Why I'm running a half marathon

It's not that I want to run a half marathon; it's that I'm powerless to resist it.

Its gravitational pull has left me helpless. It's so obvious that I have to do this that it's never even occurred to me whether I want to or not.

I had toyed with the idea of running this thing ever since I moved to Nashville six years ago. The whole city shuts down the last weekend of April for this race, and it felt weird not to be part of it, even though I had never been that into long distance running. 

But I just couldn't pull the trigger.

I kept coming up with reasons not to do it:  It requires a whole lot of training, and I don't have much spare time.  The registration fee is high, and I don't win anything for my effort, so what's the point? April is an unpredictable weather month, and the conditions might be miserable.  The race might conflict with my training for the Jamaican bobsled team. 

I made that last one up, but you get the point.

This year, though, was different.

I had started running last year, when I couldn't process the stuff life was throwing at me through any other means. I guess Forrest Gump and I have that in common, along with being from Alabama.

I found that while I couldn't run escape the cancer in my family, the financial problems in my household or the deteriorating relationships in my life, I could still run away, if only for an hour, and that counted for something.

My weekly runs started out as a simple diversion, but before long finishing the route before me became a metaphor for making it through whatever else I was struggling with in my life.

As I began to associate running with overcoming the things that had stolen my joy, it was only natural that it started to feel like the only way I could ever reclaim my peace of mind was to finish the biggest race my city has to offer.

In the meantime, I've found that I like running.  Or at least, I like running until I get really tired, my legs hurt and I feel nauseous.

I've still never reached a state of enlightenment or felt a "runner's high," but I like having an hour or so to be alone with my thoughts and where my mind can roam aimlessly, at least until my body hurts so badly that I can't think of anything but finishing.

Even then, when I'm done, there's something rewarding about winning the struggle between my own limitations and the distance to my destination. 

It's that feeling that is pushing me forward into the 13.1 club.  I have to do this so that I can prove to myself I can. 

It's a symbol for overcoming every other overwhelming obstacle in life.  It will be a reminder that through hard work and progressive steps I can accomplish so much more than what seems possible, and that I'll be able to accomplish still more in the future than I can right now.

It's a starting point for crossing off those lingering life projects I've put on the backburner for too long, and becoming the person I know somewhere deep inside that I could be.

It's to be a final triumph to signal closure, hopefully, to at least a segment of a difficult period of life.  It's to reaffirm that hard times don't endure forever, and that there can be joy if we continue running until we reach the other side,even if it isn't always in sight. 

I realize that my other problems won't magically disappear once I cross the finish line, nor will an instruction manual pop into my hands to tell me how to fix them.

I'll still have too much debt, unfinished dreams, and imperfect relationships whether I run a half marathon or not.  But somehow, it seems like those issues will feel just a little less daunting if I know that the person facing them is the type of person who can persevere to finish a half marathon.

I just need to prove to myself that I'm that kind of person.

Backhanded Compliments

"You're a really good writer.  I mean, I don't actually read your blog or anything, but your stuff is pretty good."

"You've really come a long way."

"You're pretty good at basketball, for a white guy."

"Your idea is interesting.  It's heretical, but it's interesting."

"I was hoping (that other couple) would want to come out too, so our night might be fun."

"You've gotten much better looking since the last time I saw you."

"I used to think you had dumpy hair. You've improved it 100 percent."

"This brief is not the best you can do."

"You're not as big of a know-it-all jerk as I thought when I first met you."

"I'm sorry I don't feel the same way about you.  But I really respect who you are as a person."

"It's not that I don't like your girlfriend. It's that I believe in you so much that I think you can do better."

"You don't look like you're old enough to be my lawyer."

"God gave you the potential to do so much with your life. If only you had the faith to trust him."

"Congratulations on achieving a measure of success."

"You don't sound like you're from Alabama."

"You're not as dumb as you look."

What do all of these phrases have in common? 

With the exception of the last one (which is just a personal favorite), I've heard each of them at some point in my life.

Nothing sends a mixed message quite like the backhanded compliment.  It's the message that you are either better than the useless idiot you used to be, or perhaps, that you are ok but not as good as you could be, if you actually applied yourself. 

It's the art of telling someone that they are good, but only up to a point.  It's sharing in someone else's success, but with an implicit message that they not get too carried away, lest they suddenly think that they are more important than you.

It's telling someone to stand and accept recognition, but stay in their place.

Why do people say these kinds of things?  If you want someone to feel appreciated, what's the point of attaching strings to the positivity?

I seem to attract a lot of these for some reason, maybe I really did use to be an uptight weenie, and maybe because I constantly feel like I fall short of my potential.  But I suppose people usually mean well when they say these things but just don't know how to express themselves.

The people with selfish motives for saying these type of things usually have low esteem, and their backhandedness comes out of their own feelings of inferiority, so I try not to take it personally.  Other people are just socially clueless and not worthy of our frustration--by the way, these are the same people who post pointlessly argumentative things on facebook.

I sometimes marvel at how anyone could think their mixed blessings could be interpreted as anything other than an insult, but I try to just shake my head and file them away for a future blog post.  

And what about this post? 

Well, maybe it wasn't very good.  But it's better than most of the ones I've done lately. 

You don't have to tell me. 

Whoever Heard of Catfish in a Swimming Pool?

When I rank the numerous bizarre stories from my childhood, number one on the list is probably the time my dad stocked our swimming pool with catfish.

While I'm tempted to just leave the details story to your imagination, I suppose it's only fair to share it. 

You see, my dad has come up with a number of bad ideas over the years, generally with the goal of either making or saving a few dollars. So when someone told him that he could save money on chlorine and electricity during the wintertime by stocking the swimming pool with catfish, he was open to hearing the details.

The premise was that catfish were bottom feeders and would naturally eat the algae and bacteria that cause unattended pools to turn green. Someone (and perhaps it was a catfish salesman) managed to convince my dad that the upfront costs of buying a bunch of catfish would pay for more than even out from the savings on electricity and chlorine (not to mention the effort of cleaning the pool) in just one winter, and when it was warm enough to swim again, the catfish could easily be scooped out of the clear water and provide a number of tasty meals.

As my dad loves catfish, saving money, and the saving effort, it seemed to him a brilliant plan.

And what could go wrong?

Well, everything.

Catfish might eat bacteria and algae, but they don't eat their own poop, so the pool quickly turned some shade of brownish-green.  The fins cut holes in the pool lining, which meant that not only did my dad waste a whole lot of money on catfish, he had to drop over a thousand dollars for a new pool liner. 

But before we could do that, he had to remove the catfish from the pool.  For some reason, my dad didn't want to chlorinate the pool until the fish were gone.  Maybe he thought it would be a lost cause, as the catfish's natural pollution would undo whatever benefit the chlorine might offer.

More likely, he thought the catfish's ingestion of chlorine would render them inedible and thus destroy the last potential minuscule return on his investment. 

Why he didn't just drain the pool is an open question, but my only guess is that he wanted to catch the fish slowly so as to allow the catfish to reproduce all winter, thus maximizing the proceeds of his investment over time.

But even using this incremental strategy, the whisker-filled bottom feeders proved surprisingly difficult to fish out of the murky water. The catfish remained in the pool long after the experiment had proven itself a complete disaster.

To make matters worse, my dad had his real estate office behind the house, directly beside the pool. On more than one occasion, a client arrived to close on a real estate transaction only to be greeted by the sight of a green swimming pool, and one of my then-skinny brothers casting a fishing line inside of it, apparently in hopes of a small miracle.

If my dad sold any property at all during this period, it was a small miracle in and of itself. 

The pool was eventually drained, and I don't remember whether we ate the catfish immediately or just threw them in the pond that was further behind the house. 

That pond, by the way, was full of brown, murky water, despite the presence of numerous catfish inside it.

Perhaps that should have been a sign. 

Just Hoping: One Year Later

It's hard to believe it's been a year since I wrote this:

http://andrewsmithsthoughts.blogspot.com/2012/02/this-is-blog-about-hope.html

But it's true.  My brother's surgery to remove a fist-sized mass and 18 inches from his colon was a year ago today. 

Since then, he's endured 12 sessions of chemotherapy, a triathlon and a whole lot of life uncertainty, starting with an initial post-bioposy prognosis on the Ides of March that didn't sound so optimistic. 

But he's kept moving forward (as much as circumstances allowed) one day at a time, and all the news lately has been good. His is an inspiring story of what we can overcome if we refuse to accept defeat.

But as for my story, it has been better. 

I've been in the dumps lately, and I can't seem to find my way out.

Sometimes it seems, after life has been calm for awhile, a million little things conspire (with a couple of big things) to try to drag you down.  Of course, I have way too many friends who are going through worse things than I am, but I don't know whether their suffering should make me feel thankful that my life seems peaceful by comparison, or whether I should just feel heartbroken on their behalf.  I compromise by feeling a little bit of both.

I want to believe there's beauty and meaning in our struggles, but sometimes, it seems like tragedies are a hot potato that gets tossed around freely from one person to the next.

My pastor says that God "prunes" us sometimes, which hurts in the beginning but leads to greater, more focused growth over the long term. In the meantime, though, it just hurts. 

I've found myself in similar places before, and worked my way out.  I've found that if we just focus on finding the strength to live the day in front of us, it always seems that eventually we'll suddenly realize that life's uphill climb has finally evened out, or maybe even started just the slightest slope downward.

Until then, all we can do is try to find the strength, hope and courage to keep going, believing that better things, things that we can't even fathom, are around that blind corner.

I've lived this story enough times to know that hope is true.

But wouldn't it be nice if that corner got here soon?