Doing it Backwards!

Today I had the urge to do it backwards!


Before you think I’ve gone all kinky on you, let me explain; I woke up feeling tired and my body was sore and stiff from last night’s soccer game, not to mention the game I played a couple of days earlier. Also my mind was swimming in a murky pea-soup of a fog, likely due to increasing tensions in an area of my life which has recently culminated in an unpleasant change. I knew I needed a short easy run to work it off and clear out the blue funk, but none of my routes were “calling me”. What to do?


I made a pot of coffee and contemplated the possibilities. It was a beautiful morning, I just had to get out there. Then it came to me...I would step out of my running-route “comfort zones” and run one of my short easy routes backwards. My routes (approximately 7 of them) are formulated so that the long, steep hills occur near the beginning or the middle of the run. I like the last part of the run to be mostly down hill or flattish (there isn’t really a lot of flat terrain in my running neighborhood) so I can “coast” home or run at warp speed, depending on the mood. The idea of a backwards route was enough of a motivation to get me going and I hit the pavement in shorts and sunglasses...also a first this year...and in a new light.


The view from the backwards route was startlingly different. I felt like I was running in a brand new neighborhood. It was also 2 hours later than my usual running time, so the sun was warmer and the various smells along the way were different too. The ocean seemed to be a lighter shade of blue and I caught a glimpse of a lovely babbling brook that I can only hear when running the other way. I soon forgot about my stiffness and the pea soup in my brain slowly faded away as I enjoyed the familiar but new surroundings. Before I knew it, I was on the last, long, big hill headed towards home and it wasn’t so bad. I wasn’t able to run it all the way home, but the fast walk felt good and was a nice “cool down” to an awesome easy run.


As humans we often see life as a linear process. We start, we do something and we finish. But what if we chose to turn our whole personal world upside down and inside out and then looked at things from a different perspective. Would our world change? Would it become more exciting? Or maybe become more simple?


Around 1100 AD there lived a wise monk. No one remembers his name, but they do remember his words. His words still echo in the halls of wisdom to this day. 


“When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation.


When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.”


This wise old monk realized one of the key secrets of life - change yourself and the world changes around you. Or better still; change your focus about life and life changes. Wisdom is the art of seeing a bigger picture.


So today, this week, this month, I’m going to look at my life from a different perspective. I’m going to subtract certain things and thoughts from it and focus on being who I naturally am. I’m going to consider that there could be more to the picture of life than what I am seeing right now.


So, as I navigate the aisles of the grocery store this afternoon, I might take a backwards route. And you can bet I will not be buying any lemons, but a basket full of nature’s bounty and then I might just fly on a light beam all the way home.