Marlow's Musings 12/10/23
Insights, adventures and fun stuff from this week.
Audio narration by David Marlow
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
Lao Tzu
A Journey of Any Kind…
…starts with a single step. Whether it ultimately ends a thousand miles later or eight hundred sixty-six.
If you think 866 is an unusual number to end on, you are right. It is not the number I had in mind when the year began, starting my fifth running journey of a thousand miles in a single calendar year.
With only a few weeks to go in 2023, that is likely where this one will end.
Even though I set an intention to run 1,000 miles each year, it is not a goal in the traditional sense.
Goals are essentially made up, with little to no understanding of the future as we create them.
We invent them out of some hope or wish of how we want the future to go. Yet, we can't predict or control the future, making setting goals almost useless.
Outcomes
What I do is set outcomes. The outcome I want is a healthy body and mind. Running contributes to that, and having an intention of running one thousand miles gets me out on the road on days when I would rather not lace up my shoes.
To reach 1,000 miles in 365 days, you must average nearly 2.75 miles daily.
✔️Every
✔️single
✔️day.
If you take a day off, you must run 5.5 miles to catch up.
Prior 1,00 Miles Journeys
Last year, I completed my fourth calendar year 1,000-mile running journey, finishing with nearly 1200 miles.
Each year presents its own challenges and opportunities for growth and reflection.
Three years ago, I didn't think there was even a remote possibility. I was recovering from Covid where I couldn't even walk a mile for months, let alone run.
I kept running even when it was hard and was terrible at it. Then, in July, I realized that I had recovered and put in enough work that maybe, just maybe, I could hit 1,000.
It was a bit of a spiritual journey for me as well, pushing through doubts, failure, and illness.
This Time It's Different
2021 was going to be different. At the close of 2020, I had fully recovered and hit my best fitness level ever, as rated by V02Max.
I was going to have the best running year of my life!
💥 Then I injured my neck, unrelated to running, and missed eight weeks. As I mentioned, to hit 1,000 miles in a year, you must average 2.75 miles daily.
Missing 8 weeks put me behind over 150 miles.
My Focus Word for 2021 was intention. I learned the value of intention and acceptance in that running year. Through disappointment and frustration of injury, I ran with intention and acceptance.
I kept at it while allowing for proper rest and for days when the body or lungs weren't ready for a long run.
I permitted myself to have 'terrible' runs and even not to make 1,000 if that was how things went. In late December, on a beautifully sunny and deceptively cold day, I passed 1,000 miles.
Year of Creative Running
Last year was thankfully injury and illness-free. My Focus Word was 'create,' and it was a year of creative running.
I worked with my doctor to create healthy conditions for running outside and controlling my cold-induced asthma.
I ran all my miles outside for the first time, even on the coldest days.
Outcomes over Goals
The 1,000-mile intention gets me out and running. Having an outcome of health rather than a goal of miles keeps me going while encouraging me to allow time for rest, recovery, and life's inevitable surprises.
This year, I caught a cold that transformed into pneumonia, causing me to miss over a month of running. If I had a goal of 1,000 miles, the old me would have gone out and stressed myself out to catch up. I would have run before I was ready and in conditions that risked my health.
Even before pneumonia, I was behind the curve much of the year because of some bizarre stretches of extreme cold in the spring and sizzling weather in the summer of 2023.
There were many days when it wasn't safe or in support of my outcome of better health to run.
After recovering from pneumonia, I started slow and ran short distances, working my way back to shape and health.
At one point, out on a run, I did the math and figured if I ran 6 miles a day every day until the end of the year, I could still make it.
Six miles was my pre-illness daily distance. As I did the calculation, I could feel myself running faster, and then I slowed my pace and breathing.
The goal-driven perfectionist Dave of the past would have tried. The harmony-focused Dave of today is enjoying running for the sake of running and embracing the outcome of health.
Now, about next year…
Word of the Week
Laraxtio (n )
la·rak·sēō
Latin laetātiō, rejoice + praxis, the process of turning theory into reality. Pronounced “la·rak·sēō”
1: The joy of knowing how quickly your circumstances could change on you. Rather than feeling anxious or apprehensive about current circumstances, we are happy at the prospect of positive change. The world around us seems brighter and more vibrant, and we find ourselves smiling and laughing more often.
We may even find that our usual worries and concerns seem to melt away in the face of our newfound sense of joy. A single word, a single step, a phone call out of the blue, and by the end of next week, you might already be looking back on this morning as the beginning of a bright new season of life.
Note: This is basically the opposite of craxis, last week’s word. See comment of the week for more about the story behind the creation of this new word, laraxtio.
In case you missed it…
🌀Imagine a Neglected Garden
📌 Without purpose, WE are the neglected garden.
🌱 Now imagine the most beautiful garden you’ve ever seen. Such a garden is brought to life with intention. With focus, dedication, and discipline.
People often expect things to just happen, to be organic. A patch of weeds and a garden are both organic.
🌱One is organic with purpose and intention.
💥 When we embrace our purpose we bring forth the life we were meant to live.
💥 We do the things we were meant to do.
💥 We impact the people we were meant to impact.
Want your life to be a beautiful garden?
You can check out more in the video…
Ikiquest+
This week in Ikiquest+…
The Coffee Contemplation encourages you not to do New Year’s Resolutions and to do this instead.
Plus subscribers can read it here.
Comment of the Week:
This week’s comment is from Corrie, who is a long-time reader of my work. She had this to say about last week’s Word of Purpose…Craxis.
I’m not sure why but while this definition seems a little ominous its also kind of exciting to me. I’m reading it from a perspective of wanting and waiting for big changes though (hopefully positive, of course), and if next week my current normal is overturned then I fully expect it to be a huge blessing and I’d celebrate that my current “normal life” had dissolved so fast. I’m curious if you considered it that way too. So much is written about change being scary and negative. Is there a word for the joy of knowing how quickly circumstances can change for the better?
As it turns out there isn’t a word for the opposite of craxis, for the joy of knowing how quickly circumstances can change for the better. So, I created one and made it this week’s Word of the Week.
Quote I’m Pondering
This week, I’ve pondered this passage from French poet François-Anatole Thibault, better known as Anatole France.
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
While exploring craxis and laraxtio, the extreme feelings of change, it seems we reside most often somewhere in between, as the poet’s idea here suggests.
Fun Thing I Saw This Week
It has been unseasonably warm and sunny this past week. Even so, ice remains on the ponds near my running path from the cold of prior weeks.
I spotted these geese who probably should have flown south long ago. Instead, they were lounging on the ice, not the open water on the pond.
Stopping my run for a while, I watched them, and they paid me no mind.
Final Thoughts
The only word that seems fitting right now is surreality, the sense that things seem real but are so illogical and unsettling that they can't possibly be.
Standing today on the windswept plains, I pondered the imponderable. This is the ancient family ground where generations who came before rest deep in the black Illinois soil.
Saying goodbye to a sibling fourteen years your junior is not how it is supposed to be.
Yet that is my reality, no matter how surreal it seems.
Quest well.
Nice reflections David sorry to hear of the family note…May he rest in peace!
I like the signal word of "outcomes" versus "goals". It's funny how meaning varies from person to person - I would almost swap intentions and outcomes based on the meanings you describe here. Yet, it doesn't matter - the intention of having a more conscious relationship to the year's activities remains. Something I'll certainly be percolating on as the new year unfolds.