Yesterday, I was channeling both Martha Stewart and Guy Kawasaki at the same time. How cool is that? I was the design maven known for creating something fabulous and useful out of nothing as well as the innovative entrepreneurial visionary and author of “Art of the Start” rolled into one for an invigorating session of dreaming, intentioning and goal setting.
But since my budget is a tad smaller than even the post-incarcerated Martha, I was more like the Giant Tiger version of her. I took a roll of birthday wrapping paper, turned it around so the blank side was facing out towards me and taped the design side across 6 feet of my living room wall. Then, with a coffee mug full of colourful markers, I brainstormed what 2012 could look like under the headings of “Life's Work”, “Heart” and “Body & Spirit”.
There is still much work to be done in reducing the longer term goals into smaller, more manageable 'to do' lists but that will come.
In the area of Body & Spirit, one goal was to train for a 5K race in May. This run, known affectionately by my family as Race Weekend, has been an annual event that my original family and an assortment of friends, children, lovers and distant relatives have participated in for 8 years. It started May 2003, the year that my father died and we have run every May since to raise money to support the hospital that treated him during his illness.
The first year I took training very seriously. It was my way of proactively grieving for an inevitable and painful ending that I saw coming. Morbid? Maybe. Perhaps it was the fifth reading through the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying that convinced me to sit with the impending darkness and not look for a way past it.
By January of 2003, I had signed up for a 5K race near my hometown, downloaded a beginner's 5K training schedule and stuck to it religiously using every commitment device I could find. My intentions were mostly visual. I was running towards something, not away from it.
My father was still living during my training and was determined that he was going to be there to watch me finish the race. Imagining that scenario gave me the energy to run even after a long day at work. In the bitter cold. In the dark of evening or morning. Or through the mind-lies that lashed out at at me to keep me from going on. "You don't have the body of a runner." "You're too old." "This won't make a difference to anyone."
At this point in his illness, the cancer had entered his bones and there was significant deterioration and pain in his one hip. He eventually admitted that he might have to be at the finish line in a wheelchair. Even near the end, in his morphine-induced haze, he kept asking if we won the race. Eventually I told him 'yes'. We won.
My father died May 3. Three weeks before the race. Through the tears, the funeral preparations and the mind-numbing exhaustion of round-the-clock vigil at my father's bed for two weeks, the rest of my siblings, their children, friends and extended family all signed up to run the race with me. Our first Race Weekend was born.
This memory flooded me, as I went out for a run this morning. My first run since last May and part of my goal setting practice. Training is less vigorous as the years pass and I realize now much more there is to Race Weekend than just running. It's a legacy of facing obstacles with courage of a hero and the frailty of a human being. Of flawed and fiercely real people putting one foot in front of the other and breathing through the “I can't go on” moments.
My father was running beside me this morning. Occasionally flicking at my hands to see if I was clenching them into fists. Telling me to lower my shoulders. Reminding me to relax. To breathe. He was telling me not to give up, even when I wanted to. Then, when we realized we were closing in on the 4K point, we both smiled, lowered our arms for increased pumping action and really gave 'er to sprint the last block home.
My father seriously would've needed a few days to get used to the large piece of paper of my living room wall. He was old-school that way. But since our family owned a flower shop and a catering business for 20-some years (after his long career as a banker), he would've been totally okay with the Martha and Guy bit. Then, after a week or two, I would hear him telling someone else why they should be visioning with wrapping paper on their living room wall it as if it was his idea.
Hey, how can I miss you if you never go away? .... I knew that would make you smile.
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