Striving to win and ‘get there’ can so often be a disappointing and exhausting journey…
This is not to say that goals are not fun – a goal to focus on fully can be the most wonderful experience…
Full focus on a process brings us joy in each step…
And then whether anything comes of it or not is not of importance, because we will have developed new skills, uncovered inner strengths and become wise with the experience… We will have fully lived each moment.
As I raced down the tree lined avenue on this sunny Sunday morn, suddenly beside me there she was, running alongside me the 29 year old me who raced here too, this exact same road… Running running running…
She covered the ground much faster than I do now…
But she discovered as the years went by that the real joy was in the run to become; she became the run – she stayed in the step and the next and each one turned into the next…
She’s still running now – after all these years; that never happened – she’s still running now…