MORE different

I started the morning, in the same way that I start all of my mornings, eager to hit the ground running. I buckled the collar around my dog's neck, fastened the leash, slipped on my running sneakers, quickly tied my laces and away I went. “C’mon girl, let’s go see what the world has for us today!” I said enthusiastically to my dog, while she wagged her tail happily in response. She loves to go out in the cool morning air, before the day heats up and becomes too unbearably hot for a shaggy, thick-haired dog. While nothing seemed immediately wrong or out-of-place; I felt a bit awkward, a little sluggish and well, I was moving slower than usual. Something had changed and as I ran outside into the morning sunshine, it seemed as if the very air surrounding me had also changed.

Everything...felt...different.

I couldn’t put my finger on it but it was a nagging feeling, sort of like a cramp in my side, that refuses to go away, no matter how much you try to get rid of it. The farther I ran, the more bothered I became.

"W-H-A-T?"

I quickly sorted through all the odds and ends, bits and pieces of various thoughts I was holding in my mind, pulling and pushing all of the stuff up there, hoping to find whatever it was, that had me a bit “out-of-sorts” this morning. I love to run. The first fifteen or twenty minutes are usually the most difficult, as I work to find a comfortable rhythm. However, once I get past that point, I feel like I can run forever and my mind just opens up to reveal a world of thoughts, that I would never know otherwise. It's one of the unexpected benefits of prolonged exercise outdoors, which forces your attention away from screaming cell phones, computers, Blackberrys and any other type of machine demanding immediate attention, while leaving no time to really think about anything.

For longer than I want to admit, my mind has been dominated by the worry generated by tough economic times. On most days, the responsibilities I shoulder have become more than overwhelming and sometimes, I feel on the verge of collapse. I am tired. It is in times like these, when the quiet time spent with myself, helps me in managing all of my fears to a level I can deal with. "I thought 2010 was a tough year but this year has been a doozy." I said out loud. Halfway through what has become an especially grueling year; the economy is changing the face of most everything I have known. "Whoever heard of  $4 a gallon for gasoline?" I said out loud, as I ran past our local gas station.  It wasn’t that long ago when I could, with twenty dollars in my pocket, fill up my gas tank and even receive some change back.  The hard reality is that people are doing much less and

LESS

was definitely having an impact upon my life. Usually, when one part of my life becomes especially challenging, I can count on finding some relief in another part of my life. A new phenomenon, is that there is no respite anymore, not even in the parts of my life which used to rejuvenate me. I am finding everything to be so...difficult. Did I just wake up one morning to find that I had been reprogrammed during the night and that I was completely out-of-sync with the person I have been?

 “What is going on?”

I asked myself,

“and how do I change this and make it better?”

My mind became quiet, focusing on the sounds that my running feet were making on the asphalt road,

one..two..change..it..one..two..change..it.

The longer I run, the more I think. And the more I think, the more my mind wanders and realizes an enormous amount of freedom to think of many different things, all at the same time. One minute is spent thinking about something at work, another moment I am thinking about something that is going on with one of the kids and somewhere in between all of that I am thinking about car payments and "hey, did I mail the payment for..." but then, I start to think about horses. AHHH....horses. I love horses. I am consumed in every living cell of my being by horses. Horses are my safe spot. No matter how much my life changes, horses remain the one part of me, that never changes. Sometimes, I think of race horses like Affirmed and Alydar. I admire these two champions and I think about all of their races and how great each horse was. Affirmed and Alydar raced ten times against each other, with Affirmed winning seven of those races. Had they been born one year apart, we would have had back-to-back Triple Crown winners but then, we would have been cheated from witnessing the most intense and longest-running rivalry that  horse racing has ever known. Thinking about these two horses helps me to run faster and stronger. I imagine myself to be Affirmed, with Alydar hot on my heels, waiting for just the right sliver of an opportunity to pass me and "win" the race. It's a great time-passer type of game to play, mile-after-mile and I can feel my legs stretch out a little farther, the tempo picks up a little quicker, as the ground flies underneath my feet.

But today, I don't think of Affirmed and Alydar.

And that's my problem. I figured it out. Today, I am still thinking about "less" and unfortunately, as is often the case with thinking "less", you really end up with "less". I am not used to living under such dark and heavy clouds, thinking about things that make me so unhappy. Yes, I do need a change in the direction of the wind. I need to get back to where I was, when I enjoyed so much more.  So, as I head back for home, I resolve to not dwell on "less" but think about "more", a lot "more". Maybe this is where I do need to be more like Affirmed. When he was challenged by Alydar, he found "more" and delivered "more". He became our last Triple Crown winner and one of our greatest racehorses of all time and even though Alydar remained in second place in the majority of their races together; Alydar also found "more" and in the process, taught us something about hope. In every race he ran, he believed he would win and ran a race worthy of that win. He gave it all he had, just as I need to give it all I have, in order to get to the place called "more". Maybe, that's why I need to think of horses more, as it always seems that life's greatest lessons, always have a horse in it, well, at least for me, that is.

Do you need to change your vision, so you end up in a more bountiful and enJOYable place?
Ralph