How wood floors and running go together…

I once read, that in a meditative state where you are present in the moment and connected to now, you can observe patterns about life cycles while doing something as mundane as mopping a floor. Yea, you read that right. I thought it was silly when I first read it. Then one day I tried it.

There are dark wood floors in the bedroom, not midnight dark – more like deep caramel. The floors are shellacked, so they glisten when cleaned especially on days when the sun pours through the windows. During a Saturday afternoon cleaning session – you know the one where the soca and dancehall reggae mix is bumping at max on the speakers, the mop clearly doubles as a mic and no real opportunity is missed to practice your budding whining skills when the beat drops- I decided to try this thing I read about. So, scene – me, wet mop in hand, swiveling from left to right. I drowned out the background music and started paying attention to the floor. Initially all I saw were varying degrees of caramel wooden tones, but as I looked deeper, I noticed discolored patches, missing nails, areas of deep chocolate color, a seamless blending of old and new wood planks, unevenness from tiny objects trapped in the shellac, missing pieces/splinters of wood. Now all this may sound like the floor guys did a poor job 🙂 The reality is, unless close attention is being given to the floor, it’s easy to miss these imperfections. What I read was making more sense. The floor was a parallel for life, hear me owwt! Unconsciously we often aren’t paying attention and may glimpse a life and conclude “eh, looks fine” maybe even “great.” That day, the deep and shallow variation in wood tones reminded me that both the dark and light parts of myself need to co-exist and both are beautiful. Those missing nails anchored the thought that I was still thriving after losing people who I thought I could never live without. As for the trapped tiny objects, they meant to me areas of life (habits, things, feelings etc.) that I attached to for one reason or another but will need to detach from eventually. These things aren’t the core of my being but accoutrements that I gained over time; that likely needs to be scraped out the shellac with a box cutter and discarded as trash. Finally, the seamless blending of old and new wood was a stark reminder that as life evolves, as we grow, as we change, as we connect with new people and experiences, the things we sometimes assume won’t blend well, actually do so beautifully.

So, yea, that Saturday had me thinking about life, cycles and where else these parallel lessons were happening that I wasn’t yet conscious of. It brought me back to running, so bear with me as I unpack a few thoughts and share a bit of insight gained from a running practice.

1. Just start. It’s like anything else. There’s always a distraction, something else to do, someone to get back to, something that needs cleaning or feeding, all kinds of reasons. But, like church, getting there is half the battle. To be honest, starting happens long before we lace up running shoes and put on t-shirt and shorts. Long before we grab the contraption to hold our phone. Starting a run, starting absolutely anything, starts in your mind way before you act on it. This is why mental health is as important as physical health, it’s a circular relationship. There are those of us who may find ‘doing’ easier than others, because mentally we have a developed that kind of relationship with actions- otherwise known as habits. Building new habits, and breaking old ones, almost always comes down to how we think. The fear of beginning something, not knowing what to expect and crippling thoughts about “what-if” kills many a dream in its infancy. The hack is to just get started, start scared, start uncertain, start without the right words – they will come, it’s ok to start without feeling in control of the journey. Start by putting one foot in front of the other.
2. Start slow. Take your time, be patient with your body in the early miles as it makes the adjustment from not moving to running. Anything I’ve ever gotten better at, I did by starting slow. Whether related to career, spiritual growth, cooking, karaoke…you name it. Slow feels ugh sometimes, especially at work when you often want (or in some cases need) to be seen as the expert very quickly. Slow doesn’t always feel confident. This is why being learning to be patient with yourself is so critical. Practicing patience is one of the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned. Life is cyclical and all things are connected, so patience is universal. If I’m patient with learning how to paint a door (something I know very little about) that practice of patience extends to other faucets of life – that is if I’m in the moment and connecting with the feeling. The same goes for any other emotion. Nothing happens in a vacuum. We only become better through practice. We develop and nurture that practice by starting slow.
3. You’ll go faster as time goes on. Keep in mind that faster doesn’t always mean fast. As your body warms up, you naturally start to go faster – than when you first started. This one can be a dozy, because the pace of ‘faster’ depends on the kind of race you’re running i.e. your goals. The key point though is, the comparison is yourself at the beginning of the run. Sometimes faster means time, sometimes it means resilience, sometimes it means just not giving up. The duration may vary; “faster” can happen in one run, over a series of runs, even over the course of a life. We often observe others at peak performance (whether in a race, at work or life in general) and want to be there – I’ve definitely had these thoughts. But we often miss the preparation parts of their journey, the false starts, the failures, the slow days, the days of building endurance. We don’t often see the days when they were practicing getting faster. As you get into running or doing, you’ll naturally get better over time (assuming other things are equal…health etc.). 
4. You’re home. The place in the run where you feel like you could run like this foreva! Everything feels limber, your pelvic is loose, your rhythm is on point and you’re running in the moment as if nothing else exists. This feels glorious. It’s the comfort zone. And yes, you won’t find much new growth in the comfort zone BUT there is so much value here. The comfort zone sets the baseline from which you grow. It’s in the comfort zone that you recover (mentally, physically etc.) and reconnect with your journey in its entirety; since in many ways this zone is a culmination of work over time. It’s a marker that tells you where you are now, where you’ve been and informs where you still can go. There is often a sense of urgency to shift out of the comfort zone, but sometimes it’s just as important to look back where you came from and bring from the past that which is useful to support your new endeavors. This is the beauty of the comfort zone, the beauty of home. There’s infinite value in its capacity to tell you how you got to the present moment, what worked, what didn’t, how you performed under certain conditions. Like everything else, the comfort zone is temporary; but savor the moment while you’re there. 
5. Transitions and Endings. As you round out the end of your run, there’s a natural transition. You either give it one final push and speed up. Or you simmer down slowly to a halt. Either way, you mentally prepare yourself for a shift, a transition to the end. Until the next run. Transitions are as natural as breathing. And though we sometimes get annoyed with change, we must simultaneously accept that change is in fact the only constant. In this transition, it can be challenging to stay in the moment. As we think about the run coming to an end we often start thinking about what’s next in our day. Maybe it’s the to-do list, the bills, the thing we forgot to do and just remembered, dinner plans, homework, bedtime stories to be read…there are a million thoughts that may flood our minds during this transition. It’s helpful to reconnect with the run here, settle into a place of gratitude for having done the run, gratitude for the body’s incredible power and ability, gratitude for the space in which you ran, gratitude for the people who made the run possible (babysitters, partners, friends etc.), gratitude for the mindset to complete this run and the spiritual connection that propels you forward, gratitude for the moment in which you cross another finish line; likely one without much fanfare but with your biggest fan, your most important coach, YOU!

You may have already gathered; these lessons aren’t solely about running. To that end, it makes sense to include a BONUS – what is likely the most important part of any habit or practice- understanding your why, understanding your purpose for doing the run…your purpose for doing anything. I included this bonus because I’d be remiss not to. Developing any practice takes discipline (among sooooo may other skills and traits). Without identifying, and connecting, with the purpose of your doing, any attempt at practicing discipline in this area will be frustrating and futile. *Discipline deserves it’s own piece so I won’t unpack it here; but just know we must include it in our considerations.*

This was an exercise in the connectedness of all things, from the mundane to the exciting. It’s an exercise in increasing awareness of the minutiae in everyday life; whether running, working, cooking, writing, teaching, selling, you name it. We are powerless to change the things we aren’t aware of. In the minutiae there is much we take for granted, that we tune out of, but ultimately these habits and actions subconsciously shape our lives.  The reality is life primarily happens in the mundane, who you are as a person happens in the minutiae, not in those one-off moments we tend to focus on- you know, the ones we often have pictures to commemorate. As the great scholar Shawn ‘Jay- Z’ Carter once said, ‘You was who you was when you got here.” Give some thought to who you are in the minutiae. Where are the transitions? What’s happening in your comfort zone? In what areas are you going faster? What have you been putting off that you need to just start?

Until next time, walk gud.

K.H