This morning I woke to the wind thrashing through the pine tree outside my window. I have had the privilege of spending the last week, training up at altitude in beautiful Mammoth, California. The air is light and fresh. The scenery is perfect, sheer cold rock cliffs, covered by a warm carpet of green trees; emerald blue lakes dot the side of the road like call boxes. This morning I set off in the cold morning air expecting a mellow hour and forty-five minute run, not much effort, not much thought.
It’s been a long time....
It’s been a very long time since I have sat down and simply thought. It’s been a long time since I allowed my self to get lost in thought anywhere, sitting, standing, eating, sleeping; it’s been a long time since I allowed my introversive to consume me and blur everything even my powerful extravert.
I think it happens in small steps, split second choices made day after day; a little decision here another one here and before you know it, you have crept away from something you near and dear. Sometimes people walk away from relationships, a decision at a time, others hobbies, passions, gifts, things they loved. I think it was somewhere around fifty minutes, as I looped around a wind-whipped Lake Mary, nestled at ten thousand feet, I realized I had nothing on my mind. I wasn’t worried about anything, stressed by a pushing situation, anxious about a deadline, nothing.
I’ve heard many times that, “Life is a Journey,” whenever on a journey there is a road, where there is a road there is two directions. If life is a journey, then life has a specific direction, what direction are you heading now? Today the crunch of the trail, the wind in the trees, brought me a to a starling realization, I have gotten away from hobbies, passions and gifts decision by decision. I have let the pressing issues of now, shift my focus and not in a great direction. In pursuing something I love, I became oblivious to the many other important things right around me.
“But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere.” Ecclesiastes 2:11
I have worked so hard to chase the wind, and some of the things that were truly worthwhile have blown away in the wind. So I ask you in your grind and rhythm we call life, what have you lost?
Are you chasing the wind?
