Home is Where I Want to Be

Throughout my life I have searched for home--that elusive place of ease in my soul where all seems right with the world. While on an eight-mile run along the Androscoggin River in Brunswick, Maine Sunday morning, I affirmed an earlier realization that, for me, running just may be that home.

My life is rich, peopled by wonderful friends and dear family and marked by the fortune of deep love. I have followed a career path that is rewarding and adds value to society. But by nature I am reticent, which often strands me outside looking in, ever searching for a way to connect--and feel connected--more profoundly.

Moving along the running trail I perfectly inhabit my body, limbs synchronized, breath rising and falling easily within and without, air sweeping across my face, my thoughts drifting freely and brightly and gently in my mind, judgement gone (we will get to the difference between RUNNING and RACING for me in a later post!). Even on those days when the run comes hard, I can understand, forgive, and run on. I know my running self.

Like any love affair, there are problems with falling deeply in love with running. There is injury, of course. And even the anticipation of injury is ever-present, worrying that a forced separation will leave an accompanying void in my life. There are days with too little time. And days when I'm too stubbornly unhappy to get myself out the door to happiness.

But then there are the up-sides of this particular lover. Together we move in the world and see the world and its people in new ways.  Inside of running I am a gentle witness to the strength and weaknesses of my own mind and body. I can take running with me wherever I go. My size 10 Sauconys fit even my smallest overnight carry-on. If there is no nearby trail, I am sure to find a hotel treadmill waiting for me.  It takes me five minutes from pajamas to fully clad and ready to head out the door. And it is a certainty that just thirty minutes later I will be a happier and saner version of myself, more able to follow through on all of the demands of life.

Running has taught me so much, not the least of which is perspective.  To quote David Byrne from his beautiful love song, Naive Melody, that has served me as a touchstone for decades, "Home is where I want to be but I guess I am already there."