Friday, September 22, 2006

Jogging My Memories

I am feeling a lot of stress these days.  The sordid details of why and wherefore are not relevant to our considerations; suffice it to say, tension and anxiety in some form have been coursing through my veins for months now and I’m getting pretty tired of it.  It saps me of vigor and deadens my initiative.  But just as importantly, it darkens my outlook.  I dwell on bad things and don’t notice – or appreciate – good ones.  That’s particularly pernicious, of course.  It makes good times seem bad, and bad times seem irredeemable. 

The thing is that, at least theoretically, this last one is actually something I have control over.  I may not be able to affect some of the events touching my life these days, but even as to those that are entirely within my power, it is only in the framing and the viewing of them that the individual constituent stressors that constitute my life can be addressed, evaluated, and somehow accommodated.  I can influence how I respond to things, and that will influence what things I am responding to.  In theory, anyway.

This is a particularly apt realization to embrace at this season of the year.  It is Rosh Hashona tonight, and time to pause and reflect on the world entrusted to us and the power inherent in us all to uplift it.  It is a time for seeing the grace that surrounds us.  And in this spirit, here are three little gifts of beauty and wisdom bestowed on me during a run with the boy in the park on an obligatory but nonetheless deeply appreciated day off work yesterday:

* I really felt tired and unprepared for that run.  My joints were stiff and my feet weren’t happy with me.  It was therefore a matter of some satisfaction to me when my big jogstroller and I zipped past another jogger on the path. I may not have much to offer, but I can still bring what I’ve got.  My strength is strong.  No matter that I was 20 or 30 years younger than that other runner, or that I was the only one of us wearing attire designed for exercise, or that I am differently gendered than she.  I totally kicked that floppy-hat-wearing old woman’s ass at jogging in the park.  I RULE.

Then, not a minute later, I got mine.  The guy who passed me had calves like two fists side by side, thighs like cordwood, and a high tech jersey that seemed to bounce lightly over what appeared likely to be a richly-defined and very trim physique.  He was past me almost before I even saw him, glistening in a light sheen of sweat but assuredly not over-straining himself. As I watched him recede into the distance before me, I realized: You’ve got to compare yourself to the right example.

* My run starts me in the park’s rose garden. It’s a lovely display but certainly a modest one: maybe 200 beds, mostly in two ranks of rectangular plots on either side of a small semi-circular plaza in the middle.  The garden attracts a lot of visitors, as much by virtue of being on the maps and near a lot of other things that people want to visit, as for its own inherent beauty. I don’t mean to talk it down, but it’s just a rose garden – exemplifying, if you will, that which I never promised you, but otherwise not especially noteworthy.  The specimens on display are, of course, exceptionally beautiful, and to run through this garden in a casting light and smell the myriad blooms on a clean ocean breeze…. I love the rose garden, but I don’t let that blind me.  It’s great, but it’s nothing special.

As I ran through yesterday, I saw a lot of tourists checking out the rose garden, with their cheap paper maps and museum guides crumpling in their sweaty tourist hands.  They were taking elaborate photographs and examining the flowers with nearly-scientific attentiveness.  I wondered if any of them were going to visit the dahlia garden too.  That’s a smaller plot of land next to the beautiful old conservatory, where hundreds of amazing, huge, colorful, exuberant dahlias are in full bloom.  It’s a short walk down the road but a bit off the beaten path so a lot of people miss it.  As I ran past that garden on JFK a few minutes later and took special note of the incredible reds and yellows and purples erupting from the ground back where the dahlias grew, it occurred to me that sometimes you get what you’re looking for at the first garden you visit, but sometimes there is another better garden just a little further down the road. Tourists, beware: the garden you’re visiting may not be the garden you were looking for. 

* Finally, as I ran back home, I realized I’d learned two important lessons.  But I like odd-numbered lists so I set to wondering whether a third lesson was in the offing for me.  My delicate brains wrestled with this question as I trotted along my sweaty way, until I realized that two lessons was going to have to be all I learned.  Sometimes life gives you nothing.  When you get two lessons instead of zip, appreciate them – don’t demean them by looking for more.  Appreciate what has been strewn along your path.  That, as it turns out, was lesson three. 

It’s time for me to shut down and head home so I can get ready for services.  It’s been a long time since I last went, and Zach has never davened.  This is going to be a good path, this weekend, with unexpected gardens and reconsidered benchmarks.  I really need it to be that, anyway.  Good luck to you and yours, and have a weekend full of satisfactions.