This summer I have been hidden, a little removed, and far away. On purpose. It is the bliss of the teaching life to cease striving in the world of education for a little while. Soon it returns to me.
This summer I have had loads of writers block. And I've traveled to see old friends and I've done lots of new things too. And I've cleaned. And I've grown up a little more. And I've faced things squarely that might have been hidden or held residue in the business of the school year.
When you really face yourself in the quiet of a summer day, the real true you sometimes needs to be reckoned with. I will say that this has been awkward for me...to really think about things I've carried in my mind, the clutter that holds a fog that doesn't need to be there. The messages I share internally that propel or hinder. Amidst this, the questioning, the perspective changing, the reckoning, beautifully, there has also been rest.
In the far away, abstract, summer reaches of my mind, I have seen again that this is growing up.
We all like people who are comfortable with themselves. People who are unapologetic about self without being abrasive and angsty about it in their expression. Inward grace, I think some have called it. Or 'Self flashing off of face and frame.' I have always liked that. In the summer season, I see how often this expression of living from your truest self, and living honestly from who you are is not always an easy thing.
But surprisingly, this week, all things met when I joined a gym. Which is the last place I'd consider 'all things meeting' in my life. I will tell you that for a few years now I've had 'ideas' about gyms, and the reasons people go there. And I've heard stories that confirm insecurity or self-absorption or a restlessness that compels the ever present and continual movement of our times. I have never wanted to be one of those people who joined a gym for an external reason. Or a fear. Or a status quo. I think you'll resent it all very quickly if you are running on external motives.
But this week, I waltzed in and signed up too.
And it made me deep down happy to do so.
This seems roundabout, but it connects....In the last year of my life I have thought long and hard about the things that were very present in my life in high school. Namely competitive sports like track and cross country. I've asked myself why I was in a sport like track for six years if it stressed me out. (And it really did.) I didn't have parents who pushed me intensely, and I wasn't competitive. Music I loved. But I pushed myself to be in sports. So what was I doing with these competitive people?
I think I logged all of those miles because there were people there, and I love people. Knowing different subcultures in high school certainly paved a way to relate with most everyone else in life I've encountered since then. So that's good. But the question that was never asked before was, 'What was MY motive?'
Aside from subcultures, I think I didn't want to miss out. I wanted all of life in front of me. And I wanted to do the hardest thing. (Guess which sport never got cancelled on rainy days? I still have a love/hate relationship with this when afternoon announcements come on in the spring at school. I internally still commiserate with the runners.) And I believed people when they said sports would build things in you for life later on. I didn't want to miss that either.
Joining a gym at this age has helped me see all of this. But ten years ago, running races, I really was just miserable. Just last night I sat with good kindred spirit friends on their porch, and cross country came up. And the sheer panic you felt when the gun went off and a mass of people started sprinting across a muddy field. Why were we there? Why was everyone running so fast for 2.5 miles? This was the shared sentiment. I have heard other people describe this as a moment they relish. That was never me.
Yesterday I had a chance to talk with another someone in my life about our earlier selves. And she said a similar thing, which surprised me. She wanted to do hard things too. It compelled much of her life in high school. The strangeness of this attitude of self however, is that I wasn't the girl who had to be perfect. I wholeheartedly saw my B- as an accomplishment in math, and was never on varsity, and lived happily there.
The beyond here, the thing that compelled me I think, was not the competition, or the goal setting by the coach, or the promise of a good chance at college. What I see now, that I didn't see then, is a good strong mix of being a people pleaser and wanting to prove to myself that I could do anything I wanted.
You find this attitude in a generation of girls who are told they can do whatever they set their mind to. And women who see what was paved before them in order for this to happen. I have always seen the world as all gates, all opportunities because of this, and feel grateful to fully live in ways women couldn't before.
But I never asked myself if I WANTED to do those things. And really, life becomes a lot more interesting when you do the things you want to do and are very good at. So says the 20s.
(Not me.)
The gym, I have quickly realized, is a place for me to be an introvert. It's near my house, it's month-to-month, it doesn't allow anyone under 18, and it has a pool. This week when I didn't want to run, I went swimming. And when I didn't want to do laps anymore, I floated in the water, back and forth, and stared at the ceiling. And felt happily far away. No pressure. No competition. No advice. Just floating. But the work of pushing myself could live next to that too.
I must say that I really loved it. And it's a strange thing when it takes so many people so many years to make peace this very important piece of their lives. I am celebrating this new found perspective, and, for the first time in life that deep down happiness that can be found while exercising.
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