Life

Dick's Lake -- Desolation Wilderness 

Life. Raw. Real.

I’ve mentioned it before—discovering your own mortality.  It’s as if one has passed through a doorway into an entirely different world.  A world where everything looks anew, fresh, different.  There is still that child inside of me with the naivety that I still have my youth, but the body provides subtle signs of a different perspective.  Maybe, it’s a mid-life crisis, but I’d rather consider it an awakening into everything life has to offer.

Over the past several months, my training for races has waned and I find myself just satisfied to be out on a quiet, lonely trail with nothing but my thoughts to keep the mind occupied.  Sometimes, it’s many miles, and other times, it’s only just a few, very few.  Only time will tell if I can find the motivation to train again, which entails very tough runs that leave a person breathless and muscles sore.  Lacking this intensity would have bothered me just a few short years ago, but, now, I’ve begun to develop a trough deep with patience and a new found comfort in myself that it is…just running.

But, back to what is real—life.  Most things seems to be a delicate balance between work, family, friends, of whom I have very few, hobbies, of which are mostly long forgotten but constantly on my mind, and a multiplicity of discord containing everything else.

One of my biggest fears is a premature exit of this life before the completion of many tasks in my mind which have no definitive ending.  Being a Father to my Son is prevalent in my mind.  There are so many things I want to teach and guide him through—an experience absent in my own life since I have never met my still living father.  But, even without that experience, I had a Grandfather and a few Uncles whose lessons and guidance have been a priceless gift that have become more useful as the years pass.  In my youth, somehow, I had the foresight to realize they were my mentors and with opinions I respected and actions I’ve used as a guidepost for my own life.

And, life, has a way of providing an individual with the opportunity to become a better person.  A series of, at the time, divergent events and decisions led me to a lonesome trail on a mountainside to discover a woman who would not only challenge me, but plant a seed inside me to want to become a better person, not only for her, but for me.  I threw away the book on what I considered to be the correct path in life and the sequential nature and timing of how it should occur.  It hasn’t been without struggle and consequence for us both, but the fruits of our labor has begun to reveal itself and it comes at a more frequent rate as time passes.  She has granted me the ability and confidence to truly feel like a man and a deep, innate desire to continue a life of self discovery and improvement.  It’s an irreplaceable gift.

So, as each hour passes, there’s a motivation to appreciate how precious and forgettably short our time is on this little planet in a solar system part of a galaxy containing roughly 200 billion stars amongst a Universe with over 100 billion galaxies.